Avoiding Eugenics: It's Easy!

Src: wired.com

I want to prevent inheritable disease. I think we should explore pre- and perinatal therapies as part of this. And not all the therapies I can imagine are approved by Church officials. Am I a eugenicist?

It the original sense of the word, no. I'm not a member of a "social movement claiming to improve the genetic features of human populations through selective breeding and sterilization." But more recently, the eugenics ideal has gone underground, and motivates some (not all) uses of prenatal diagnosis and abortion (related to race and mental disability). It creeps behind the language of "every child a wanted child," "working together for stronger healthier babies," and "healthy babies are worth the wait."

What if you could freeze oocytes (not morally illicit per se according to Dignitas Personae) and inject them later (e.g. after chemotherapy) in a woman's ampulla and allow conception to occur after natural intercourse? We'd need to learn more about construction of a zona pelucida and cumulus oophorous, but I bet we could do it.

What if you could CRISPR the ΔF508 out of all of a man's sperm, not only preventing this from being passed onto his sons, but also assisting the act of procreation, allowing him to build working sperm? This is germline gene therapy.

What if you could engineer a neo-ovary for a BRCA-positive woman, with her genome, minus the affected gene? That way, her offspring would not carry her genetic predisposition to breast and ovarian cancer. CRISPR would make it possible, and bioprinting would could make it real.

I don't think any of these things are eugenic in themselves (per se). Eugenics is marked by the erroneous equation between essential dignity and accidents like quality of life, health, beauty, intellect, usefulness, etc (paragraph 319 in the link). This error affects the intention behind the action, and the selection of means to the end of promoting those separable accidents.

None of the techniques I just listed are evil in themselves (malum in se). Printing tissue is not immoral, even printing tissue to replace reproductive organs. (Even though the reproductive system is set apart as half of a whole, meant to be used with a complementary system by a couple in a very sacred act, replacing an organ is a medical act that promotes the natural act of the human body.) Freezing cells, thawing them, and implanting them without IVF might be a roundabout way to assist fertility, but is not evil in itself. And germline therapy (I'm arguing something that not everyone agrees about now) is no different from somatic cell therapy, since it assists, rather than replaces or demeans, procreation and the health of offspring.

But any of those actions could be used with eugenic motives. A woman who wants to "clean up" her family tree or her society should re-examine her motives for neo-ovary creation. A woman who wants to freeze her eggs so that she doesn't use "the Down's duds" at the end of her reproductive life needs to re-think her intentions for egg freezing (and don't get me started on women who do this for their careers; that's a disaster of mixed priorities and apparent goods). A woman who plans to use germline therapy because she doesn't want to raise a child with mental retardation, or lose a child early, or pay for expensive drugs, needs to reconsider her reasons for germline gene therapy.

With a loving intention to contribute to the health of children conceived, and an attitude of acceptance of whatever children are conceived, we can avoid becoming eugenicists when we use morally neutral means to achieve a good.