Eugenics is the deliberate engineering of a species to produce desired traits and eliminate undesired ones.

Eugenics got a bad name in the last century when it was used to cull “undesirables.” Used this way, it was viewed as a less violent form of genocide. The Nazis led this work (often unscientifically) but were far from alone.

Like any technology, eugenics is neutral. Even those who decried its use with people were happy to enjoy the benefits it offered regarding pets and foods.

Now a new kind of eugenics is dawning. In this case, the modification of people is being done on a voluntary basis by parents.

In the above-mentioned case, a couple created embryos via IVF. By removing a single cell, the doctors were able to make sure that there was no cancer-causing gene before transferred an embryo to her womb.

Previously, the technique was only allowed in Britain for genes that always cause disease. Now, the rules have been relaxed to allow for elimination of genes that usually cause disease.

According to the Times of London, “Retinoblastoma accounts for 11 per cent of all cancers that develop in the first year of life. In almost half of cases, it is caused by an inherited mutation in a gene called RB1. Parents with this defective gene have a 50 per cent chance of passing it on to a child, and it causes tumors in 90 per cent of those who inherit it. The mutation also raises the lifetime risk of suffering other cancers from a third to more than half. “

Eugenics, as practiced by parents, is here to stay. Where will it go?

It’s a small step both technologically and morally from correcting disease to enhancing abilities. This makes many uncomfortable, but that’s never stopped the progress of technology before and it won’t now.

I foresee that as the function of individual genes and patterns of genes becomes better understood, more and more “experiments” of this kind will be undertaken. At some point, there may be a catastrophic failure wherein a particular combination of genes is found to cause a brand-new kind of illness.

Assuming this is discovered once significant numbers of children have been engineered, it will quell the grounds well — for a while. Then a solution will be found and the wave will resume.

It’s almost inevitable, because once a virus has been designed to “infect” a body with a particular genetic modification, the cost of doing it again is negligible. This makes it almost irresistible for parents to “infect” their own offspring with the benefit.

Parents will fall into two camps: Those who consider such modifications an abomination or of questionable safety, and those who regard the risks as acceptable for enormous perceived gains in health, strength or other abilities.

The new Outer Limits series had an episode entitled, “Unnatural Selection” that did a good job of looking at the social implications of all this.

What they missed — as do most prognosticators — was the ultimate form of genetic engineering. There’s no reason a virus can’t be engineered to introduce a genetic change after birth. This allows the individual to make this decision for him or herself, without the parents playing God.

Further, once this technology is perfected it should be reversible. Already, in a few cases (e.g., children born without a functioning immune system) some experiments have been done. Results have been mixed, but these will continue.

I’m watching to see which startups move aggressively and smartly into the “post-birth DNA repair/enhancement” space. It will be an enormous market.

To your profitable future,
Jonathan Kolber
July 17, 2007

Investing in the Eugenics Debate was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.