While the 20th century was shaped largely by spectacular breakthroughs in the fields of physics and chemistry, the 21st century will belong to the biological sciences. Scientists around the world are quickly deciphering the genetic code of life, unlocking the mystery of millions of years of biological evolution on Earth. Global life science companies, in turn, are beginning to exploit the new advances in biology in a myriad of ways, laying the economic framework for the coming Biotech Century.

Genes are the raw resource of the new economic epoch and are already being used in a variety of international business fields—including agriculture, animal husbandry, energy, bioremediation, building and packing materials, and pharmaceuticals—to fashion a bio-industrial world. Nowhere is the new genetic commerce likely to have a bigger impact, however, than in human medicine. For the first time in history, the scientific tools are becoming available to manipulate the genetic instructions in human cells. Human gene therapy raises the very real possibility that we might be able to engineer the genetic blueprints of our own species and begin to redirect the future course of our biological evolution on Earth. Breakthroughs in genetic technology are bringing us to the edge of a new eugenics era with untold consequences for present and future generations and for civilization itself.

In less than ten years, the global life science companies will hold patents on many of the 30,000 or so genes that make up the human race as well as patents on the cell lines, tissues, and organs of our species, giving them unprecedented power to dictate the terms by which we and future generations live our lives. The concentration of power in the global pharmaceutical industry has already reached staggering proportions. The implications of a new market-driven eugenics are enormous and far reaching. Indeed, commercial eugenics could become the defining social dynamic of the new century.

Friendly Eugenics

The term “eugenics” was conceived by Sir Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin, in the 19th century and is generally divided along two lines. Negative eugenics involves the systematic elimination of so-called biologically undesirable traits. Positive eugenics is concerned with the use of genetic manipulation to “improve” the characteristics of an organism or species.

The prospect of creating a new eugenic man and woman is becoming ever more likely as a result of the steady advances in somatic and germ line genetic engineering technology. In somatic therapy, intervention takes place only within somatic cells and the genetic changes do not transfer into the offspring. In germ line therapy, genetic changes are made in the sperm, egg, or embryonic cells, and are passed along to future generations. Somatic gene surgery has been carried out in limited human clinical trials for more than a decade. Germ line experiments have been successfully carried out on mammals for more than 15 years and researchers expect the first human trials to be conducted in the near future.

Despite years of favorable media reports on various somatic gene therapy experiments and the high expectations voiced by the medical establishment and the biotech industry, the results have, thus far, been disappointing. So disappointing, in fact, that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) itself was forced to acknowledge the results and issue a sober warning to scientists conducting the experiments to stop making promises that could not be kept. After surveying all 106 clinical gene therapy trials conducted over a five-year period, involving more than 597 patients, a panel of experts convened by the NIH reported that “clinical efficacy has not been definitively demonstrated at this time in any gene therapy protocol, despite anecdotal claims of successful therapy.” Still, many of the staunchest supporters of the new gene therapies remain convinced that the techniques will bear fruit as methodologies and procedures are refined and new knowledge of the workings of genes become more available to researchers and clinicians.

Far more controversial is the prospect of conducting human germ line therapy. Programming genetic changes into the human germ line to direct the evolutionary development of future generations may be the most radical human experiment ever contemplated and raises unprecedented moral, social, and environmental risks for the whole of humanity. Consequently, debate over genetic manipulation of human eggs, sperm, and embryonic cells has raged for more than 20 years.

Even so, a growing number of molecular biologists, medical practitioners, and pharmaceutical companies are anxious to take the gamble, convinced that controlling our evolutionary destiny is humankind’s next great social frontier. Their arguments are couched in terms of personal health, individual choice, and collective responsibility for future generations.

Writing in The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Dr. Burke Zimmerman makes several points in defense of germ line cell therapy over somatic cell therapy. To begin with, he argues that the increasing use of somatic therapy is only likely to increase the number of survivors with defective genes in their germ lines, who will pass an increasing number of genetic problems onto succeeding generations. Second, although this therapy may be able to treat many global disorders by replacing populations of cells, it may never prove effective in addressing diseases involving solid tissues, organs, and functions dependent on structure, like, for example, the brain, making germ line therapy the only likely solution to such disorders.

Proponents of germ line therapy argue for broadening the ethical mandate of the global health profession to include responsibility for the health of those not yet conceived. The interests of the patient, says Zimmerman, should be extended to include the interests of “the entire genetic legacy that may result from intervention in the germ line.” Moreover, parents ought not to be denied their right as parents to make choices on how best to protect the health of their unborn children during pregnancy. Therefore, it is argued that to deny parents the opportunity to take corrective action in the germ line would be a serious breach of medical responsibility.

Finally, the health costs to global society need to be factored into the equation, say the advocates of germ line therapy. Although the costs of genetic intervention into the germ line to cure diseases will likely remain high in the early years, the cost should drop dramatically as the methods and techniques become more refined. The lifetime cost of caring for generations of patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease or severe Down’s syndrome is likely to be far greater than simple prevention in the form of genetic intervention at the germ line level.