Expert: Dana Krempels, Ph.D. - 5/15/2007

Question
It is likely that genes that influence people's propensities to be agressive or depressed, or intelligent or shy, and so on, will increasingly be discovered. Should these genes be altered to maked a better human being? Should genomics be used to alter a person's personality and if so, what are the ethical issues to address?  

PS This is not a homework question!!!

Answer
Dear Hiram,

What you say in the first sentence is undoubtedly true, and is of a biological nature.  Your questions, though, fall in the realm of ethics/sociology, not biology.  So what I'm going to answer is no more than my opinion.

I, personally, do not believe that genes should ever be altered to change a person's behavior or nature.  I believe that gene therapy should be used only to prevent/cure devastating genetic disease, such as cystic fibrosis, Sickle Cell Anemia, etc.  Only those genes that cause deadly suffering.  

What constitutes "deadly suffering" could be different in the opinion of different people.  So that, again, is my opinion only.  I do not believe in tampering with personalities or appearances or anything that is not vital to survival.

The ethical issues here are immense.  Should we predetermine the life course of another human being with supposedly free will?  Who is to decide what characteristics consitute ones that should be changed?  Would altering human genes to produce perfect humans be the biological equivalent of what Hitler tried to do in the 1930's (in my opinion:  yes).

We are so far away from understanding genetic influence on personality that these questions may not be relevant for a long time--or ever, if we manage to destroy our own home planet (which we seem to be working hard to do).  No one knows how much of personality is Nature (genes) and how much is Nurture (environmental influence).  So tampering with the genetic components could have unexpected (and possibly unpleasant) results, since in such a multifactorial system you never really know how the whole system will react to the changing of only one factor.

Just some musings.  Hope they help!

Dana