The British fertility industry and theDepartment of Health have announced their intention to press ahead with attempts to introduce internationally novel legislation to permit human germ-line gene modification involving genetic material from three human parents. As well as scrambling a child’s identity in new ways this would allow, for the first time, designer human beings.
The new techniques – Pronuclear Transfer (PNT), Maternal Spindle Transfer (MST) and Nuclear Genome Transfer (NGT) are presented as a minor extension of IVF. The introduction of genetically modified humans born of biological material from three people, however, heralds a novel assault on human identity and the start of a designer eugenics race.
The techniques involve radical new experimental alterations to the genetic constitution of the human being. First, the procedures are at odds both with international law and intergenerational justice.
The procedures are incompatible with EU Treaty 2004, the 1966 United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Declaration of Geneva all of which prohibit various aspects of the processes.
Secondly, they also involve a scrambling of the genetic identity of the child introducing new kinship confusion for future offspring.
For years the fertility industry, the Department of Health and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority have demonstrated a persistent refusal to consider the interests of donor offspring silencing their biological kinship needs. Three parent children will suffer new and greater identity loss.
Thirdly, given the opportunities for design, domination and control of a child’s very characteristics, a thing not possible with standard donor conception, the indifference to the welfare of future generations is predictable given the commerical implications. Be sure, a new eugenics race is on!