Question

Presume a couple found out their embryo has a gene mutation that has a high success rate of causing cancer later on in the baby’s life.

Would you advocate the use of gene therapy in the embryo to correct the problem before the child was ever born? What if the embryo did not appear likely to develop a genetic disease, but the parents decided that they would really prefer that their child have blue eyes as opposed to brown? Would you advocate the use of gene therapy in this case? Should the use of this therapy be limited? Who should decide those limits?

Answer 1

Gene therapy is an advanced high-risk genetic engineering procedure. This has been performed in past to cure SCID, but it is highly risky and success is not guaranteed. In the given case, the mere presence of the gene which might cause cancer cannot justify the gene therapy. The cancer is not a disease, but malfunctioning of regular genes and proteins. These mutations many times do not show up and many people with the mutant allele which might cause cancer have lived healthy through their life. The gene therapy certainly cannot be done if the parents want a blue-eyed baby and not a brown. This is not ethical and we cannot allow people to have what is called "designer babies". This might result in baby race war where all parents want good looking, intelligent child. this will elevate the socio-economical problems in society and we might end up having clones and designs instead of natural babies with diversified characters.
The therapy must be limited to rare and lethal disease only. it cannot be a part of general medicine. Only parents can take this call and they must be responsible when they make decisions.