Genetic Engineering and Three Parent Babies On February 3rd 2014 MPs voted overwhelmingly to allow mitochondrial transfer – a genetic engineering of the human embryo outside the womb which involves taking the nucleus of one egg and transferring it to the egg of a third party donor in order to combine the faultless mitochondria of the third party. The mitochondria, which comprise just 37 of an embryo’s 20,000 genes, have been likened to the battery pack that powers human development. If the mitochondria are faulty all sorts of horrible diseases can ensue: if they are eliminated, they are gone forever and the germ-line (so- called, meaning the genetic line of a child) will be altered forever. So what is the ethical objection?

Both the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church came out against it. The Church of England argues for more consultation and research (so far there has been seven years worth of consultation and research at Newcastle University) and the Roman Catholic Church has always opposed any interference in a natural process, even one outside of the womb and prior to conceiving. As Humanae Vitae puts it (1968) “there is an inseparable connection, willed by God and unable to be broken by man on his own initiative, between the two meanings of the marriage act: the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning”. This ‘inseparable connection’ is broken by contraception and also by in vitro fertilization, cloning, and genetic engineering of embryos implied by mitochondrial transfer.

“The child,” argues a second catholic encyclical, Donum Vitae, “is not an object to which one has a right, nor can he be considered as an object of ownership: rather, a child is a gift, ‘the supreme gift’ of marriage, and is a living testimony of the mutual giving of his parents”. Moreover, a child “has the right to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents” [Donum Vitae, 1987]. So one religious (ethical) view is that such treatments stem from a desire to produce the ‘perfect child’ – that children have become in human terms a form of commodity to be generated artificially and ‘perfected’.

Slippery Slope

“But you know the way things are today, uses for the technique wouldn’t stop there”, comments Dr David King, director of Human Genetics Alert which strongly opposes the treatments, “it is a disaster that the decision to cross the line that will eventually lead to a eugenic designer baby market should be taken on the basis of an utterly biased and inadequate consultation.”

But slippery slope arguments are actually a form of consequentialism. What Dr King is arguing is that the most likely consequences of legalising mitochondrial transfer is a slippery slope which will end in the ethically disastrous place – where parents are designing the full eugenic makeup of their children.

I agree with the majority of those surveyed, 56% of whom supported this new treatment. 2,500 couples risk the horrible consequences of a genetically malfunctioning child. Diseases include muscular dystrophy, brain degeneration, organ failure and epilepsy. There is no moral argument for not eliminating such extreme suffering in a short-lived child and replacing it with perfectly normal one. And as for slippery slopes – they only exist if you allow the slide to happen – they are not inevitable, and legal safeguards can ensure they never happen.

Health risks

The Church of England points to ‘unknown health risks”. But much the same argument was put forward to oppose the first test tube baby. We can never be sure that new treatments, like new drugs, won’t have unintended side effects. But we can only weigh probabilities and proceed with caution. I’m not sure what health risks we are being asked to imagine, but again it strikes me as nothing compared to the health risk every parent carrying faulty mitochondria faces at each pregnancy: the high risk of giving birth to a child whose life will be nasty, painful and short.

When the first IVF baby was born in 1978, the public had understandable mixed feelings about it. Lisa Jardine, former HFEA chair, is quoted by The Independent as saying that, “the day Louise Brown was born…was uncharted territory. Many thought she would turn out to be a monster. Those uncharted waters are now charted – IVF is now routine.”

Over 200,000 IVF babies have been born in the UK since Louise Brown – and I’ve taught some of you – every one a miracle of human ingenuity.