Hello. I'm Katrina. This is the Practical Ethics Channel.
So this is the audio version of an interview I conducted with Julian Solecki,
professor of Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford and Director of the Oxford Hero Centre for Practical Ethics.
I interviewed Julian on the ethics of genetic selection and human enhancement, and this was at a public engagement event organised by the Mad Batman,
which is a Belgian non-profit organisation, facilitating public debates on various topics related to the so-called make ability of humans.
So we'd like to thank the Mac Batiments for the audio files of his interview and Monster for the photos.
Professor Julian Soffer. Let's go.
First of all, thanks so much for being here.
So I realise very well how busy your schedule is, so I think we should all be grateful for having you here.
So thanks very much. So Julian made valuable contributions to almost any debate in bioethics, to almost any debate in bioethics.
So he has worked on the ethics of infectious disease, like how can we prevent a growing, growing danger of antibiotic resistance?
And he's worked on end of life issues, euthanasia, animal ethics, like the ethics of animal experimentation and so on.
But I think it's fairly uncontroversial to say that you've caused most controversy.
But your contributions to the debate about genetic selection and human enhancement I think probably made a few people angry.
Even so, it's great that you'll have a chance to explain your views a bit to us.
Okay, so when we think about genetic selection, there are two important questions.
So a first question is, is genetic selection acceptable genetic selection in general?
So is it ever acceptable to use genetic selection?
The second question is if it is acceptable to do genetic selection,
sometimes in some circumstances, how do how should we decide what children to choose?
How should we select? And that's what we want to or I would like to focus on today, because I think that's the interesting question.
So, Julian, you have developed a famous or should I say, in famous principle to help us decide what children to select.
And it's called procreative beneficence.
And basically it means that parents or individuals or people who want to have a child should choose the child from among different children.
They could have they should choose the child that that will have the best chance at the best life.
So why should we choose the child that we think will have the best life?
So Katrina said that my view is controversial, but but, in fact, it it's common sense.
And I want to give you an example where I think that you will agree with me.
That is a kind of clear example of of this principle.
So not only do I think people should be allowed to do this, but that they should do it.
And by should I mean they have a reason that can be outweighed by other reasons,
but that if they're in any if there are no other reasons, they should do it.
So here's an example. So some of you may have heard of this Zika virus, which is passed by mosquitoes to human beings.
And if it doesn't affect people like you.
But if you're trying to have a child, it can cause the child to have a small brain and intellectual disability.
And so one way to there's no treatment for it, but one way to avoid this is to avoid getting Zika.
But sometimes you don't know if you've been infected, and it can take three months to to tell whether you've actually had the the infection.
So when the epidemic was at its peak in South America, for example, in countries like Brazil,
Public Health, England, the medical authority said it issued a warning to people and it said,
if you are thinking about having a child and you've been to an area with Zika,
you should wait three months before you start to try to conceive to have a child.
And the reason is if you conceive now, you might be infected with Zika still from coming back from Brazil.
Now, the child that you will have. In three months will be a different egg.
There will have been at least two cycles and a different sperm because sperm turnover.
So the child that you will have in three months will be a different child than the child you would have had today.
In fact, it might be of the opposite sex. So the child that you have in three months might be healthy, Harry,
whereas the child that you would have today if you were infected with Zika will be maybe.
Zelda with with microcephaly. An intellectual disability.
So what Public Health England says is you should have healthy Harry rather than Zelda with intellectual disability.
That's what you should do. And if you went to a doctor and asked their advice, you would expect the doctor to say You should wait three months.
Now I have asthma. So I'm an asthmatic.
If the doctor and I went to the doctor and said, Look, Doctor, I'm thinking of having a child.
The doctor said, look, we've got this new pill, and if you and your wife take it for three months,
the child that you'll have in three months time won't have asthma.
I take the pill and wait three months, but that will be a different child.
That's like having two embryos and you do tests on them and you predict one will have asthma and one won't.
That indicates not only should we select against conditions like intellectual disability.
But also minor conditions like asthma. Or to take another example, which is more controversial.
If I went to the doctor and said, Look, Doctor, I'm thinking of trying to have a child, the doctor says, look,
if you take this pill for three weeks, for three months and then try to conceive, your child will have a higher IQ.
I'll guarantee you the child will have an IQ over 120 and be able to go to university, whereas who knows what will happen if you have a child now?
I'd wait three months. Why? Because it's better to be able to go to university than not.
You have a wider range of options and choices. So procreative beneficence is something that guides our mental, our medical advice,
but also I think guides what would be our everyday practices if we reflected on them more.
So it's good that you mentioned IQ. So there is this company in the U.S. genome prediction who claims that they'll be able to
predict that they'll be able to help people select a GM through an embryo with a very high IQ.
But so then we have to be pretty sure that IQ actually contributes to a good life.
But how can we be sure about that? I mean, IQ aren't smart.
Very smart people are also often a bit depressed just because they are so smart.
So how how do we know what traits will continue contributes to well-being?
So I think genomic prediction at the moment is only offering tests.
But but they are offering tests for tests for identifying low normal intelligence, not very high IQ, but just IQ, which is normal.
But the normal level is between 70 and 130 and less than 70 is intellectual disability.
And they're offering tests that will give you a higher probability that an embryo will be somewhere in the lower range between 70 and 85.
So. Is that a good thing? Well,
we need to do scientific research and understand try to understand what are the benefits and disadvantages
of having something like IQ or impulse control or whatever property you think that you might want to select.
Now, as it happens, there is a lot of a lot of research on IQ.
And what that research shows is that IQ is roughly 50% genetic.
Using the sorts of research that.
It's being used in this test, you could probably identify up to half of that 50%, but that still means you'll be able to make predictions.
So is it better to have, you know, a higher or lower IQ?
There is no evidence that higher IQ makes people less happy.
Having a low IQ means that you'll have a lower range of job opportunities.
You'll have to be in more supervised, lower paid jobs.
You're more likely to be murdered. You're more likely to become ill, and you're more likely to be lower on the socioeconomic scale.
Even even having a very, very high IQ, it's still worth increasing it.
So if you if you think about patents as a measure, the ability to produce a patent means you've invented something that's useful to society.
If you look at the top 1% of IQ, they produce more patents than the average.
But even within that top 1%. The bottom quarter produces 3.5 times as many patents as the average,
but Dentons in the top one quarter of that top 1% produces about eight times as many patents.
So even moving even increasing your IQ, even if you're in the top 1%, will mean that you'll be able to produce more patents.
So, I mean, this is just a sketch I'm going to I'm going to try to provoke you to because I think ethics is about getting you to think,
I don't really care whether you're in favour enhancement or not personally and will whether society legal.
I think it's good to think about it for yourself,
but I think and I can only sketch a bit of the evidence, but clearly it depends on what the evidence is.
But the evidence, as I see it, is very important for the individual, but it's even equally important for society.
So when we used led in petrol and paint, it would reduce people's IQ by affecting children's brain development.
And when we got rid of lead from petrol and paint people's IQ rose.
This is called LED abatement. Based on those studies, experts have estimated that just a 3% increase in everyone's IQ would add 1.5% to GDP,
150 billion to the US economy, reduce poverty by 25% and welfare recipients by 8% and males in jail by 18%.
Massive effects. So the US military who don't have the sort of kind of restrictions that we have in civil society.
The research arm of the US military has said even a small increase in the working
population's IQ would have the same economic effects as the introduction of the Internet.
So as far as I understand the evidence, it's good for the individual and it's good for society.
And that's why if somebody told me that doing something would enable my child to have a higher IQ, I would do it.
And that's why I send my children to school, because school is a cognitive enhancer.
It actually increases IQ. And that's why school is compulsory, because it's a beneficial effect.
Okay, so intelligence is one trait, but I want to zoom in a bit more on what you mean by the best chance at the best life.
So the best life is a life containing much well-being.
So does that mean we should create happy people?
And does that mean that, for example, there is a reason to select for children, for example, Down's syndrome?
Because, I mean, I don't know much about it, but some people say to have a cheerful disposition and are quite happy.
So. Well, I think one of the most urgent questions facing society is what is a good life?
So countries like Bhutan have moved from gross domestic product and economic markers of success of a country to the GROSS Happiness Index.
So they follow a Buddhist tradition and say that what matters is happiness.
And that's what we should be aiming for as a marker of success of our country and of individual lives.
And happiness is certainly important.
But if you think about your own life, well, at least when I think about my own life, my life, happiness is not the only thing I want.
I want happiness, but I also want certain things that I think are good to have as a human being,
like a rich and deep set of perks of relationships, friends and family, children.
I want to be able to develop my talents. I entered this field of philosophy.
I used to do medicine because I thought it would be more creative.
I want to understand the world and myself. I want to improve.
I want to engage with nature. I don't want to age all of these things.
Some philosophers have said of our objective goods.
So I think personally, I think well-being is a mixture of happiness and these these other kinds of goods.
So why is why is IQ important?
It's important to help you gain what are called rational beliefs,
beliefs that are more likely to be true about the world or yourself based on the information that you have available.
It's the ability to draw inferences. So I think that's a valuable property, whether or not it makes you happy.
It enables you to gain a better understanding of yourself.
I also think autonomy is important being able to set your own goals and live your own life according to what you think is best.
So I think those three things autonomy, happiness and these objective properties.
But this is hugely contested. For 2000 years, philosophers have debated this.
But we have to start to answer the question because is it good for children like my children to spend hours on social media?
Even if they want to. You have to have a yardstick to measure what it's doing.
So the challenge of deciding whether this or that embryo is going to have a better chance of a better life is an important question,
but it's also an important question for all of us. But doesn't that make it a bit too difficult for people who want to have a child?
Doesn't that give them too much responsibility to try to think which of the
possible children I could create will have the best chance at the best life?
I mean, it's already very difficult to decide about what school you'll send your child to.
That can already be very difficult.
So. So to say to things with with power comes responsibility.
So as soon as you can change the course of events, unfortunately, you become responsible for the outcome, even if you choose nothing.
Because choosing nothing when you can avoid that outcome and knowing that there's, you know,
another option within all the set of possible outcomes is to actively be choosing that.
So unfortunately, we can't avoid the responsibility that we have,
but it might sound very onerous to be searching through thousands of embryos to work out which one precisely is going to be.
And for many people, it simply won't arise because they have a child.
In the normal way, they become pregnant and they don't want to give up their pregnancy for the sake of, you know, a few IQ points, possible gain.
They will only have a termination of pregnancy for something they judged to be very significant, like Zika.
But when you're already having IVF and you produce ten embryos, we now have this ability to sequence the whole genome.
And I think you've heard talks already where doctors are searching that genome for diseases.
And that's a wonderful thing, in my view. But if there are also combinations of genes that are associated with either better or worse lives.
In my view, we should treat them in exactly the same way as we treat diseases, because disease is not something that is a category difference.
It blends into normality. Intellectual disability blends into normal IQ.
Psychopathy blends into hard headedness.
So many of the properties that we call diseases are actually just extreme ends of something that, you know, has degrees.
And what matters to us is how our lives go. And we should make a decision about whether those properties are going to make for better.
So. So do you think it's the parents who have to decide about what they think will give their child a good life or the best possible life?
And if so, what do you think about cases where.
So these these are real cases where death couples have used genetic technologies to choose a death child because on their view,
deafness is not a disability. A child that is deaf, they say, will have a life as good as any as as hearing children.
Deafness is more like deaf.
People are more like a minority group comparable to black people or or women.
So minority groups, minority groups, women.
I was going to say now a group that that is that was a mistake.
I was thinking of where the disadvantage that comes to you is is sort of mainly caused by society.
And that was more the comparison between women and deaf people, where deaf people say,
well, the disadvantage that we have is just because society is not adapting well enough to.
So. So. So some some deaf people say that deafness is a culture and it's a difference, not a disability,
that the disadvantages that this deaf people face are the result of the way society is constructed.
So that, you know, if we all were able to sign or society wasn't constructed in a way that was based on,
you know, speech and all and and oral signals, they would have as good a lives as as as any anyone else.
And I agree with that to a large degree, that there are four ways in which you can improve human well-being.
You can change the natural environment. You can change society.
You can change psychology, or you can change biology.
And it's certainly true that we that deaf people have very good lives and that their lives could be even better if society were reorganised.
But even if society were maximally reorganised, we could not eliminate all of the disadvantages of deafness.
So you won't be able to respond to auditory warnings or an auditory threats.
And it's simply we don't have the resources to completely reconfigure society in a way that completely eliminates all of those disadvantages.
At the moment, if we did, it would be no disadvantage at all.
And I think being hearing for a child of a deaf couple is like being able to be bilingual or be a part of two societies.
The hearing child can be both a part of the deaf culture and learn to sign, but also be able to hear and speak.
So I think deafness has some disadvantage less than we think, but still some.
Now we face this crisis of ethics where up until now we've been able to get away with what's called liberal neutrality,
saying we're in neutral to what people think is good for themselves.
And really, it's it's relative to what they think or what their culture thinks.
But unfortunately, now we have to make decisions. So if a deaf couple comes and says to a doctor, we want you to defend our child, the child can hear,
but we want the child to be a part of our culture and we want you to cut the auditory nerves.
Or if they have a deaf child where there is a cure for the deafness, that has to be done now like a cochlear implant.
And they say, we don't want to use the cochlear implant because we think that deafness is just the difference.
Now you have to make a decision. Is it really just a difference, like having a different hair colour or being a different sex?
Or is there something that is really going to be a disadvantage for that child to some degree?
And we should correct that disadvantage. And I think it is.
I don't. Think that people should be allowed to to deafen their child or refuse interventions that will give that child hearing.
Now, when it comes to selection, I think it's slightly different because as just go back to my Zika example,
imagine that a couple have a virus that if they conceive a child now said rubella is like this German measles.
Imagine that a woman has German measles. And she says, look, I want to have a child.
And the doctor says, look, if you have a child now, the child's going to be deaf.
But if you wait three months, the child will be able to hear if she has a child now, she'll have one deaf child.
If she waits three months, she'll have a hearing child. That's different.
Now, if she has the child now, she hasn't harmed that child.
Because that child won't exist. That's different to taking a child who can hear now and cutting the auditory nerves.
So I think selection is wrong for a for a disability, but I think it should be allowed.
I think people should be free to do that because it's a different kind of way of having a deaf child.
It's a complicated point, but I think shows that philosophy is necessary to really carve up these cases more, more, more finely.
So, I mean, if we sort of form ideas of what type of children should exist and shouldn't exist,
if it's not completely up to the parents, in a sense, aren't we sort of at risk of sliding down the path to dangerous forms of eugenics?
So if you think of eugenics, I mean, people think of what the Nazis did,
forced sterilisation of certain groups, even killing people that were thought to have inferior genes.
Think of progressives in the US in the early 20th century, in the US, in the early 20th century,
there were many states that had laws that say that it was allowed to forcibly
sterilise certain groups of people like the mentally retarded or the blind,
the deaf, Native Americans and African-Americans, because they were thought to have inferior genes.
So these were also people that had good things in mind.
They wanted to improve genes in the human gene pool.
But it ended up with really horrible practices.
So isn't what you are promoting too close to this sort of scenario?
Well, the word eugenics comes from the Greek, meaning well-born, and it means choosing better children,
having the next generation better than the previous generation.
And clinical genetics is a form of eugenics.
It's enabling people to be born without diseases. So Down's syndrome screening is a form of eugenics.
That's practice now.
The difference between modern eugenics, which is sometimes called liberal eugenics and Nazi eugenics, or the eugenics of the 19th and 20th century,
because it wasn't only the Nazis, it was practice in Sweden and the US and many, many parts of Europe.
Is that, as you correctly said, Nazi eugenics was involuntary.
People were forced to have terminations of pregnancy or forced to be sterilised.
And it wasn't aimed at having a child with a better chance of a better life for the child.
It was aimed at realising racist, social Darwinist ideals about how society should be.
Now, modern eugenics is about offering parents the opportunity to choose and the freedom to say no.
So 10% of people choose not to terminate pregnancies with Down's syndrome and they've absolutely free to do that and that freedom should be protected.
People are free not to have screening for deafness and I think they should
even be free to select embryos that have either Down's syndrome or deafness.
So modern eugenics is very different.
But would we think that parents are free to cause intellectual disability to their child, say, by shaking a baby or hitting a child over the head,
causing a similar level of intellectual disability as that would be associated with with Zika or or even Down's syndrome.
Or say there was a cure now for cystic fibrosis or for Down's syndrome, a pill that you could give in the early months of life.
Would we think then parents should be able to decide not to give that pill?
It's like a Jehovah's Witness saying, I'm not going to give my child a blood transfusion because I believe that the Bible forbids taking blood.
And if we don't take blood, we'll go to heaven.
It's entirely reasonable for adults who decide to not have a blood transfusion and die for their religious beliefs.
But I don't believe that parents should be able to refuse lifesaving blood transfusions,
and I don't believe we should be able to refuse treatments for major medical
conditions or even minor conditions that are going to help the child later in life.
So I fully agree that eugenics today is very different from eugenics in the past and there is no coercion involved.
But some people are concerned that there is still quite a lot of pressure on people to do a lot of tests.
And for example, in Belgium there was a quite a bit of controversy because the government made sure that the NIPT test,
NIPT test, the non-invasive prenatal diagnosis test, you might tell them.
Well, I'll tell you. I mean, it could be, I think, largely, um.
Reef. It's like it could refund it. So it is very cheap for people in Belgium to have this test.
So it does their blood tests. This is going to the and he need a test from the food uses.
So out of those one it is Malcolm who won't go down the van.
[INAUDIBLE] simply blood test anatomic DNA up on the futures and routes funding for his Mr. Zane Akeelah Inform the test student [INAUDIBLE] have
to go pencil you see Campbell and Angland because that says on bond so many people thought that the government's making this tests so cheap.
Actually thereby sort of put some kind of pressure on people.
To have yourself tested and that there were worried that this would result in fewer cases, fewer children with Down syndrome.
So people were concerned that there would be fewer children with Down syndrome.
I don't think it was the case, but it's difficult to know what the effect was of the policy.
But, yeah, it's so. So my question is, I mean, is there a reason to be concerned about this sort of pressure that can be created by policies?
Well, one one concern is that it will create a pressure.
And indeed, people have, you know, quite inappropriately been criticised for not using the screening tests.
It it may reduce the number of people with that condition.
And so the social support services for people and it may be seen to be expressing a view about the value of people's lives with those conditions.
So another common criticism is that promoting screening for Down's syndrome expresses a negative view about people's lives who have Down syndrome.
And I think all three of those are problems and those are problems that need to be addressed.
So, for example,
we should be putting more money into supporting and including people of a diverse range of features because they're people and somebody who has Down
syndrome or intellectual disability or asthma or some other feature that makes their life in society more difficult should be given a fair go.
And I think it's a mistake to equate people with some feature about themselves,
like equating me with my asthma or equating somebody with Down's syndrome as as as being somehow identical with Down's syndrome are a person.
Their name might be John, just like my name is Julian. They'll have friends, they'll have interests,
I'll have a life that and so I think we need to move away from this reduction of people to their disabilities or features about themselves.
And this also applies in the sort of trans to the gender debate.
So I think we need to correct that reduction. We need to ensure that people are given a fair go and we need to ensure that they're
not forced into choices because freedom is only real if people have a real choice.
And that doesn't just mean a choice on paper. It means the real opportunity to choose the option that other people might disagree with.
So that means not just supporting their choices, but enabling them to have the mental environment to make those choices freely.
So I agree those are real adverse effects of promoting screening,
but I don't think the response to it is we should ban Down's syndrome screening or we should discourage
Down's Syndrome screening by making it expensive in what we should be doing is looking at those problems,
which are separate to giving people the choice about something that is is is very important.
Okay. Now, I just want to move on to some discussion about enhancements.
So think about the gene editing experiments that were recently done in China that were mentioned earlier today.
I think so.
Scientists genetically modified genes in the embryo to ensure that the children that would develop from these embryos would be resistant to HIV,
the virus causing AIDS. So this is a form of enhancement.
These children would not have been ill, they would not have had AIDS.
It's just making them resistant to AIDS.
So do you think these experiments are a good thing?
So those experiments I described as monstrous. But and I think they were unethical and shouldn't have been done.
And the reason for that is that the scientist, Jan Quaid, he or her, I think it's pronounced in Chinese,
but I don't speak Chinese, took normal embryos with a normal chance of a normal life, a good chance of a good life,
and gave them attempted to give them resistance to HIV, which can be prevented in many ways by not having sex with people with HIV,
by not sharing needles, by not engaging in risky practices, and it can be treated.
So it didn't provide a necessary benefit, and it also exposed them to risks,
because gene editing is a very immature technology that can cause damage too to the DNA in other areas and maybe cause cancer.
So I think it was wrong to expose those children to a risk for no real benefit.
However, if he had done the gene editing experiment with an embryo with a condition that was lethal very early in life,
say in the first few months of life or even just the first few years attempting to cure that condition.
So one genetic condition that's common in the Jewish population is Tay-Sachs disease.
If you took an embryo with Tay-Sachs disease where that child would only survive a few years, the benefits are very great.
And the risk if, for example,
the the gene editing were to result in the premature death would be a much smaller loss to that to to that to that individual.
So I think this sort of research is important at some point because what it's doing is trying to develop cures.
For genetic conditions. And this is a kind of ultimate form of medicine.
Instead of trying to give a drug the replaces the missing protein.
That is the result of a genetic disorder. They tried to go back and correct the gene itself so the body can produce that protein in every cell.
So I think the this kind of research is very important, but it should start with with embryos that essentially have nothing to lose.
Instead of human beings with everything to lose.
But you think that in principle I mean, you don't have any objections in principle to gene editing embryos, even if it's for enhancement purposes.
If it were if the technology were safe. Well, I mean, think about it.
If there were a vaccination for HIV that was completely safe and had no side effects, I would fall over myself to get it.
That's what medicine is about. Now, if that, instead of being a vaccination, were a modification of a gene and it had no side effects,
I would fall over myself to get it and also to give it to my children.
The only difference between routine vaccination and gene editing is the risks.
The outcome is the same. So, you know, genes.
People have this kind of mystery about genes. Genes just make proteins and proteins contribute to who we are, but they are not who we are.
There's nothing special about genes except that at the moment we are understanding them.
It is very limited and our ability to intervene safely is very limited.
But were it the science to progress? There is no difference between giving a drug and correcting a gene so that the body
itself produces the same molecule that you were going to give you externally.
So to take one example another.
Well, to take one example, there's a disease called Gaucher disease, where an enzyme isn't produced and it causes brain and liver damage.
Now, researchers have been able to to replace that enzyme and and essentially cure this disease.
But it's really expensive. It costs £180,000, I mean, over €200,000 a year per patient to treat.
So in the UK it costs over £20 million.
Gene editing would be very cheap and what gene editing would do would be correct, that gene.
So the body produces the enzyme it was supposed to produce every day for the rest of that individual's life,
instead of having to give a drug every day. And gene editing probably costs about £5,000.
So it's as a treatment for disease, it's it's really irresistible.
Once it becomes safe enough.
So one difference, of course, is if you gene at it's very early embryos, the changes that you make will be passed on to future generations.
So one of the principles of practical ethics is you want to compare the intervention you're discussing,
not with some Hollywood romantic fantasy the way you think the world should be, but with actually reality.
I'll give you a whole range of things that change the DNA that's passed on to the next generation.
Smoking. Having a child when you're older.
Viruses. Getting a virus. All of these things change our DNA and they passed on to the next generation.
Now, it's true that when you do a gene, editing at the stage of an embryo will be passed on to the next generation.
And that means that that next generation is exposed to risks.
That just increases the stakes.
It also increases the benefits because if you're talking about correcting a gene that is abnormal, that would be passed on to the next generation.
Now it won't be passed on to the next generation.
So there's nothing there's nothing, first of all, unusual about changing genes that are passed on to the next generation.
And there's nothing special about it in court. It just changes the magnitude of the risks and benefits.
That means you have to do more scientific research before you do it. But there's no absolute line to do it to doing it, in my view.
So a question about so how it could be used in society.
I mean, is there a risk that it would increase inequality in society,
that gene editing in embryos would be something that is used by the rich and that this would sort of result in a,
say, a genetic upper class of intelligence, attractive, healthy people, because they had access to these technologies.
And then poorer people just don't have access to these technologies exacerbating some of the socio economical splits between the two groups.
All right. Let's take one example that is close to my heart.
Ageing is completely normal. It's but and it's also one of the targets of enhancement.
And in non-human animals, there have been mice that have been genetically engineered to live twice as long as normal mice.
So let's assume and what Katrina is talking about is not correction of a single gene, but maybe modifying 50 genes,
which has already been done in non-human animals and modifying them so that people don't age.
They may be live to 120 with a healthy life, a healthy life and full capacity until they're 120.
This is called health span, increasing health span. In my view, that would be a fantastic enhancement.
It would raise huge social questions and questions about the number of people there should be in the world.
So it will raise other questions.
But in itself, I think it would be benefit for that individual, at least if a sufficient number of other individuals did it.
So we can imagine a world where this is expensive.
And not only do the rich have cosmetic surgery and sort of look younger,
they actually are younger the younger because they've had their genes modified and they're not ageing.
And then the poor like me age and sort of lose their capacities and and look at these kind of healthy, vibrant, productive functioning.
Centenarians. Yeah, that would be bad.
It's just like it's bad that the rich buy better health care or better education.
And in my view, if it's important, it should be made made available through the public health system and everyone gets access to it.
But it's it's even more important than that because at the moment.
There are some people who get to 100 in really good shape and it's genetic.
They're lucky. Nature allots every property about us unequally.
The mere fact that you're here, you know, on a Sunday, a Saturday afternoon, you know,
at this means that you're probably pretty financially and biologically privileged.
There are a lot of people who aren't that well off. And gene editing can correct that.
So gene editing could give those of us who don't age, as well as the centenarians, an equal chance of having the best things that life can offer.
And science is giving us, you know, the power to do these things.
And I think we should have the ethical framework to to do them in a way that.
Creates the sort of lives that and the sort of society that we think we ought to create.
And I think greater equality could also be the outcome as well as greater inequality.
Thanks for that. I would like to invite some of the previous speakers to ask a question if it's very dark for me so I can't really see where they are.
But if there's any of the previous speakers who would like to ask a question.
Um, yes. Yeah. I was looking for you, but I couldn't get stuck.
So if you want to go, it's. Yes.
I thought you'd have some questions.
The thing is, of course, you can say there will be this pill that will give me the perfect in perfectly intelligent baby.
From a today's genetic standpoint, we know that we don't have this enhanced yet.
You mentioned 50 genes, and I agree with you. There may be situations where, say, in ten years from now, we will have a better grasp on this thing.
But aren't you applying rules and examples that are suitable to black and white situations?
Now to your kind of inclining or declining field, can you say that something which is treated now because it's black and white, the Zika kit.
Compare it to something which is which, which will always be great, and that your principle seems to be the same that apply for those two situations.
Can you apply the same rules ethically or philosophically to things which are less tangible than others?
Yeah, look, I think that's a great I'm glad you asked that we didn't actually organise this, but I think that's a really important point.
Sometimes people come to me say, Look, Julian, you know, it's very simple in these sort of cases that you're describing.
But but actually, genes don't work like that. The genes that will dispose to manic depression will also be associated with creativity.
The genes that are associated with autism spectrum disorders, at least in the Aspergers range,
are associated with abilities in in in science, technology, engineering, mathematics.
There will be there will be. Introversion has advantages and disadvantages.
Extroversion has different advantages. How do we know what's better?
I absolutely agree there. There'll be much grey, as you said, it won't be clear whether it's better or worse to have that that constellation of genes.
Maybe in that case we don't allow selection or we don't allow enhance and we just allow people,
parents to choose which of them they whether they want to have the the embryo,
which has got a higher chance of having a mental disorder,
but perhaps having a higher chance of a creative life or one that's got a less interesting life but is mentally healthier.
That's a great question. But that shouldn't stop us for looking from looking for the black and the white.
And maybe there won't be much black and white once you get outside of disease,
because disease is just something where we're really clear that that thing.
But even now we're getting pressure where people say, well, maybe deafness isn't a disease or a disability.
I think that we have to search for the black and the white, but also acknowledge that there's grey and there might be a lot of grey.
And how far we'll go, we don't know because we haven't done the science and we also haven't done the ethics,
we haven't done the we haven't set the values that we're trying to achieve properly.
We haven't we haven't really thought through what we should be aiming for. But, you know, I think the jury's out.
And, you know, I think it's a project that, you know, I think has got legs because I,
I just think as a matter of observation, you know, inequality is quite profound and not all of that.
Inequality is social, socially determined.
Some of it has a biological contribution. Now, I could be wrong about that.
We just really don't know at the moment because this has only really started in the last these
these what are called g was huge studies of hundreds of thousands or millions of people.
And genetics is just really starting. And that's what's kicked off.
Until a few years ago. There were no genes for intelligence, there was nothing.
And then they started these genius studies and then and the problem was they couldn't get large enough because they didn't have IQ scores.
So what they did was they used educational attainment as a proxy, the correlates and that was found.
And because you could get hundreds of thousands of people, they suddenly started to account for,
you know, five, ten, 15, now up to 15% of the genetic contribution to intelligence.
And I think they can get to 30 but not 50 without new methods.
So I think we're starting to make it. That's only been in the last two or three years.
So I think it's really too early to say whether it's just all grey.
Yeah, but maybe then we should explain to people if they allow me to, to tell about this.
Gee was. So what happens in your studies is people look at disease patients or intellect, intelligent people, people and less intelligent people.
And then they look at the frequency, as we call it, of variation.
And then people say, okay, we see that, for instance, one gene variant is more frequent in disease, but it's about proportions.
So statistically it can be very strong.
And you can say we have found that variant more often, but because the variant exists in both groups, you cannot reverse the interference.
You cannot say. Well, now I have to say that you have a black box here, but you have less black than you have yellow.
And here you have all the said national colours.
And then on the other one, you have you have significantly, statistically, significantly more black rather than yellow.
But if I would give you a black one, you can't tell me on which side of these two groups that black person would be or that black ball would be.
It's another person. You see what I mean? So you can't reverse it.
And this is a mistake that is being made when people interpret this kind of, gee, what studies and what.
So another area that kind of throws.
The sort of questions up is the genetic modify modification of non-human animals?
We don't have genetically modified human beings. We have.
Billions of dollars and massive, you know, experiments modifying characteristics in nonhuman animals.
In fact, one sort of, you know, example you'll be familiar with, the greatest genetic experiment ever done is the breeding of dogs over 10,000 years.
That's a genetic experiment of genetic selection that breeds certain properties.
So when it comes to non-human animals, you're able to create striking differences.
And, you know, from a biological point of view, we are very different from our cousins.
And what is possible in non-human animals is possible in humans.
So to take one example, I've got a book coming out, plug it in January, Love Drugs about biologically modifying love and I sell whisky.
That's crazy love in the sense I'm using.
It has three phases lust, attraction, attachment.
We have the same phases as all other mammals.
Love is one of the most highly biologically coded behaviours that creates the propagation of the species through reproduction.
Each of those three lust is sexual desire for a quasi appropriate mate.
Attraction is falling in obsessively attracted to features of that individual.
And then attachment is a long term pair bond that that enables us to bring up our offspring.
Each of those has different biological bases. You can modify the biological bases of all three of them.
You can create lust by giving testosterone or in women flibanserin.
Oxytocin promotes bonding. You can change the mating patterns of non-human animals by fiddling with the oxytocin.
Vizer represses viso press a receptor system.
The third part so you can create a monogamous foal where previously they were polygamous and that system has also been implicated in human attachment.
And there are genetic variants. The Ivy Ivy PR one I polymorphism the 331 polymorphism.
There's some association with the instability of relationships, very immature science,
but in principle, what has been done with non-human animals could be done with humans.
What's your view about that? What's my opinion? So I explain the hang just so.
So if you want your husband or wife to be faithful, you'll be able to.
That's right. And one can use oxytocin sprays.
And apparently people look you more often in the eyes if you have these things.
My opinion is still that it's a very multifactorial it's not a disease making love, but it's a very multifactorial thing.
And again, how would you select on the genetic level?
Would you? Okay, you can say I select against polygamy, I select in favour of whatever.
But socially, would you try and change it the way you say it?
Would you allow, you know, parents to to take a look at how children will?
I mean, this is just all really at the very beginning, we're we're at the beginning of what I've called rational evolution of changing our biology,
not just to survive long enough to reproduce, which is how it's been going, but according to our values.
And, you know, how would you use it? You're exactly right.
It's multifactorial. There are going to be lots of different influences,
but I'm pretty sure that this is going to be an important part of our future and it won't just be about disease.
Give you another example. So should I finish well, so that there's another gene.
Okay, another one may have high and low.
This is a gene where if you've got the one third of you have the low variant, two thirds have the high variant.
The low variant is fine as long as you're not abused or neglected as a child, and then you're more likely become a criminal or violent or aggressive.
I mean, again, if you want like this, but if I were having IVF and I had ten embryos, they're all healthy.
And then, you know, the doctor comes says, we can tell you the Mayo status.
Do you want to know it? Yeah, I want to know it. I'll choose the high embryo, not because I'm going to abuse my child.
It's just because unless you can show me an upside to having a lot of variant,
a child might end up in an environment where they're abused or neglected without, you know, outside of my control.
So there will be, you know, ways in which or you could use that to test children who are in deprived environments to see which is more vulnerable.
Or you could use it. Now, I don't think that studies that research is mature enough to use.
In the ways that I'm describing. But if it were replicated and developed,
we may well be using biomarkers to allocate resources to identify people at risk or even to select which children we have.
I agree we will do the same for cancer risk anyways. Okay.
Thanks so much, Julian, for this provocative discussion and think we agree on something.
You agree on some things, maybe some extra oxytocin will make the bond a bit stronger.
So thanks very much for this piece. Let's give Julian a big applause.
Thanks very much for listening to this interview.
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