Thirty-six years ago, the first human to be conceived in a petri dish took her first few breaths in this world, much to the relief of her parents and the two doctors – Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards – who developed the ground-breaking procedure now known as in vitro fertilisation (IVF) . Today, that baby named Louise Brown is happily married with an eight-year-old son and another on the way.
Just as how Brown has grown and developed in the past three decades, scientists too have increasingly refined the baby-making process, making possible options to parents that once only existed in the pages of science fiction novels. Now, the human race has the unprecedented power to influence the physical characteristics of the next generation. From removing the genetic markers responsible for debilitating diseases to even choosing the gender and athletic ability of your baby, we are beginning to play God.
The question is: should we?
Currently, creating a so-called designer baby is through a technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Three-day-old embryos will be genetically profiled in a laboratory to test whether any of them carry the genes that would result in a disease. Those that do not will be planted into the woman’s womb while the rest will be destroyed.
In Singapore, PGD is only allowed for couples who are legally married and who are at risk of passing on certain genetic diseases to their offspring. According to Professor P C Wong, Head of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at the NUH Women’s Centre, “PGD is able to test for 23 different genetic diseases and 13 chromosomal imbalances”. Using PGD for any other purposes such as selecting the gender of the baby is banned here, although this has not deterred determined couples who fly to places like Thailand and the United States just to be absolutely certain that they would be welcoming a bouncing baby boy or girl.
The first successful case of PGD in Singapore was in 2009, as reported in the Annals Academy of Medicine Singapore. A 36-year-old Chinese woman and her husband, who were both beta-thalassaemia carriers and who had a daughter affected by the disease, requested for PGD so that their second child would not be a carrier. The lady managed to get pregnant in the second cycle and gave birth to a healthy baby boy who did not have the defective gene.
However, as more and more genetic markers that lead to the onset of different diseases are being identified, we are fast approaching a moral crossroads of deciding whether we should allow PGD for everything, from deafness and blindness to even facial deformities.
Ethicists are divided on this issue. People who are for it, such as Janet Malek, a bioethicist in the Brody School of Medicine, argue that “we have a moral duty to spare the next generation” while those who are against it point out that we are essentially saying carriers of the disease, such as the 36-year-old Singaporean Chinese woman, should not even be born. Religion organisations have also not explicitly weighed in on the issue yet, especially when it comes to whether governments should allow their people to legally play God.
It is a moral conundrum that BELRIS, a think-tank based in Singapore that funds research addressing the controversial bioethics brought about by the advances in reproductive technology, wants to pour money in to investigate.
The problem with the advancements that we have made in science is that we still have an incredibly limited understanding of how these genes function in our body in tandem with each other. Incredibly, researchers have discovered and estimated that all of us unknowingly carry genes that are linked to at least three diseases.
Ironically, the man who invented the microchip that can test for 1,500 genetic traits attributes his “faulty” genes for determining his future. Dr Brandon Colby, founder of Existence Genetics, was born with epidermolysis bullosa simplex, a condition that causes blisters on his hands and feet when exposed to heat and friction. It was because of this disease that sparked his interest in genetics.
As we venture even further into the unchartered and morally ambiguous territory of genetics, sooner or later, we have to answer difficult questions and the answer, unfortunately, cannot be scientifically tested. Rather, it has to come from the one place that has so far confounded the best of scientists – the heart and the mind.
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