STATEMENT OF JAMIE F. METZL
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, THE
BEFORE THE HOUSE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS COMMITTEE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM AND NONPROLIFERATION
“CAN WE PREVENT THE ARMS RACE OF THE HUMAN RACE”
JUNE 19, 2008
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee,
Thank you for inviting me to testify before you today. It is an honor for me to be here.
When our descendants two hundred years from now look back at our present age and ask themselves what were the greatest foreign policy challenges of our time, I believe that terrorism, as critically important as it is, will not be on the top of their list. I am here testifying before you today because I believe that how we as Americans and as an international community dealt with our new abilities to manage and manipulate our genetic makeup will be.
It has been only 55 years since Watson and Crick deciphered the construction of DNA, and humankind has made monumental progress towards understanding our genetic code since then, and significant progress in manipulating the genetic code of plants and animals. But a relatively short time from now, a period counted in decades, our abilities to manipulate the human genetic code will very likely be substantially enhanced. This development will have tremendous potential to help alleviate human suffering and improve our lives. It will also have the potential to maximally destabilize the international order unless we start thinking now about how we as a global community can work together to prevent the worst abuses.
These wondrous advances in our technological abilities are, almost literally, a goose that lays a golden egg which we must protect. We must also not let the necessary dialogues about the need to establish global norms for human genetic research and applications be used as a front for those who oppose this important work altogether. But it would be dangerously Pollyannaish of us to not recognize the potential dangers inherent in these advances and to not begin thinking proactively about what might be done to address this future challenge.
Whether it arrives a decade from now, or more, the day will come when the human race, or at least a subset of us, will have the ability to take control of key aspects of our own evolution. While national and global debates on such issues as in-vitro fertilization (IVF), stem cell research, and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have begun to open people’s mind to the challenges and opportunities of revolutionary advances in the life sciences, America and the world remain dangerously unprepared for the international genetic “arms race” that could one day emerge. To maximize the benefits of these new capabilities while minimizing the potential harms, and to keep popular fears of this enormous transformation from overcoming its potential contribution to the quality and security of human life, the world community must develop new standards for human genetic enhancement and an enforcement structure that nurture this research and its beneficial application, but simultaneously prevent their most dangerous abuses.
As the convergence of complementary and mutually reinforcing advances across the fields of nanoscience, biotechnology, information technology, human fertility, gene therapy, molecular biology, and cognitive science make the arrival of more revolutionary capabilities in human reproductive, or “germline”, engineering inevitable, our species will become equipped with the Promethean ability to manage our own evolutionary process to an extent and at speeds that Charles Darwin never could have imagined. As opposed to the somatic gene therapies already in use today that target non-reproductive cells, germline technology alters reproductive cells at the outset of the fertilization process, allowing genetic changes to be replicated in every ensuing cell.
While germline engineering is likely not being carried out on humans today (although we cannot be one hundred percent sure of this), the process is already being used widely in experiments with laboratory animals such as mice. Scientists disagree over the timeframe, but most generally accept that this technology will relatively soon reach a stage of development where it could be used on humans.
Already today, the pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) process enables parents to select from among their fertilized eggs prior to re-implantation during the In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) process. PGD is today being used in approximately seventy-five percent of IVF clinics across the United States to screen fertilized eggs for certain genetic diseases such as Down Syndrome, Cystic Fibrosis, and Tay Sachs, to select the gender of one or more fertilized eggs to be implanted into women, and for other reasons. As our ability to “read” the genetic code from the cells extracted in the PGD process becomes greater, prospective parents will have increasingly more information that will inform their decisions about which fertilized eggs to implant. It might well be the case that this could become the reproductive method of choice for some group of parents seeking to maximize, according to their own criteria, the genetic inheritance of their children.
At some point in the more distant future, an additional step to this process might allow genetic material from fertilized eggs to be swapped out and replaced by genetic material from a different fertilized egg from the same batch, or from an artificial chromosome with a targeted genetic alteration. As these capabilities advance, they will hold the key to potentially massive enhancements to human life and well-being.
Just as advances in agriculture, sanitation, and health care have dramatically enhanced the length and quality of our lives (and transformed whatever an alternate evolutionary process might have been), so to will advances in bioengineering help secure and enhance our future – extending our lives, making us immune to some genetic diseases, massively expanding our memory capabilities, and expanding our sense perceptions to only name a few possibilities. Enormous hurdles exist on the scientific, cultural, and legal levels to making these enhancements possible, especially in light of the complex mix of genetic and environmental factors that underpin most human attributes and behaviors. But these hurdles will have a greater impact on determining “when” major breakthroughs will occur than on “if” they will occur.
This process will likely be supercharged by global competitive forces. Although spectacular debates have emerged within societies and in international fora on many issues related to the human genetic manipulation process, and although some states and groups of states have mandated and will continue to establish tough restrictions on these capabilities, it will be extremely difficult to stop motivated states or groups of individuals from engaging in human genetic manipulations that go beyond any commonly accepted norms that may emerge. On the contrary, some states, groups and individuals will have an increasing incentive to move forward aggressively.
In today’s increasingly globalized and competitive world economy, individuals, corporations, and states tirelessly seek even the smallest advantages over competitors that can then be leveraged into industry-transforming gains. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to believe that these types of competitive pressures will not also become drivers of the human genetic manipulation process. On the contrary, it is far more likely that humans, or at least some groups of us, will seek to provide our children with the competitive advantages that would come with exceptional gene-driven capabilities. The developments will create enormous competitive pressures within and between societies that will, if unchecked, propel the human species into the unknown territory of human genetic manipulation at warp speed.
Within societies, social Darwinists have long claimed that the elites were smarter and had a greater natural capacity than the masses, a concept that has clearly been proven wrong as opportunity has democratized. But if, in addition to having better nutrition, more exposure to ideas, and better schooling, the rich and privileged within a society also had genetic manipulations that actually made their brains function better, would it begin to make sense for these enhanced people to assume leading roles in running institutions and governments and making decisions on behalf of the less enhanced populace? Uneven genetic enhancement could, in this manner, be a pre-cursor to genetic discrimination and place enormous strains on the democratic process.
Between societies, enormous conflict would likely ensue between the states that ban or restrict new forms of human genetic manipulation and those that do not. If the current debate over genetically modified crops is anything to go by – where many Europeans see an existential threat to their way of life and Americans and Asians are generally far less concerned – the stress on international systems over genetically modified people would be monumental. As in the GMO debate, countries opposed to the human genetic manipulation process will increasingly feel that those engaged in these activities are affecting their fate, and the genetic make-up of their species, in ways the opposing countries cannot control -- a recipe for heated conflict.
But, if a specific country, corporation, or a group of motivated individuals were to move forward with an aggressive genetic enhancement program while other countries banned or limited these activities, competitive pressures would force the other countries to choose between (1) doing nothing and accepting a deteriorating relative position in the world (if the increased capabilities of the genetically enhanced people proved competitively decisive); (2) beginning such genetic enhancement activities themselves in order to keep up; (3) working to halt the genetic enhancement activities going on in the offending country or other entity by means of coercion; or, (4) seeking to develop a global governance structure that attempts to influence the behavior of all state and non-state actors.
Among these options, doing nothing will become increasingly untenable in light of global competition, a genetic arms race absent of any global norms or standards will come to seem increasingly dangerous, and using coercive measures to stop scientific advance elsewhere will be massively destabilizing and likely futile given the inherent nature of knowledge transmission. The fourth option, developing some type of permissive global governance structure, will likely come to be seen as the best, or at least the least bad, option.
While each nation will be forced to develop policy approaches for maximizing the benefits and minimizing the dangers of genetic manipulation, the global competitive environment, the ease of transfer of scientific knowledge, and the implications for all humans of germline manipulations done to any human will require a far more concerted approach.
The challenge for the
In 1997, UNESCO adopted the Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights, a non-binding document that claimed to prohibit “practices which are contrary to human dignity, such as reproductive cloning of human beings.” The following year, the Council of Europe adopted its Convention on Human Rights and Dignity with Regard to Biomedicine, which asserts that interventions aimed at modifying the human genome can only be undertaken “for preventive, diagnostic or therapeutic purposes and only if its aim is not to introduce any modification in the genome of any descendents,” although this protocol has only been ratified by 20 of the Council’s 41 member states.[1]
In February 2002, the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee for an International Convention Banning Human Reproductive Cloning began negotiations intended to lead to a binding treaty. The Committee convened high-level exchanges by experts on genetics and bioethics and drafted text that was eventually brought to the General Assembly for a vote. Over the years of negotiations, the members of the UN General Assembly Legal Committee could not come to agreement between the countries that wanted to allow research or therapeutic cloning and only ban human reproductive cloning (including China, Great Britain, Singapore, South Korea, and Sweden), and those countries (including the United States, the Vatican, and others) who wanted to ban all forms of cloning. Although the United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning, adopted in March 2005 by a vote of 84 in favor, 34 against and 37 abstentions, called on all member states to: “to prohibit all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life,” this non-binding resolution had neither any significant impact or influence nor any influence on those countries that disagreed.
The weakness of all of these documents and the standards they seek to set is obvious based on the lack of both consensus and enforcement power. As they did in the UN resolution, the countries with the most to gain from and the greatest hopes for this scientific advancement are and will remain extremely reluctant to have their activities limited in any way by others, especially if they see efforts to build international consensus as carrying water for an anti-life sciences agenda. These documents also say very little about establishing standards for how even research that fits in principle into accepted norms should be carried out.
Some genetic manipulation, for example, might be considered acceptable if chromosomes are inscribed with genetic instructions making it impossible for introduced mutations to be transferred to future generations, or if artificial chromosomes contain chemical “switches” that can be used to activate or de-activate specific genes. Although the expertise currently exists to make a germline genetic mutation non-inheritable, the world community, even in a context of general agreement on what standards should be, would still have to figure out a way of ensuring that any human genetic manipulations are carried out in a matter which does this. The issue in this case is not whether a mutation is introduced, but how it is introduced.
The challenge faced by any international regime could therefore be to both prevent whatever are agreed to be abuses of the genetic manipulation process and at the same time ensure that those engaged in legitimate activities are doing so according to internationally accepted standards and procedures. An international regime which sought to accomplish this would have the tough dual role of being on one hand an enabler of responsible research and technological advancement, and on the other an enforcer of limitations regarding how far these activities can go.
There are few successful models in the international legal system for effectively confronting a challenge of this nature, but in spite of its flaws and limitations the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) provides one model that could be applicable in this context.
As is well known, the 1970 NPT sought
to limit the spread of nuclear weapons by establishing both standards for
non-proliferation by the five states permitted to own nuclear weapons (
Although the NPT has come under increasing strain as the technology required to develop nuclear arms has become far more easily transferable, as non-signatory states have transferred requisite knowledge and equipment, and as exceptions to the norms outlined in the treaty are being carved out for India, a non-signatory state, the treaty still boasts an overall impressive track record. Signatory states South Africa and Ukraine voluntarily gave up their nuclear weapons, Libya publicly renounced its secret effort to develop them, and the acquiring of nuclear weapons by non-nuclear states remains a taboo, even if a weakening one.
The potential for a genetic “arms race” and the potential for a nuclear arms race share a number of characteristics. Both deal with the implications of cutting edge technologies whose applications become increasingly accessible to wider groups of people and states, both represent capabilities that have enormous potential to improve people’s lives matched by a similarly great potential to harm them, and both represent technological capabilities developed in more advanced countries that become desirable the world over.
An NPT-like framework for human genetic engineering would be incredibly difficult to negotiate because it would need to neither offend the sensibilities of powerful constituencies deeply uncomfortable with the concept of human germline engineering nor impede the beneficial development of new generations of knowledge and its applications. In addition, the standard for such a framework would need to be extremely permissive and flexible enough to keep the more scientifically aggressive countries, particularly those with the most to gain from the development of these capabilities, on board. Although this balance would be enormously difficult to develop and maintain, finding it will be critical to preventing an unimpeded, unregulated human genetic “arms race,” and the conflict and unregulated abuse that could well emerge under such a scenario. If such a position could be reached, an even more difficult step would be finding ways to use a combination of carrots and sticks to try to enforce it along the lines of the NPT model.
According to a Human Genetic Modification Abuses Non-Proliferation Treaty, states possessing greater knowledge in the field of genetics would pledge to share basic science capabilities and the broadly-defined benefits of this science with those states that have agreed to accepted protocols for human genetic manipulation and to implement appropriate regulations, possibly requiring the non-inheritability of germline genetic manipulations and the banning of human reproductive cloning. As part of the ratification process, all signatory states might be required to pass enforcing legislation in their own countries based on the principles of the treaty.
Because scientific standards will change over time, such a treaty would also need to establish an international advisory committee of experts and ethicists who would report yearly on the state of development in the field of human genetic engineering globally and country-by-country. At regular intervals, the basic tenets of the treaty, including the list of what is considered to be an abuse of the genetic modification process, would need to be re-negotiated. Those states that allowed violations of the treaty on their territory would be required to immediately stop the violating activity or face sanctions, potentially including a limitation of their access to some of the benefits of the genetic manipulation process.
Three serious objections to this approach demonstrate the imperfections of such a treaty, but do not suggest a better course. The first is that states will need to develop their own standards for genetic modification before they can consider an international regime. Although this argument makes some logical sense, the danger is that the science is moving so quickly that the international community must work to establish an enforceable, if changeable, international standard or risk creating a global culture more conducive to the worst abuses.
The second is that this type of regulation, particularly if armed with enforcement mechanisms, will be used by opponents of legitimate research to advance principles antithetical to the genetic engineering process as a whole, including its many benefits. This is a real danger, although the supporters of the treaty will always be able to invoke the counter-pressure of needing to maintain a progressive and permissive framework in order in order to keep the most advanced countries on board.
Third, it is by no means clear that states will be the drivers behind the most aggressive applications of these technologies, which would potentially leave open the question of how to deal with non-state actors that could, for example, engage in such activities from ships based in international waters or, conceivably, on research platforms in space. Life sciences research today often requires tremendous resources, but this may not always be the case. And applying these technologies on an individual basis can even today be carried out on a far smaller scale. International agreement on standards, however, would help establish norms that could be enforceable in these non-national environments.
Although the prospect of human genetic modification is terrifying to many, it is a reality, and a potentially very positive reality, of our future. As difficult as it will be to establish an international framework for maximizing the benefits and minimizing the dangers of this revolutionary advance, the consequences of not doing so are severe. Allowing these capabilities to emerge completely unregulated and unchecked will ultimately serve to de-legitimize critically important research and applications, prove destabilizing in international affairs, and potentially allow actual abuses to occur that could harm individuals and our species as a whole.
I am not here today to advocate for immediately establishing a Genetics Abuse Non-Proliferation treaty. In fact, I think that establishing such a treaty is premature in light of where the science now stands, and there may be a better approach than this altogether that has yet to be proposed. I do believe, however, that this science is moving extremely fast and that we must supercharge our national and global dialogue about how to build a global policy structure that achieves our dual goals of promoting miraculous life science research and avoiding an arms race of the human race that could prove extremely dangerous to us all.
Thank you very much. I look forward to answering any questions you may have.