PET PET
  • My Account
  • Subscribe
Become a Friend Donate
  • About Us
    • People
    • Press Office
    • Our History
  • Get Involved
    • Become a Friend of PET
    • Volunteer
    • Campaigns
    • Writing Scheme
    • Partnership and Sponsorship
    • Advertise with Us
  • Donate
    • Become a Friend of PET
  • BioNews
    • News
    • Comment
    • Reviews
    • Elsewhere
    • Topics
    • Glossary
    • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Previous Events
  • Engagement
    • Policy and Projects
      • Resources
    • Education
  • Jobs & Opportunities
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
    • People
    • Press Office
    • Our History
  • Get Involved
    • Become a Friend of PET
    • Volunteer
    • Campaigns
    • Writing Scheme
    • Partnership and Sponsorship
    • Advertise with Us
  • Donate
    • Become a Friend of PET
  • BioNews
    • News
    • Comment
    • Reviews
    • Elsewhere
    • Topics
    • Glossary
    • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Previous Events
  • Engagement
    • Policy and Projects
      • Resources
    • Education
  • Jobs & Opportunities
  • Contact Us
  • My Account
  • Subscribe
  • Privacy Statement
  • Advertising Policy
  • Thanks and Acknowledgements
PETBioNewsReviewsVideo Review: What If My Neighbour's Kid Was Genetically Modified?

BioNews

Video Review: What If My Neighbour's Kid Was Genetically Modified?

Published 11 July 2016 posted in Reviews and appears in BioNews 858

Author

Simon Hazelwood-Smith

Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the output from a DNA sequencing machine.
CC BY 4.0
Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the sequencing output from an automated DNA sequencing machine.

Paul Knoepfler's TEDx talk covers familiar ground — designer babies, segregation between 'natural' and GM children, unintended side effects, playing god, and eugenics all feature in his dystopian vision of a future involving genetically modified humans...


What If My Neighbour's Kid Was Genetically Modified?

TEDx, Tuesday 1 December 2015

Presented by Dr Paul Knoepfler

'What If My Neighbour's Kid Was Genetically Modified?', TEDx, Tuesday 1 December 2015


In the world of genetics and assisted reproduction, the fear of 'designer babies' is one that constantly bubbles under the surface. Paul Knoepfler's TEDx talk 'What if my neighbor's kid was genetically modified?' covers familiar ground as he develops this theme. He sets up a future scenario, set in 2030, in which there is widespread genetic modification (GM) of children to improve their physical and intellectual capabilities.

His set-up is strongly reminiscent of the 1997 sci-fi classic 'Gattaca' - segregation between 'natural' and GM children, unintended side effects, playing god, and eugenics all feature in Knoepfler's talk as he appeals for a moratorium on human genetic modification.

The talk is inspired by two recent developments in genetic technology and assisted reproduction that, according to Knoepfler, could make this dystopian fiction become a reality. The first of these developments is the widespread success of the genome-editing technique, CRISPR/Cas9, that allows for cheap, precise and comparatively simple modifications to the genome.

The second is the recent legal approval given to trials of mitochondrial replacement therapy in the UK. This is a technique that involves replacing the mitochondria from a human egg that would otherwise lead to a child with mitochondrial disease, with healthy mitochondria from a second donor egg.

The combination of these technologies and policies is prompting serious discussion about the legal and ethical implications of allowing modifications to human embryos. These debates revolve around the as-yet-unknown safety of these techniques, the fact that modifications could be passed onto future generations, and the question of what is natural or desirable.

I was struck by the lack of subtlety in Knoepfler's principal argument. He asserts that unless there is a moratorium there will inevitably be widespread uptake of genetic modification to create people with extraordinary intellectual and physical capabilities. He goes on to suggest that GM people will have a number of unwanted traits, such as narcissism and aggressiveness. Finally, he alludes to the eugenics programme of Nazi Germany, and issues a warning that using these technologies risks a return to the divided societies of the 1930s and 40s.

These are strong words but not, in my opinion, strong arguments. Many of the traits that Knoepfler suggests could be added to people at will would require a huge leap forward in our knowledge of genetics to even become possible.

For example, genome-wide association studies have failed to find a single genetic variant that accounts for even one IQ point. This means that to be able to deliberately genetically engineer someone to be more intelligent you would have to alter several thousand as-yet-unidentified genes, with a knowledge of all of the genetic interactions that are affected by the changes so that you don't make any mistakes that harm the child. That would be an enormous leap forward in just 14 years.

His scenario also invokes a strong form of genetic determinism, ignoring the huge impact of a person's environment on such complex behavioural traits. If you wanted to improve your child's chances of having a high IQ, it would make far more sense to do this the traditional way and make sure that they received a high-quality education.

It also assumes that people would want to use this technology for anything other than medical interventions to prevent children from inheriting a genetic disease. There is nothing to suggest that this would ever be legal, or even widely desirable. One of the reasons that IVF is popular is that it allows people to have children that are as genetically related to them as possible. Genetic modification for 'desirable traits' would work against this sense of relatedness, and it's why I doubt that people would choose to use technology in this way.

Should we permit the genetic modification of humans to prevent children from being born with serious medical conditions? On that question I am still undecided. The safety of these techniques is a big unknown, and there's also the question of which diseases and conditions could be targeted. Assuming it is possible, would it only be used for diseases that are fatal, or could there also be modifications to remove predispositions to cancer, for example? Producing a list of conditions that would be permitted for treatment would be challenging and controversial. Finally, there are serious concerns about the cost of these treatments, which could make them unusable within the most healthcare systems.

It is essential that people debate and discuss the moral and ethical implications of new technologies, in particular those that directly affect human health. But lazy arguments about narcissistic, aggressive designer babies simply obscure the real issues, and don't advance that important debate.

Related Articles

Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the output from a DNA sequencing machine.
CC BY 4.0
Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the sequencing output from an automated DNA sequencing machine.
Reviews
16 January 2017 • 6 minutes read

Book Review: Redesigning Life — How Genome Editing will Transform the World

by Annabel Slater

Dr John Parrington thinks the ethics of genome editing should be shaped by scientifically informed public debate, and he hopes his book will provide a starting point...

Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the output from a DNA sequencing machine.
CC BY 4.0
Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the sequencing output from an automated DNA sequencing machine.
Reviews
19 September 2016 • 2 minutes read

TV Review: Panorama — Medicine's Big Breakthrough: Editing Your Genes

by Rhys Baker

Over just 30 minutes Fergus Walsh has a lot of ground to cover here without even touching on the ethical debate. Yet, while gene editing may have 'just been made simple', how we respond to these stunning advances is anything but...

Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the output from a DNA sequencing machine.
CC BY 4.0
Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the sequencing output from an automated DNA sequencing machine.
News
14 September 2016 • 2 minutes read

Most Americans worried about genome editing, survey finds

by Anneesa Amjad

A survey has found that a majority of adults in the USA are worried about the potential use of genome-editing technologies to give children a reduced risk of disease...

Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the output from a DNA sequencing machine.
CC BY 4.0
Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the sequencing output from an automated DNA sequencing machine.
Reviews
30 August 2016 • 5 minutes read

Book Review: GMO Sapiens - The Life-Changing Science of Designer Babies

by Julian Hitchcock

GMO Sapiens is just the annoying grit in the machine that the genome editing debate needs, but readers deserve clearer lines between science, speculation and opinion...

Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the output from a DNA sequencing machine.
CC BY 4.0
Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the sequencing output from an automated DNA sequencing machine.
News
12 April 2016 • 3 minutes read

Second Chinese team create genetically modified human embryos

by Ayala Ochert

A second team in China report that they have created genetically modified human embryos, in an attempt to make them resistant to HIV, using the genome-editing technique CRISPR/Cas9...

Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the output from a DNA sequencing machine.
CC BY 4.0
Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the sequencing output from an automated DNA sequencing machine.
Reviews
22 February 2016 • 4 minutes read

Radio Review: Editing Life

by Sarah Pritchard

Professor Matthew Cobb investigates some of the implications of the groundbreaking CRISPR genome-editing technology in this BBC Radio 4 documentary...

PET BioNews
Comment
22 February 2016 • 1 minute read

Should we be using CRISPR/Cas9 to experiment on human embryos?

by BioNews

This video documents a debate about genome editing, produced by the Progress Educational Trust as part of the Festival of Genomics...

Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the output from a DNA sequencing machine.
CC BY 4.0
Image by Peter Artymiuk via the Wellcome Collection. Depicts the shadow of a DNA double helix, on a background that shows the fluorescent banding of the sequencing output from an automated DNA sequencing machine.
Comment
11 January 2016 • 5 minutes read

Why the UK should be leading the discussion on embryo engineering

by Sarah Pritchard

Sir Mark Walport, the UK's Chief Scientific Adviser, gave the keynote address at the Progress Educational Trust's annual conference, where he highlighted the complexity of assessing emerging science and technology, particularly in relation to genome editing...

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

« Radio Review: Contact

Data-Label The UK's Leading Supplier Of Medical Labels & Asset Labels

RetiringDentist.co.uk The UK's Leading M&A Company.

Find out how you can advertise here
easyfundraising
amazon

This month in BioNews

  • Popular
  • Recent
1 August 2022 • 3 minutes read

Podcast Review: Stories of Our Times – IVF, fraud and 'unwanted' children

25 July 2022 • 4 minutes read

TV Review: DNA Family Secrets – series two, episode six

18 July 2022 • 4 minutes read

TV Review: Spotlight – The babymaker uncovered

4 July 2022 • 3 minutes read

Podcast Review: Biohacked Family Secrets – The birth of the sperm bank

20 June 2022 • 5 minutes read

Documentary Review: Our Father

15 August 2022 • 3 minutes read

Radio Review: The Life Scientific – Shankar Balasubramanian on decoding DNA

8 August 2022 • 4 minutes read

Podcast Review: Babbage – Editing the code of life

1 August 2022 • 3 minutes read

Podcast Review: Stories of Our Times – IVF, fraud and 'unwanted' children

25 July 2022 • 4 minutes read

TV Review: DNA Family Secrets – series two, episode six

18 July 2022 • 4 minutes read

TV Review: Spotlight – The babymaker uncovered

Subscribe to BioNews and other PET updates for free.

Subscribe
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • RSS
Wellcome
Website redevelopment supported by Wellcome.

Website by Impact Media Impact Media

  • Privacy Statement
  • Advertising Policy
  • Thanks and Acknowledgements

© 1992 - 2022 Progress Educational Trust. All rights reserved.

Limited company registered in England and Wales no 07405980 • Registered charity no 1139856

Subscribe to BioNews and other PET updates for free.

Subscribe
PET PET

PET is an independent charity that improves choices for people affected by infertility and genetic conditions.

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • RSS
Wellcome
Website redevelopment supported by Wellcome.

Navigation

  • About Us
  • Get Involved
  • Donate
  • BioNews
  • Events
  • Engagement
  • Jobs & Opportunities
  • Contact Us

BioNews

  • News
  • Comment
  • Reviews
  • Elsewhere
  • Topics
  • Glossary
  • Newsletters

Other

  • My Account
  • Subscribe

Website by Impact Media Impact Media

  • Privacy Statement
  • Advertising Policy
  • Thanks and Acknowledgements

© 1992 - 2022 Progress Educational Trust. All rights reserved.

Limited company registered in England and Wales no 07405980 • Registered charity no 1139856