Friends of the Earth has been a leader among environmental organizations in opposing cloning and inheritable gene modification of human beings (germline engineering). We are looking at what could be the biggest decision humans will ever make because these germline genetic alterations have the capacity to replicate and cannot be recalled once they have spread. Friends of the Earth has argued that cloning and germline engineering of humans are in conflict with two cornerstones of the environmental movement: 1) respect for nature, and 2) the precautionary principle, which requires gathering of knowledge on risks and benefits before taking potentially irreversible actions.

In this presentation I will expound our arguments and will also examine the arguments advanced in favor of cloning and germline engineering to show that the case for this manipulation is weak. Some of the arguments in favor of tampering with the human germline are put forward by a number of well-known scientists. For example, the DNA pioneer James Watson, a big proponent of designer babies, said that some people “are going to try germline therapy without completely knowing that it’s going to work, to cure what I feel is a very serious disease - that is, stupidity.” Furthermore, he asserts, “if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn’t we do it?”

I will devote some significant attention to presenting some of the arguments Bill McKibben makes in his new outstanding book Enough where he argues that germline modification will destroy the meaning of human life, will remove our freedom of choice, and will ultimately deprive us of our liberty and our democracy.

Finally, I want to point out why purportedly rational arguments are packing less and less influence in the political debates of today because a) far too many scientists are personally financially involved in making a lot of money off what they propose to do, and b) universities are losing the capacity for independent analysis as a result of large corporate donations. This effort began with the chemical industry’s attacks on Rachael Carson following the publication of Silent Spring and has escalated with the development of agricultural biotechnology. It is now manifesting itself in the push to eliminate or prevent any regulation of genetic engineering of humans.

Vision of the Genetic Engineers

In Remaking Eden, Princeton geneticist Lee Silver envisions society eventually becoming divided into two distinct groups (the GenRich and the Naturals) as a result of genetic “enhancements”. “Emotional stability, long-term happiness, inborn talents, increased creativity, healthy bodies - these could be the starting points chosen for the children of the rich,” Silver says. “Obesity, heart disease, hypertension, alcoholism, mental illness - these will be the diseases left to drift randomly among the families of the underclass.” Eventually the GenRich and the Naturals will lose the capacity to interbreed. The genetic engineering of offspring will become so sophisticated so rapid that before too long, he says, parents will “gain complete control over their destiny, with the ability to guide and enhance the characteristics of their children, and their children’s children as well.” As to the morality of such actions, Silver envisions a time hundreds of years from now when the engineered human race will reflect back and conclude: “The original practitioners drew a moral line between preventing disease and enhancing characteristics. How could anyone argue against preventing childhood disease? But it soon became clear that the moral line was an imaginary one. It was all genetic enhancement. It was all done to provide a child with an advantage of one kind or another that it would not have had otherwise. And what was wrong with that? What was wrong with helping children to live better lives?”

Michael West, the CEO of Advanced Cell Technology, envisions a future in which he “could take a Y chromosome from Arnold Schwarzenegger, a chromosome X from Bob Barker, a chromosome 6 from Robin Cook, and so on, and assemble a human being with 46 parents, all male for that matter - a child with 46 fathers and no mother.”

The fundamental arguments as to why we should pursue germline engineering start from the assurances that it is only to cure people from a few serious diseases like Parkinson’s or cystic fibrosis and that such activity will not affect the gene pool. Thus, the worry about inheritable genetic modification, they say, is blown out of proportion. James Watson is upfront about the strategy, saying: “…what the public wants is not to be sick. And if we make them not be sick they’ll be on our side.”

Many scientists going before Congress today to seek funding for germline engineering argue that they are just as upset about the Raelian cult and similar groups which are trying to clone human beings. They say that these people are not solid scientists or are on the lunatic fringe. But there are prominent credentialed people who are vigorously advocating germline enhancements. Consider, for example, what Daniel Koshland, the former editor of Science said in favor of germline engineering for enhancements: “If a child destined to have a permanently low IQ could be cured by replacing a gene, would anyone really argue with that? Is there an argument against making superior individuals?”

Some people like Ray Kurzweil take the argument further. In his book the Age of Spiritual Machines he says: “The emergence in the early twenty-first century of a new form of intelligence on Earth that can compete with, and ultimately significantly exceed, human intelligence will be a development of greater importance than any of the events that have shaped human history.” Rodney Brooks, an Australian advocate of this view, adds: “Those of us alive today, over the course of our lifetimes, will morph ourselves into machines.”

Another line of argument by advocates of germline engineering is that human nature has proven so disastrous over the centuries with never-ending slaughters of each other that progress can only be made by genetically engineering the human race to be better. For example, the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk has argued that civilization has failed to stop barbaric practices and is incapable of building a just society. The only answer is genetic engineering, or in his words “biotechnological optimization.”

Some who argue that we shouldn’t stop germline research and experimentation say that major changes won’t ever occur to the gene pool. In contrast, Lee Silver contends that such germline engineering is inevitable. It will soon be a growing juggernaut that cannot be stopped. The reason, he contends, is that such genetic engineering is in a totally different regulatory category from nuclear weapons. Control over nuclear weapons is possible because they are extraordinarily expensive and the ingredients are difficult to manufacture. In contrast, genetic enhancements will be sought by millions of families and could be delivered by low-cost labs, thus making regulatory control impossible

The Environmental Reply

Respect for Nature

Respect for nature has been at the heart of what environmental organizations teach their members. We encourage our members to appreciate nature, to visit the outdoors, to protect places of great beauty and biological diversity, and to enjoy the world we live in. The recent actions to alter species through the insertion of novel genes should send up an alarm. A rabbit that glows in the dark has been created through the insertion of firefly genes. This may be seen as more of a sick joke, but a serious attempt is being made to create a gigantic genetically altered salmon. Many environmental groups and fish markets are strongly opposed because this could lead to the extinction of wild salmon by this engineered superpredator.

Rather than seeing respect for nature emerge from the mouths of the genetic engineers, we find a contemptuous or disdainful attitude being expressed. For example, Max More, a leader of the Extropian movement (extropy being the opposite of entropy) stated to a big convention of followers that Mother Nature had done a poor job with the human constitution and had failed to give us an operating manual. His goal is to “move us from a human to an ultrahuman condition.”

Robert Haynes, president of the 16th International Congress of Genetics told his organization: "What the ability to manipulate genes should indicate to people is the very deep extent to which we are biological machines. It’s no longer possible to live by the idea that there is something special, unique, or even sacred about living organisms."

The idea of redesigning humans and animals to suit the primarily commercial goals of a limited number of individuals is fundamentally at odds with the principle of respect for nature. It exhibits a cavalier or even an arrogant or disdainful attitude to the wonders and magnificence that characterize the extraordinary biological diversity of our planet. They fail to see that genetically engineered enhancements will turn our children into commodities.

Precautionary Principle

The precautionary principle is a cornerstone of the modern environmental movement. It embodies the ancient wisdom that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and that you should look before you leap. The precautionary principle calls for examination of the risks and benefits of actions with potential long-term, widespread or irreversible consequences. It is an effort to refrain from acting out of ignorance. It is one thing for an individual to be willing to risk his or her own life through gene therapy, but quite another for someone to undergo a transformation that could seriously impact neighbors, a village, or even the human race.

In engineering everything does not always go as planned. There is a fundamental difference between biological pollution and chemical pollution that mirrors the difference between germline engineering and somatic engineering. Once a mistake is made with germline engineering you have a case of biological pollution that cannot be recalled any more than the chestnut blight can be recalled. Biological pollution is out there replicating and spreading, unlike chemical pollution, which tends to abate over time.

We are just emerging from a century in which bioinvasive species are causing an estimated $100 billion a year in economic damages in the United States. Some of these invasions were the result of deliberate introductions of species by government agencies. For example, the USDA introduced the Asian chestnut tree and precipitated the chestnut blight that killed off the single most economically important tree in the Eastern United States - the American chestnut. To this date no cure has been found for the chestnut blight.

With scarcely half a century of work on germline engineering, some scientists have enough chutzpah to think they have the wisdom to override millions of years of evolution in the design and fashioning of species. At the same time, other scientists are trying to grasp how complex ecosystems function. We still do not know, for example, how many species are on earth, and for a large number of those identified and given a name, we understand very little about their characteristics.

Bill McKibben summarizes this concern: “Ecology, the great emergent science of the twentieth century, has tried to understand the incredible complexity of relationships that govern the living earth - tried to understand, among other things, how we might fit in. But if we finally and forever breach all those relationships, emerge as a limitless force, then what possible interest will any of the rest of life hold?”

Scientists who say that one gene controls just one trait are propagating a myth. Because of this myth, they thought that the human genome would have 100,000 genes and then were surprised to find only 30,000, which suggests that one gene controls more than one trait. Instead of going back to the drawing board and letting go of this myth, they cling to it because it is the foundation of their claims that they can precisely genetically engineer a change to prevent cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s disease or to produce desired traits such as strength, eye color, or intelligence. Newspapers repeat the mistake as they publish headlines proclaiming the discovery of the gene for this disease or that disease. Most recently, it was the colon cancer gene that garnered the publicity. Such a simplistic view flies in the face of the findings of the human genome project and neglects the obvious question of how many thousands of other traits are associated with the given gene.

One other significant embarrassment for genetics and molecular biology came to light several years ago when an infectious prion was identified as the likely cause of mad cow disease. But these prions are free of nucleic acid, and according to the central tenets of molecular biology, should be incapable of infecting other organisms. The precautionary principle reminds us that we are in the primitive days of understanding what is going on with DNA and the cell and that it might just be a slight bit prudent to get another 100 years of research done before programming inheritable genetic traits into humans.

Our DNA itself is like a complex ecosystem barely understood by scientists who have mapped and understand only a very small portion and declared the rest “junk” DNA. More recently, a few scientists have suggested that there are untold functions in the so-called junk DNA. Manipulating one gene in relation to other unidentified genes may cause a rippling effect. We have seen this in some instances with genetically engineered crops. Engineers introduced herbicide tolerance and an unintended effect of stalk brittleness has occurred. Now a crushing blow to the industry’s assurance of no environmental problems has emerged from the multi-year studies in Britain comparing fields with genetically engineered crops to fields with their conventional counterparts. The results show reduced biological diversity in the engineered canola and sugar beet fields with far fewer seeds left for birds and reduced butterfly populations.

Several novels have explored the consequences of what can go wrong in a genetically engineered world. Crake and Oryx by Margaret Atwood is a scary novel about a malevolent scientist who programs a lethal gene in a world where genetically engineering has become commonplace. Michael Crichton’s novel Prey shows the powerful consequences of nanotechnology combined with biotechnology. His earlier novel Andromeda Strain looked at the impacts of an alien species, which is brought back from our outer atmosphere and gets out of hand.

The precautionary principle also speaks to the social consequences of actions like cloning and germline engineering. The basic concern here is that designer babies will separate humanity into two groups. The movie Gattaca speaks directly to a society divided into GenRich and Naturals. The movie portrays a society in which the clones are the prestigious individuals and the naturally born are subjects of discrimination. In one scene a couple pleads in vain with the birth counselors, asking whether at least one trait or two cannot be left to chance.

Bill Joy, an architect of the Internet, has begun to question where genetic engineering, robotics, and nanotechnology are leading us. In his extraordinary article, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” he points out that there is an enormous asymmetry between the power of good and the power of evil. Just one individual can put things in motion that are self-replicating and cannot be recalled. These new technologies hold the potential to devastate life as we know it. The precautionary principle calls on us to consider just this kind of momentous decision. Some people like Silver, Watson, and Stock have a vision of a future earth run by enhanced superhumans, and they are pushing this vision, and once germline engineering is done for certain diseases, they say it will be unstoppable.

What if Everything Goes Right? McKibben’s Arguments

The great strength of Bill McKibben’s Enough is that he fully develops the case that even if all the germline enhancements can be carried out without mishap, the net effect will be the loss of meaning in our lives and the loss of what a human being is.

A look at athletics brings this issue into focus. Suppose that genetic engineers are really successful in producing extraordinary athletic feats. We need to ask what would be the meaning of competition if athletes are genetically engineered to run phenomenally fast or jump inordinately high. The medical ethicist Eric Juengst poses the question about the point of running: “Just what human excellences are we supposed to be celebrating? Who’s got the better biotech sponsor?” McKibben writes “as we move into this new world of genetic engineering, we won’t simply lose races, we’ll lose racing: we’ll lose the possibility of the test, the challenge, the celebration that athletics represents.”

What goes for sports, goes for IQ’s. Do we get an arms race in IQ’s or in musical talent or any other area of endeavor? Do consumer organizations start rating the various biotech companies on their menus of genetic enhancements?

UCLA professor Gregory Stock pushes these ideas by saying: “A concert pianist may see music as so integral to life that she wants to give her daughter a greater talent than her own. A devout individual may want his child to be even more religious…” McKibben argues that if the concert pianist does this genetic enhancement to her daughter, “she robs her forever of the chance to make music her own authentic context—or to choose something else (dance, art, cooking) as the act that brings her life to life.” Similarly, with the son engineered to be religious, McKibben asks: “if he has any brain left to himself, he will question that piety at the deepest level, wonder constantly whether it means anything…”

In other words, “If the programming works…you will have turned your child into an automation of one degree or another; and if it only sort of works, you will have seeded the ground for a harvest of neurosis and self-doubt we can barely begin to imagine. If ‘Who am I?’ is the quintessential modern question, you will have guaranteed that your offspring will never be able to fashion a workable answer.”

With respect to these three considerations offered by proponents about more choice for parents, an increase in humanity’s progress and inevitability, McKibben provides the counterargument that such engineering is really anti-choice because it actually engineers out the possibility of choice or chance and thereby removes the meaning of choice. The reason is that engineering these traits specifically builds into kids certain capacities that preclude choice. Engineering in these traits will actually rob kids of liberty and strip freedom from every generation that follows.

With respect to the claim that this is needed for medical progress, a detailed examination of each proposed disease or illness could lead to alternative non-engineering approaches such as screening and thus avoids the problem. Later I will discuss the hype surrounding the claims that genetic engineering will produce a range of miracle cures. The big question is whether this is inevitable. Bill McKibben offers several examples of societies taking actions that prevent what many might have thought of as being inevitable. In 1600 Japan had the capacity to develop a vast arsenal of firearms but instead chose not to pursue their manufacture. In the United States we are now removing dams faster than we are building them. We have said: enough. McKibben contends that a hallmark of the human species is our capacity to say no and to reject certain technologies when they will harm our community or our society.

Hijacking of Science and Rational Argument

As a lobbyist for the past 33 years, I have seen a steady erosion of the power of good arguments to pack any weight with politicians. The reason lies in the runaway costs of political campaigns. Not only do members of Congress have less time to study issues, they are confronted with a cutoff of electoral contributions if they take a stand opposing wealthy special interests. What has happened in the realm of genetic engineering is that the biotech companies have gone beyond the political contribution route. As a result we see today many scientists testifying in favor of taxpayer support for their research or a decrease in regulation only to find out that they have a large financial stake in a company that will profit from such governmental action. So if as a legislator you are trying to determine how to allocate scarce health research dollars, you may be getting a very biased view from the skilled hype of these scientists.

The recently published book Seeds of Deception by Jeffrey M. Smith exposes the extensive corrupting of the scientific process by biotech firms. Independent scientists at universities find themselves under blistering attacks if they publish articles critical of genetically engineered foods. The unethical tactics of various biotech companies has shattered the integrity of our nation’s food regulating agencies.

This same kind of deception has spread into the area of cloning and germline engineering. For example, Michael West of Advanced Cell Technology predicted at a Senate hearing in December of 2001 that his company would create extraordinary cells that would save at least 3,000 lives each day. He pledged that he would successfully clone human embryos and obtain stem cells from those clones which would cure major diseases such Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s as well as spinal cord injuries. He warned that even a half year’s delay in his cloning research would cost over half a million lives. Imagine yourself in the position of a Senator listening to this hype. Would you want to be in the position of preventing all these wonderful life-saving actions? This testimony is a form of blackmail to get legislators to take a hands-off approach to regulation.

An examination of the track record of gene therapy should give pause for concern. In the late 1980’s all sorts of cures were promised and the government approved human gene therapy trials with minimal oversight. Over the past decade over 400 gene therapy trials have taken place and to this date not a single person in any U.S. gene therapy trial has been cured of any disease. Furthermore, it has now come to light that there have been a number of deaths from these trials as well as hundreds of serious effects due potentially to the treatment.

This disastrous track record has been conveniently forgotten by the genetic engineers as they have pushed forward with claims that stem cells from cloned embryos hold the greatest hope for curing the full range of human disease.

Conclusion

Are we headed in the direction of technologization of conception and genetization of humans? We are living in a world in which carcinogenic and endocrine disrupting chemicals have reached even remote places on the planet and have caused reproductive problems and reduced male sperm counts. Given the picture of a society beset by such a chemical stew with a growing number of people finding it harder and harder to reproduce, the push for artificial reproduction will accelerate and will energize the commercialization of the reproductive process.

It is imperative that the nations of the world draw a sharp line between somatic gene therapy and germline engineering. We need a global ban on germline engineering or we risk an arms race in genetics that jeopardizes the human future. There are global treaty precedents like the Montreal Protocol to save the earth’s ozone layer. We need a treaty on germline engineering to save the human race from an experiment too dangerous to be undertaken.

In his article “Unraveling the DNA Myth” Barry Commoner concludes: “What the public fears is not the experimental science but the fundamentally irrational decision to let it out of the laboratory into the real world before we truly understand it.”

Remarks at 50th Anniversary of the Law-Medicine Center, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, October 8, 2003