Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

What Counts as “Success” in Speculative and Anticipatory Ethics? Lessons from the Advent of Germline Gene Editing

  • Discussion Note
  • Published:
NanoEthics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This discussion note offers a preliminary analysis of what recent developments in human germline gene editing tell us about the effectiveness of speculative and anticipatory modes of techno-ethics. It argues that the benefits of speculative discussions are difficult to detect thus far, and that pushing the focal point of ethical discourse well ahead of the current state of technology may prematurely undermine existing norms long before a broad consensus would justify moving beyond them.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. The problem identified by David Collingridge is that attempts to control the social effects of a new technology face an inverse relationship between knowledge and agency. When a technology is new it may be easy to implement policies to control it, but we do not yet know what its problematic effects are; once it does come into wide use and negative social consequences become apparent, implementing effective policy responses becomes far more difficult [3]. Although some have claimed that speculative ethics can prepare society to respond (just in case a given technology produces the very effects that ethicists anticipate) [4], there is no evidence that this would be any more effective than an incrementalist approach that is responsive to technologies as they are developed and come into use. To be clear, this does not bear on the work of ethicists working on upstream development processes (such as engineering moral values into AI systems), but this has not been an approach taken within speculative bioethics, which usually asks what we ought to do with a given technology once it arrives.

  2. In the field of technology assessment, by contrast, and in related discourses, these considerations have played a significant role in shaping how socio-technical futures are approached.

  3. I use the term “anticipatory” to specify a subset of the discourse that, while speculative in nature, is focused on technologies that are expected in the nearer term and which tends to be more policy-oriented.

  4. Juengst claims that this is a misinterpretation of the document so long as its calls for public engagement and multiple stakeholder input are taken seriously [18]. However, what his analysis really points to is the existence of two different voices within the report. The first, supporting limited therapeutic germline editing at some future point, offers expert policy guidance in the same vein as many previous reports. The second voice reflects a countervailing approach critical of these top-down regimes of expertise. The tension between these two approaches underlies what some see as a core unresolved problem for public bioethics [19].

  5. To be sure, a range of factors that that led professional bioethics toward the acceptance of somatic interventions in 1982 also served to make the eventual acceptance of germline engineering something of an inevitability [25].

  6. See for example the discussion about a “Global Genome Editing Observatory.” [27] If such projects successfully orient themselves toward “observing” the evolving present rather than anticipating the future (as ELSI-style research often has), this would mark a significant development in how bioethics initiatives keyed to specific emerging technologies structure their goals.

  7. Various possibilities are briefly explored in [5]; as discussed elsewhere, a more fundamental question is how a forward-looking “prophetic” mode of bioethics concerned with the ends pursued via biomedicine and a “regulatory” policy-oriented mode of bioethics discourse can complement one another [29].

References

  1. Weckert J (2007) Editorial. NanoEthics 1(1):1–2. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-007-0009-4

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Nordmann A (2007) If and then: a critique of speculative nanoethics. NanoEthics. 1(1):31–46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-007-0007-6

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Collingridge D (1980) The social control of technology. St. Martin’s Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  4. Agar N (2004) Liberal eugenics: in defence of human enhancement. Blackwell, Malden

    Book  Google Scholar 

  5. Schick A (2017) Bioethics and the regulation/legitimation of the imagined future. In: Verschraegen G, Vandermoere F, BraeckmansL, Segaert B (eds.) Imagined futures in science, technology and society. Routledge, London, Ch. 2

  6. Walters L (2012) Genetics and bioethics: how our thinking has changed since 1969. Theor Med Bioeth. 33(1):83–95. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-012-9210-8

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research (1982). Splicing life: a report on the social and ethical issues of genetic engineering with human beings. Washington, DC

  8. Juengst ET (1991) The human genome project and bioethics. Kennedy Inst Ethics J. 1(1):71–74

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Walters L (1991) Human gene therapy: ethics and public policy. Hum Gene Ther. 2(2):115–122

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Juengst ET (1991) Germ-line gene therapy: back to basics. J Med Philos. 16(6):587–592

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Parens E (2000) Enhancing human traits: ethical and social implications. Georgetown University Press, Washington, DC

    Google Scholar 

  12. Lenzi RN, Altevogt BM, Gostin LO (2014) Oversight and review of clinical gene transfer protocols: assessing the role of the recombinant DNA advisory committee. The National Academies Press, Washington, DC

    Google Scholar 

  13. Baltimore D, Berg P, Botchan M et al (2015) A prudent path forward for genomic engineering and germline gene modification. Science. 348(6230):36–38. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aab1028

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Liang P, Xu Y, Zhang X, Ding C, Huang R, Zhang Z, Lv J, Xie X, Chen Y, Li Y, Sun Y, Bai Y, Songyang Z, Ma W, Zhou C, Huang J (2015) CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing in human tripronuclear zygotes. Protein Cell. 6(5):363–372. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13238-015-0153-5

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Organizing Committee for the International Summit on Human Gene Editing (2015) On human gene editing: international summit statement.. http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12032015a. Accessed 17 Jan 2019

  16. National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine Committee on Human Gene Editing (2017) Human genome editing: science, ethics, and governance. National Academies Press, Washington, D.C. https://doi.org/10.17226/24623

  17. Kaiser J. U.S. panel gives yellow light to human embryo editing. Science. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/us-panel-gives-yellow-light-human-embryo-editing. Accessed 29 Jan 2019

  18. Juengst ET (2017) Crowdsourcing the moral limits of human gene editing? Hastings Cent Rep. 47(3):15–23. https://doi.org/10.1002/hast.701

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Evans JH (2012) The history and future of bioethics: a sociological view. Oxford University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  20. HFEA approval for new genome editing techniques. Francis Crick Institute. https://www.crick.ac.uk/news/2016-02-01-hfea-decision. Accessed 24 Jan 2019

  21. Servick K. First U.S. team to gene-edit human embryos revealed. Science. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/first-us-team-gene-edit-human-embryos-revealed. Accessed 24 Jan 2019

  22. Regalado A. Years before CRISPR babies, this man was the first to edit human embryos. MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612554/years-before-crispr-babies-this-man-was-the-first-to-edit-human-embryos/. Accessed 17 Jan 2019

  23. Belluck P. How to stop rogue gene-editing of human embryos? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/health/gene-editing-babies-crispr.html. Accessed 24 Jan 2019

  24. Greely H. Of Science, CRISPR-Cas9, and Asilomar. Law Biosci Blog. April 2015. https://law.stanford.edu/2015/04/04/of-science-crispr-cas9-and-asilomar/. Accessed 29 Feb 2016

  25. Evans JH (2002) Playing God? Human genetic engineering and the rationalization of public bioethical debate. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

  26. Juengst ET (2000) What does enhancement mean? In: Parens E (ed) Enhancing human traits. Georgetown University Press, Washington, DC, pp 29–47

  27. Jasanoff S, Hurlbut JB (2018) A global observatory for gene editing. Nature. 555(7697):435. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-03270-w

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Next time, ask first: The affair of the gene-edited babies rumbles on. The Economist. 429(9122):82–83. https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/12/15/the-affair-of-the-gene-edited-babies-rumbles-on. Accessed 24 Jan 2019

  29. Schick A (2014) Lessons for the future? Prophecy and policy in speculative bioethics. Michigan State University

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Polonsky Library, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, 43 Jabotinsky Street, 9214116, Jerusalem, Israel

    Ari Schick

Authors
  1. Ari Schick
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ari Schick.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Schick, A. What Counts as “Success” in Speculative and Anticipatory Ethics? Lessons from the Advent of Germline Gene Editing. Nanoethics 13, 261–267 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-019-00350-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-019-00350-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation