The Politics of Genetically Engineered Humans

by Richard Hayes

"Many people love their [golden] retrievers and
their sunny dispositions around children and
adults. Could people be chosen in the same way?
Would it be so terrible to allow parents to at
least aim for a certain type, in the same way that
great breeders . . . try to match a breed of dog
to the needs of a family?"
--Prof. Gregory Pence, University of Alabama (1998)

(I) THE POLITICS OF GENETICALLY ENGINEERED HUMANS

by Richard Hayes <rhayes@publicmediacenter.org>
Coordinator
Exploratory Initiative on the New Human Genetic Technologies
San Francisco, CA

We are fast approaching what is arguably the most
consequential technological threshold in all of human
history: the ability to directly manipulate the genes we
pass on to our children.

Development and use of these technologies would
irrevocably change the nature of human life and human
society. It would destabilize human biological identity and
function. It would put into play a wholly unprecedented set
of social, psychological and political forces that would
feed back upon themselves with impacts quite beyond our
ability to imagine, much less control.

These technologies are being developed and actively
campaigned for by an influential network of scientists and
others who see themselves ushering in a new epoch for human
life on earth. They look forward to the day when parents
quite literally assemble their children from genes listed in
a catalogue. They celebrate a future in which our common
humanity is lost as a genetically-enhanced elite
increasingly acquires the attributes of a separate species.

There is little public awareness of the full
implications of the new human genetic technologies or of the
campaign underway to promote them. There are few popular
institutions, and there is no social or political movement,
critically addressing the immense challenges these
technologies pose.

If we are to have any hope of bringing human genetic
engineering within the ambit of accountable societal
governance, we need to move very quickly. We need national
and community leaders, activists, journalists, scientists,
scholars, and other citizens to inform themselves in short
order about critical aspects of the new human genetic
technologies, and to join together to begin building nothing
less than a new social movement.

The notes that follow address the science, history,
accompanying ideology, and other aspects of the most
critical applications of the new human genetic technologies.
Resources for those who want to learn more or find out how
they can join with others seeking to engage these issues are
listed at the end.

THE SCIENCE

Some applications of human genetic engineering are
benign and hold great potential for preventing disease and
alleviating suffering. Other applications open the door to
a human future more horrific than our worst nightmares. We
need to be able to distinguish between these, and to support
the former and oppose the latter.

Genetic engineering means changing the genes in a
living cell. If you have a lung disease caused by defective
genes in your lung cells, for example, perhaps those genes
can be changed and the disease cured. Researchers try to do
this by putting healthy human genes into virus-like
organisms that are injected into a patient's blood stream
and travel to the lungs. The virus-like organisms insert
the healthy genes into the lung cells containing the
defective genes. That's genetic engineering.

There are two very different applications of genetic
engineering. One application changes the genes in cells in
your body other than your egg and sperm cells. Such changes
-- like those in the lung cells of our example -- are not
passed to any children you may have. Applications of this
sort are currently in clinical trials, and are generally
considered to be socially acceptable.

The other application of genetic engineering changes
the genes in eggs, sperm, or very early embryos. These
affect not only any children you may have, but all
succeeding generations. This application is by far the more
consequential, because it opens the door to the
reconfiguration of the human species.

The technical terms for these two applications are,
respectively, "somatic" genetic engineering (after the Greek
"soma" for "body"), and "germline" genetic engineering
(because eggs and sperm are the "germinal" or "germline"
cells).

Many advocates of germline engineering say it is needed
to allow couples to avoid passing on genetic diseases such
as cystic fibrosis or sickle cell anemia. This is simply
not true, and scientists and medical researchers who use
this argument are betraying the trust that society grants
them. More acceptable means already exist to accomplish
this same goal. In the technique know as pre-implantation
screening, for example, couples at risk of passing on a
gene-related disease use _in-vitro_ fertilization to
conceive several zygotes, and only those found to be free of
the harmful gene are implanted and brought to term. No
manipulation of genes is required. Germline manipulation is
necessary only if you wish to "enhance" your children with
genes they wouldn't be able to get from you or your partner.

HISTORY

The ability to directly manipulate the genes of plants
and animals was developed during the late 1970's. Proposals
to begin human gene manipulation were put forth in the early
1980's and aroused much controversy. A small number of
researchers argued in favor of germline manipulation, but
the majority of scientists and others opposed it. In 1983
an important letter signed by 58 religious leaders said,

"Genetic engineering of the human germline represents a
fundamental threat to the preservation of the human
species as we know it, and should be opposed with the
same courage and conviction as we now oppose the threat
of nuclear extinction." [1]

In 1985 the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)
approved somatic gene therapy trials, but said that it would
not accept proposals for germline manipulation "at present."
That ambiguous decision did little to discourage advocates
of germline engineering, who knew that somatic experiments
were the appropriate first step in any event. In the period
following 1985, and especially following the first approved
clinical attempts at somatic gene therapy in 1990, advocates
of germline engineering began writing in the medical,
ethical, and other journals to build broader support.

In the mid- and late 1990's these efforts received
several major shots in the arm. The ongoing success of the
federally funded Human Genome Project in describing and
locating all 80,000+ human genes fueled growing speculation
about eventual applications, including germline engineering.
The successful development in 1996 of the ability to create
a genetic duplicate of an adult mammal ("cloning"), and in
1999 of techniques for disassembling human embryos and
keeping embryonic cells alive in culture, were critically
important. They made it possible, for the first time, to
imagine a procedure whereby the human germline could be
engineered in a commercially practicable manner.

Advocates of germline engineering were further
encouraged by the social, cultural and political conditions
of the late 1990's, a period characterized by technological
enthusiasm, distrust of government regulation, the spread of
consumerist/competitive/libertarian values, and the
perceived weakening ability of national governments to
enforce laws and treaties, as a result of globalization.

Advocacy of germline engineering moved to the status of
an openly acknowledged political cause in March of 1998,
when Gregory Stock, Director of the Program on Medicine,
Technology and Society at UCLA (the University of California
at Los Angeles), organized the symposium "Engineering the
Human Germline." All the speakers were avid proponents of
germline engineering. Stock declared that the important
question was "not if, but when" germline engineering would
be used. The symposium was attended by nearly 1,000 people
and received front-page coverage in _The New York Times_,
_The Washington Post_ and elsewhere.

Four months after the UCLA conference one of the key
participants, somatic gene transfer pioneer W. French
Anderson, submitted a draft proposal to the NIH to begin
somatic gene transfer experiments on human fetuses. He
acknowledged that this procedure would have a "relatively
high" potential for "inadvertent gene transfer to the
germline." Anderson's proposal is widely acknowledged to be
strategically crafted so that approval could be construed as
acceptance of germline modification, at least in some
circumstances. Anderson hopes to receive permission to
begin clinical trials by 2003.

A NEW IDEOLOGY

Advocacy of germline engineering and the new "techno-
eugenics" (i.e., technologically enabled human genetic
manipulation and selection) is an integral element of a
newly emerging socio-political ideology. This ideology
differs from conservative ideologies in its antipathy
towards religion and traditional social values, from left-
progressive ideologies in its rejection of egalitarian
values and social welfare as a public purpose, and from
Green ideologies in its enthusiastic advocacy of a
technologically reconfigured and transformed natural world,
human beings included. It embraces philosophical, normative
and political commitments to materialism, reductionism and
determinism; to science and technology as autonomous
endeavors properly exempt from social control; to the
presumed priority of market outcomes; and to a political
philosophy grounded in evolutionary psychology and social
darwinist views of human nature and society.

This ideology is gaining acceptance among scientific,
high-tech, media and policy elites. A key foundational text
is the book _Remaking Eden: How Cloning and Beyond Will
Change the Human Family_, by molecular biologist Lee Silver
of Princeton University. Silver looks forward to a future
in which the health, appearance, personality, cognitive
ability, sensory capacity and life-span of our children all
become artifacts of genetic manipulation. Silver
acknowledges that the costs of these technologies will limit
their widespread adoption, so that over time society will
segregate into the "GenRich" and the "Naturals" In Silver's
vision of the future:

"The GenRich -- who account for 10 percent of the
American population -- all carry synthetic genes. All
aspects of the economy, the media, the entertainment
industry, and the knowledge industry are controlled by
members of the GenRich class . . . Naturals work as
low-paid service providers or as laborers . . .
[eventually] the GenRich class and the Natural class
will become entirely separate species with no ability
to cross-breed, and with as much romantic interest in
each other as a current human would have for a
chimpanzee."

Silver continues:

"Many think that it is inherently unfair for some
people to have access to technologies that can provide
advantages while others, less well-off, are forced to
depend on chance alone . . . [But] American society
adheres to the principle that personal liberty and
personal fortune are the primary determinants of what
individuals are allowed and able to do. Indeed, in a
society that values individual freedom above all else,
it is hard to find any legitimate basis for restricting
the use of repro-genetics . . . . I will argue [that]
the use of reprogenetic technologies is inevitable . .
. . [W]hether we like it or not, the global marketplace
will reign supreme."[2]

Silver is hardly alone. Here's James Watson, co-
discoverer of the structure of DNA, Nobel laureate and
founding director of the Human Genome Project:

"And the other thing, because no one has the guts to
say it, if we could make better human beings by knowing
how to add genes, why shouldn't we? What's wrong with
it? . . . Evolution can be just damn cruel, and to say
that we've got a perfect genome and there's some
sanctity to it? I'd just like to know where that idea
comes from. It's utter silliness."[3]

And here's Dr. Gregory Pence, professor of philosophy
in the Schools of Medicine and Arts/Humanities at the
University of Alabama:

"[M]any people love their retrievers and their sunny
dispositions around children and adults. Could people
be chosen in the same way? Would it be so terrible to
allow parents to at least aim for a certain type, in
the same way that great breeders . . . try to match a
breed of dog to the needs of a family?"[4]

Or consider this excerpt from an interview with
University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan:

"'[M]aking babies sexually will be(come) rare,' Caplan
speculates. [M]any parents will leap at the chance to
make their children smarter, fitter and prettier.
Ethical concerns will be overtaken, says Caplan, by the
realization that technology simply makes for better
children. 'In a competitive market society, people are
going to want to give their kids an edge,' says the
bioethicist. 'They'll slowly get used to the idea that
a genetic edge is not greatly different from an
environmental edge.'"[5]

Here's noted economist Lester Thurow of MIT:

"Some will hate it, some will love it, but
biotechnology is inevitably leading to a world in which
plants, animals and human beings are going to be partly
man-made . . . . Suppose parents could add 30 points to
their children's IQ. Wouldn't you want to do it? And if
you don't, your child will be the stupidest child in
the neighborhood." [6]

And here's Francis Fukuyama of the Institute for Public
Policy at George Mason University and author of _The End of
History_:

"[B]iotechnology will be able to accomplish what the
radical ideologies of the past, with their unbelievably
crude techniques, were unable to accomplish: to bring
about a new type of human being . . . . [W]ithin the
next couple of generations . . . we will have
definitively finished human History because we will
have abolished human beings as such. And then, a new
posthuman history will begin."[7]

Can it get worse than this? Yes. In Germany last year
an uproar ensued following statements by noted philosopher
Peter Sloterdijk that the failure of "Habermasean social
democracy" now leaves human genetic engineering (which he
referred to as "Selektion," a word associated with Nazi
genocide) as the only means for humanity to improve its lot.

INSTITUTES OF INFLUENCE

Supporters of human germline engineering and the new
techno-eugenics have established a number of institutes that
encourage public acceptance of their program. At UCLA the
Program in Medicine, Technology and Society (MTS), noted
above, is currently promoting the notion of aging as a
disease that can be cured through germline engineering. The
Extropy Institute, also in Los Angeles, supports
"evolutionary advance by using technology." At their annual
conference last year in Berkeley, the Extropy Institute held
strategy sessions on how to organize politically to advance
the post-human agenda, and on how to talk to the press and
public about human genetic modification in ways that build
support and diffuse opposition. In Maryland the Human
Biodiversity Institute recently presented a seminar on the
prospects for genetically modified humans at a Hudson
Institute retreat attended by former British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher. These institutes are small but growing.
No comparable efforts are underway to counter their
influence.

BUSINESS INTERESTS

The biotech industry is actively developing the
technologies that would make it possible to offer human
germline engineering on a commercial basis. This work is
almost completely unregulated. Geron Corporation of Menlo
Park, California, holds patents on applicable human embryo
manipulation and cloning techniques. Advanced Cell
Technologies (ACT) of Worcester, Massachusetts, announced
last year that it had created a viable human/bovine embryo
by implanting the nucleus of a human cell into the egg of a
cow. No laws exist that would have prevented this trans-
species embryo from being implanted in a woman's uterus in
an attempt to bring a baby to term. The baby would contain
a small but significant proportion of cow genes.

Chromos Molecular Systems, Inc., in British Columbia,
is developing artificial human chromosomes that would enable
the engineering of multiple complex traits. People whose
germlines were engineered with artificial chromosomes, and
who wanted to pass complete sets of these to their children
intact, would only be able to mate with others carrying the
same artificial chromosomes. This condition, called
"reproductive isolation", is the primary criteria that
biologists use to classify a population as a separate
species.

OPPOSITION TO GENETICALLY MODIFIED HUMANS?

Given the enormity of what is at stake, and the fact
that the advocates of the new techno-eugenics are hardly coy
about their intentions, it is remarkable that organized
opposition has been all but absent. Why is this?

In part it's simply that the most critical technologies
have been developed only within the last three years or so,
and there hasn't been time for people to fully understand
their implications and respond.

Also, the prospect of genetically engineering the human
species is categorically beyond anything that humanity has
ever before had to confront. People have trouble taking
these issues seriously -- they seem fantastical, or beyond
the pale of anything that anyone would actually do or that
society would allow. As a consequence there exist no self-
identified constituencies of concern, and no institutions in
place to effectively focus that concern.

Further, attitudes concerning human genetic
modification don't fit neatly within the familiar political
categories of right/left or conservative/liberal. The more
useful set of categories is libertarian/communitarian. The
libertarian right and libertarian left are typically less
concerned about human genetic modification, which they can
accept as a property right or as a personal right,
respectively. By contrast, the communitarian right and
communitarian left tend to be strongly opposed, the former
typically for reasons grounded in religious beliefs and the
latter out of concern for human dignity, social equity and
solidarity. This unfamiliar alignment impedes quick and
confident responses by opponents.

Finally, although people intuit that the new genetic
technologies are likely to introduce profound social and
political challenges, they also associate these technologies
with the possibility of miracle cures, notably for the many
tragically fatal inheritable conditions. Before any
sentiment in favor of banning certain uses of genetic
technology can take root, people will have to come to
understand that doing so would not foreclose means of
preventing or curing genetic diseases.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

At the policy level we will need global bans on
altering the genes we pass on to our children, and on
reproductive human cloning. We'll also need effective,
accountable systems for regulating human genetic
technologies that may have some beneficent uses but could be
dangerously abused.

These policies and systems are already in effect in a
number of major countries. France and Germany have banned
both germline engineering and cloning, the Council of Europe
is working to have these banned in all 41 of its member
countries, and Canada is expected to ban germline
engineering and cloning within a year. The United Nations,
UNESCO, and the Group of Seven industrialized nations have
called for a global ban on human cloning. Great Britain has
a Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) which
licenses all research and commercial enterprises whose
activities involve use of human eggs, sperm or embryos. The
HFEA is frequently cited as a model for other countries.

If we are to realize such policies in the United States
and worldwide, is imperative that strong, coordinated civil
society efforts toward these ends be initiated, and soon.
As noted, little infrastructure to support such efforts
currently exists. We will need to establish national and
global-scale education and advocacy organizations, research
and media centers, and more. Success in adopting the
policies described above will enable us to avoid the worst
threats posed by the new human genetic technologies, and
will allow us to better use our tremendous scientific and
technological gifts in support of a healthy, sustainable and
equitable human future.

*********************
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Richard Hayes -- E-mail
<rhayes@publicmediacenter.org> -- is coordinator of the
Exploratory Initiative on the New Human Genetic Technologies
(see below). He formerly served as assistant political
director and national director of volunteer development for
the Sierra Club.
************************************************************

(II) ACTION STEPS, RESOURCES, and FOOTNOTES

(A) ACTION STEPS:

The Exploratory Initiative on the New Human Genetic
Technologies is helping alert and inform the leadership of
civil society organizations about the new human genetic
technologies, and about steps we need to take to prevent
their misuse. If you or your organization would like to
schedule a meeting, presentation or workshop; subscribe to
the Exploratory Initiative's free email newsletter; receive
its list of publications; or for other inquiries about
becoming involved, please E-mail Marcy Darnovsky at
<teel@adax.com>.

Exploratory Initiative on the New Human Genetic Technologies
466 Green Street
San Francisco, CA 94133, USA
E-mail: <teel@adax.com>
Phone: +1-415-434-1403
Fax: +1-415-986-6779

(B) RESOURCES:

Books Opposing the new techno-eugenics:

o Andrews, Lori. _The Clone Age: Adventures in the New
World of Reproductive Technology_. New York: Henry
Holt, 1999.

o Appleyard, Bryan. _Brave New Worlds: Staying Human in
the Genetic Future_. New York: Viking, 1998.

o Hubbard, Ruth and Elijah Wald. _Exploding the Gene Myth_.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1997.

o Kimbrell, Andrew. _The Human Body Shop: The Engineering
and Marketing of Life_. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.

Books Supporting the new techno-eugenics:

o Pence, Gregory E. _Who's Afraid of Human Cloning?_
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998.

o Silver, Lee. _Remaking Eden: How Cloning and Beyond Will
Change the Human Family_. New York: Avon, 1997.


Web Sites Opposing the new techno-eugenics:

o Council for Responsible Genetics, http://www.gene-
watch.org

o Campaign Against Human Genetic Engineering,
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~cahge

O Genetic Engineering and its Dangers:
http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/gedanger.htm

Web Sites Supporting the new techno-eugenics:

o UCLA Program on Medicine, Technology and Society (Gregory
Stock, director), http://research.mednet.ucla.edu/pmts/germline

o Extropy Institute: http://www.extropy.org

SOURCES OF QUOTES:

[1] "Theological Letter Concerning the Moral Arguments,"
June 8, 1983, presented to the U.S. Congress. Foundation on
Economic Trends, Washington, DC.

[2] Silver: L. Silver. 1997. _Remaking Eden: How Cloning
and Beyond Will Change the Human Family_ (New York: Avon
Books), pp. 4-7, 11.

[3] Watson: Gregory Stock and John Campbell, eds., 2000.
_Engineering the Human Germline_ (New York: Oxford
University Press), pp. 79, 85.

[4] Pence: G. Pence, 1998. _Who's Afraid of Human Cloning?_
(New York: Roman & Littlefield), p. 168.

[5] ABCNEWS.com:
http://abcnews.go.com/ABC2000/abc2000living/babies2000.

[6] Thurow: L. Thurow, 1999. _Creating Wealth: The New
Rules for Individuals, Companies and Nations in a Knowledge-
Based Economy_ (New York: Harper Collins), p. 33.

[7] Fukuyama: F. Fukuyama, "Second Thoughts: The Last Man in
a Bottle," _The National Interest_, Summer 1999, pp. 28, 33.