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American Morning
The Big Question: Should Parents Be Able to Design Their Babies?
Aired February 28, 2002 - 09:08 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: We are going to turn attention now to a medical milestone that actually could save the life a child, but raises some serious ethical questions: diagnosing disease before pregnancy. We have the technology called PGD, and it's been used hundreds of times worldwide. Most couples seek it out to make sure their babies won't be born with deadly diseases like cystic fibrosis, tay-sachs disease and sickle-cell anemia.
Now, some couples are even using it to conceive children that are free of genes that may predispose them to a particular disease.
CNN correspondent Rhonda Rowland reports on the first case of a baby designed not to develop a rare form of Alzheimer's Disease.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RHONDA ROWLAND, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's another case of technology preventing trouble, but raising tough ethical questions. Doctors don't change a baby's genes, but they do screen embryos in a lab and implant in the mother only those embryos that are free of disease-causing genes.
DR. DENA TOWNER, UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS: And many of the diseases its been used with are diseases that typically have very severe neonatal outcome. The children many times usually die within the first few years of age.
ROWLAND: It's called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. And now for the first time, it's been used to conceive a child for the first time free of a gene that predisposes her to a type of Alzheimer's Disease. The 30-year-old mother carries a gene that predisposes her to a form of early onset Alzheimer's, two of her siblings develop the mind-robbing disease in their 30s.
DR. YURY VERLINSKY, REPRODUCTIVE GENETICS INST. CHICAGO: By transferring embryo which doesn't carry (ph) this mutation will definitely cure this problem for this baby.
ROWLAND: But while the child, who is now a year old, will never develop early-onset Alzheimer's Disease, there's almost a 100 percent chance her mother will, and that concerns some ethicists.
TOWNER: She's probably going to be manifesting within the first five years of this child's life, and not be able to provide, you know, really good mothering to this child.
ROWLAND: Dr. Towner supports embryo-screening technology, but says when it's used, the child's future should be the main priority.
TOWNER: I'm not saying she should have been turned down. But I think it's just you need to discuss very thoroughly that this is what reality is going to be, and she has to accept that.
ROWLAND: Dr. Verlinsky, who's laboratory did the procedure, says the decision should be left to patients.
VERLINSKY: I think it's all up to patients to decide if they want to prevent or treat disease. We can not enforce them to live with disease, because we are seeing a medical (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
ROWLAND: The embryo screening technology gives couples the choice of eliminating a particular severe disease. It does not mean child will be born free of all disease, raising more ethical questions, which diseases, and most develop in old age, do we choose to eliminate?
Rhonda Rowland, CNN, Atlanta.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ZAHN: So, "The Big Question" this hour: Should parents be able to design their babies? Joining us now to talk more about this cutting-edge medical technology from Princeton, New Jersey, Dr. Lee Silver, a professor at Princeton and an expert on genetics.
Delighted to have you with us this morning. Good morning.
DR. LEE SILVER, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: Good to be here this morning.
ZAHN: Thank you, doctor.
So what I want to start off with is your sort of delineating for us this morning any concerns you might have about this embryo- screening technology.
SILVER: It's important to point out first that parents are not choosing babies as the they go -- go to a supermarket and choosing one baby over another off of a shelf. What they're doing is they're choosing genes, or they're choosing not to have genes placed into their child. I see that as being exactly the same as parents making choices after a child is born. You choose to give a child vaccines, and you choose to protect your child in various ways after birth.
So I don't really see a problem with parents who are trying to protect their child from any disease before birth where it is easier.
ZAHN: But there are people out there who believe that you can easily abuse this technology. They fear that some not could use this to attempt to create a master race. Couldn't that happen? SILVER: Yes, every powerful technology can be abused. It doesn't mean we should reject the good uses of this technology. And in my mind, whenever a parent is trying to use this technology to protect a child from disease, of any kind, I see that as a positive thing. I think the people who reject this technology are worried that we shouldn't be choosing genes, that nature should be choosing genes. But I think parents have the right to say, we can do better than nature, we can protect this child from Alzheimer's Disease, or cancer or stroke.
ZAHN: But there seems to be a much different judgment made about this case than I've seen before, and I want to put up on the screen some comments from a bioethicist from the University of California. Her name is Roberta Loewey, and basically, the point she's making is the mother who bore this child will get, undoubtedly, this early onset of Alzhemier's, and here is her concern. Quote: If she "wanted to adopt our society essentially would hold the position, that gee, no, we wouldn't let her do this, wouldn't let her subject a child to this. But because it's coming from her own loins, this is something we shouldn't have a say about."
Should the rights of a parent outweigh the rights of a child?
SILVER: Well, this is a very difficult dilemma, I would agree to that. But we don't stop 70-year-old men from having babies naturally. I don't think the adoption is the right analogy, because in an adoptive case, we already have a baby, and we want to do what's best for that baby. In this case, you're actually talking about stopping a woman from having her own baby. We would never do that under other circumstances. We don't do it to men, and I think it's a bit paternalistic to do it to women.
ZAHN: Paternalistic or sexist?
SILVER: Well, both paternalistic and sexist, because you're only doing it to women, not doing it to men. And you know, any woman, even at the age of 30, might die in a car accident in five years, you never know, and so I think that it might be unfortunate if this mother died when the child was young. That happens to children all the time. I think it would be a very, very bad thing to try to stop this woman from having her own baby.
ZAHN: And let's come back to the point you were making, that you don't believe that these ethical issues that were raised should stop this technology, and yet would you acknowledge that this is a highly unregulated field, and we should be concerned about potential abuses here?
SILVER: Well, I think that -- as I said before, abuses can occur. All technologies can be abused. I think the thing that's going for us as a society is to ask what do parents want to do for their children. Normal parents want to help their children. They want to protect their children from disease, make sure the children are healthy, and long lived. That's what's protecting society from abuses. That's not to say that somebody might not try to abuse this technology. But I think that's a poor reason to stop all of the good uses that could come out of this technology.
ZAHN: How would you characterize the state of regulation in this field? I know I recently interviewed a gynecologist who talked about parents coming in, and through the in vitro process, predetermining, wanting to have the sex of child. And in the case of selected sperm donors, they sort of knew the characteristics of the donor, and they wanted to create a very specific type of child. Do you have a problem with that?
SILVER: Well, I should -- well, the question is whether or not I think people should be able to do it, even if I wouldn't do it myself. I wouldn't do that myself, but this is America. America is very different than other countries. America basically has a very important notion about individual rights and individuals being allowed to do what they want with their bodies and with their children, as long as they're not hurting anybody. America is very different that Europe. I mean, we don't regulate fertility technology in America. It is highly regulated in Europe. I'm not sure we would necessarily want to go that way, unless you could show me that the technology really was being abused. I don't see evidence of vast abuse of the technology right now.
ZAHN: All right, Dr. Lee Silver, we really appreciate your input this morning.
SILVER: You're very welcome.
ZAHN: Thanks you very much for joining us.
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