TED DENİZLİ COLLEGE / 9-B
A Big
Decision
Asena ERGÜL
According to John Berger, “Without ethics, man has no future.
That means, human without them cannot be itself. Ethics
determine choices and actions and suggest difficult priorities”.
He means that; in this world is there a right and a wrong way of
doing something? In this world, ethics determines our actions
and the consequences that come about those actions, and it
determines the right and the wrong. Therefore, the question is
that what is right and what is wrong? There are lots of topics
argued on this area and one of them is the question that should
we edit our children’s genomes?
On November 25, 2018, geneticist He Jiankui of China’s
Southern University of Science and Technology announced
that his lab had successfully used the Crispr-Cas9 geneediting
system babies. They argue that it could potentially
decrease, or even eliminate, the incidence of many serious
genetic diseases, reducing human suffering worldwide. In that
case the question is that Is it ethical to edit the genomes of
children? Is this right or wrong?
The birth of a child with genetic disease is generally an
unexpected event. The parents of these children typically
won’t have any idea about what to do in this kind of situation
so it will be a hard and suffering process for both the parents
and the child. And may be the child will have to live with that
illness throughout his/her life. What if you were in their shoes?
If you would have a chance to change this situation, to prevent
that illness, would you think just a minute to take the action?
With the help of the developing technology you will have the
chance to learn the possible illnesses and genetic problems of
your unborn baby and so it means that you will have a chance
to change your and your child’s whole life. When you look at
the issue through the eyes of parents this is a great chance
and a miracle.
On the other hand, opponents say that modifying human
embryos is dangerous and unnatural, and does not consider
the approval of future generations. The scientists say that; we
are still debating the number of genes in the human genome
and certainly do not know what all of the genes do. Even if
we did, the unpredictability in the mechanism of genetic
crossover between parental genomes makes any realistic
control or prediction of the majority of traits impossible. This is
likely to have social consequences, as well as biological ones.
To sum up, there are arguments that modifying genomes is
inherently dangerous because we can’t know all the ways it
will affect the individual. But those who think the gene editing
is risky don’t consider the inherent dangers in the “natural” way
we reproduce. Needless to say, families and scientists should
think carefully, based on the best available combination of
researches, argument and evidences about how their decisions
will affect future generations.