Science, Ethics and Society. Regulating the Innovators: Reputation, Reputation, Reputation.
The recent birth of the worlds first “three parent baby” made headlines around the world. The controversial procedure was carried out using a technique known as pronuclear transfer. It has shown to completely cure a mitochondrial disease; known as Leigh syndrome. The fertility therapy relies on the fact that the inheritance of mitochondrial DNA is uniparental – it is only inherited from the mother, and thus involves the injection of a healthy nucleus into an enucleated embryo. Researchers in the New Hope Fertility Centre in New York conducted the procedures which lead to the birth of a healthy baby boy.
Even though this innovation shown to cure a previously untreatable disease, scientists are now questioning the ethics behind the procedure. Pronuclear transfer is illegal in New York, and in response the researchers fled to Mexico where the laws do not explicitly exist with a lack of clear oversight of the human-embryo modification procedure. The birth has been viewed with much suspicion by ethical societies and the issue of poorly regulated research has been highlighted.
The regulation of Biological research is a complex area to control and is frequently described as a balancing act. The scientists need to be provided with enough freedom to be able to innovate; yet examinable parameters need to be clearly set. Establishing where the parameters lie has never been always been an easy task. The innovation of cures to many diseases commonly requires the researchers to go against many social, cultural and religious beliefs. The three parent baby has posed many issues of controversy which need to be dealt with by regulators of research. Needless to say, reputation of the regulators has been majorly damaged, and without any effect they will be viewed as weak. Even though the regulators have overlooked the desire of scientists to carry out this procedure, their actions towards making a decision on its legal status was clearly too slow. The scientists used a loophole created by the poorly defined laws in Mexico, making the US regulators seem powerless and undermined. Their credibility is now even being questioned. This can be potentially dangerous as people with poor intentions may carry out illegal, unsafe and heavily unethical procedures; such as the creation of designer babies which has been recently enhanced by the innovation of the CRSPR protein which can now potentially ‘sew in’ desired traits such as intelligence.