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Geneticists must not patronise lay people about the ethics of research
into the human genome, a leading philosopher said last week. Instead, they
must help to encourage education and open debate if they want to be allowed
to continue useful research.

Mary Warnock, Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, was addressing
700 researchers attending the Human Gene Mapping Workshop in London last
week. She said people’s fears about genetic research fell into two broad
groups: first, that privacy would be destroyed and that insurance companies,
employers and others would abuse information about individuals’ gen etic
makeup; and secondly, that parents would manipulate the genes of their offspring.

Insurance companies will demand genetic information ‘fairly soon’, she
said, and legislation will be necessary to protect privacy. But fears about
the genetic manipulation of unborn children have become confused, she said.
Warnock sees ‘no moral objection’ to the prenatal diagnosis of gen etic
defects that cause very severe disease, or to the selection of healthy embryos
in in vitro fertilisation. ‘To attempt to secure the birth of a healthy
baby seems a morally admirable aim,’ she said.

Techniques such as these should be distinguished from germline gene
therapy, a procedure no one has yet contemplated, in which geneticists would
alter cells in an embryo. This hypothetical therapy raises many uncertainties
but should not be ruled out, she said. ‘It needs enormously more caution
but simply to say we should never do it is to be shortsighted.’

‘ŮÉúСÊÓƵs . . . sometimes speak as if their task were one of reassuring
the public,’ said Warnock. This could be unhelpful. Some fears, of course,
are irrational, but others are rational, and then ‘mere reassurance’ is
not enough.

‘Discussion, explanation, education and dialogue are needed, within
the context of which people can see what moral issues are at stake,’ said
Warnock. But she admitted that this would be difficult while people mistrust
the experts. Without a dialogue between scientists and the rest of society,
she said, ‘there is no possibility of reaching the kind of moral consensus
we are going to need’. As a result, ‘scientists and practising doctors will
be unable to do what they genuinely want to do, which is to continue work
for the public good’.

Warnock, whose committee on the ethics of embryo research was influential
in the preparation of Britain’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act,
suggested that the Nuffield Council on Bioethics should become a statutory
body to advise ministers.

Walter Bodmer, chair of the Human Genome Organisation, which arranged
the workshop, said HUGO was ‘very likely’ to take on the role of coordinating
an international debate on the ethics of genetic research.