Designer children. Famous children's fashion designers Designer children

Designer children - smart, healthy, athletic - are about to knock on our doors. Are we ready for them?

Bioethicist Thomas Murray from the non-profit Hastings Research Center (USA) is trying to answer this question in the journal Science. What is the use of such offspring? What restrictions should be placed on parents and doctors?

The topic did not come out of nowhere: in February, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) met to consider conducting clinical trials of genetic manipulation methods to prevent mitochondrial diseases.

The average person has been scared of designer children since the 1990s, when talk began about human cloning and the creation of people endowed with superpowers. At that time, the proposed methods were mostly purely speculative, but now genetic selection has come so far that such rumors no longer seem like science fiction. For example, parents today can order pre-implantation genetic diagnostics, that is, testing embryos created using IVF for predisposition to diseases, as well as gender.

Such a diagnosis is also possible after normal conception, because fragments of fetal DNA circulate in the bloodstream of a pregnant woman. In addition, it has recently become known that defective mitochondria have been successfully removed from an egg and replaced with healthy ones from a donor egg.

It is not yet possible to test future children for genes that determine intelligence, hair color or athletic ability, but some say this is temporary. 23andMe recently filed for a patent related to such tests. True, it is not very clear how she is going to implement this idea, because intelligence or, say, height is determined by the complex interaction of dozens of genes, as well as the environment. More likely, it seems, is screening the entire fetal genome for susceptibility to long-term diseases—Alzheimer's disease or diabetes, for example.

Healthcare organizations view these prospects differently. Thus, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine takes into account the wishes of clients regarding the gender of the unborn child, while the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists prohibits gender selection in order to avoid gender discrimination. The FDA cares only about the safety and effectiveness of the proposed methods, leaving ethical issues aside.

But it is to them that Mr. Murray devotes his material. Is it good or bad to be a designer kid? The thinker suggests starting from this question. If parents get the opportunity to determine the traits of their future child, won’t they get into the habit of directing their child in everything, depriving him of the right to choose?

What will they say when it turns out that the manipulation of genes did not lead to the birth of the person they wanted? “You could have an individual with the characteristics of Michael Jordan who would hate basketball and become an accountant,” Mr. Murray writes.

But not everyone agrees that the issue of designer babies raises new and important ethical issues. For example, philosopher Bonnie Steinbock from the University of Albany (USA) does not see anything fundamentally new here compared to traditional methods of parental influence on a child through sports clubs, music lessons and ordinary upbringing. “If it seems to us that the desire of parents to raise an intelligent and kind person is wrong, then let’s refuse to be parents altogether and leave the children to their own devices, throwing them out onto the street,” she says.

Designer children - smart, healthy, athletic - are about to knock on our doors. Are we ready for them? Bioethicist Thomas Murray from the non-profit Hastings Research Center (USA) is trying to answer this question in the journal Science.

What is the use of such offspring? What restrictions should be placed on parents and doctors? The topic did not come out of nowhere: in February, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) met to consider conducting clinical trials of genetic manipulation methods to prevent mitochondrial diseases.

John Robertson, professor of law and bioethics at the University of Texas at Austin (USA), also does not consider it necessary to introduce any special rules. If, for example, musicality is highly valued in a family, then there is no reason to prohibit parents from choosing an embryo with genes for absolute pitch. If a child wants to play football, but he is forced to learn the trombone, this may not be very good from a certain point of view, but such things are not yet regulated at the state level, and thank God.

The method of giving birth to children from three parents proposed by British scientists has caused controversy among domestic experts

Get ready, Foggy Albion will soon begin delivering children “with given properties” into the world - “designer children,” as some experts also call them. You are afraid that a sickly, weak baby will be born - they will find healthy genetic material, combine it with the parent’s and “blind” what is needed. The idea of having a child from three parents was supported in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords of Great Britain. How can all this end? How did our scientists and clergy react to the adoption of the new British law? Is it possible in Russia to have children with two genetic mothers? The problem was studied by a MK correspondent.

For those who are not up to date, let us first explain that the proposed technology is not a whim of mad scientists, but the only way today to prevent so-called mitochondrial diseases - from chronic fatigue to dementia.

Where does pathology come from?

In the classic “production” of offspring, the sperm penetrates the nucleus of the egg, and fetal development begins. But it happens that the conditions around this fertilized nucleus are not very favorable for the further development of the future fetus. It turns out that it can be influenced by energy factories called mitochondria, which envelop the very fertilized nucleus and are inherited along with the egg. When a woman does not have a genetic pathology, there is no point in doctors intervening in the process. If there is a breakdown in the mitochondria (it can account for 0.1% of the entire genetic makeup of the cell), this can affect the health of the unborn child. There can be up to hundreds of genetic diseases transmitted through the genes of diseased mitochondria (the “energy stations” of the cell) of the mother. For example, diabetes, mitochondrial encephalomyopathy, accompanied by exercise intolerance, epileptic seizures, Leber neuropathy, expressed in vision loss, MELAS syndrome - a progressive neurodegenerative disease.

Who came up with a way to be born from two mothers?

There is no cure for these diseases. But recently a way has emerged to deceive them, using mitochondria from another healthy woman during the conception of a child through IVF (in vitro fertilization). The author of the method of giving birth to children from three parents is a native of the USSR, who defended his PhD thesis at the Medical Genetic Research Center of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the Russian Federation, and since 1995 has been working at Shukhrat Mitalipov. They say that he did not leave Russia because of a good life: the talented scientist did not have the means to settle in, he lived in a dormitory, from which he was asked to leave after graduating from graduate school.

14 years after the move, Mitalipov, who became a professor in several research centers in the United States, including the Stem Cell Center, the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, the Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics and the Department of Pediatrics at Oregon Health and Science University, proposed a method for treating hereditary diseases. It was as follows: the egg of a woman who wants to become a mother, but has a hereditary disease, is first fertilized in vitro, and then the fertilized nucleus is transferred from the mother’s own egg to the egg of another woman who does not have mitochondrial disorders (the nucleus of the donor egg, of course, is first removed ). It turns out that the fetus begins to develop while maintaining the “energy station” of the “alien aunt”, her mitochondrial healthy genes.

Would Queen Victoria agree to a threesome?

The new technique, of course, has caused a lot of controversy: it has defenders and opponents. Are people ready to step over centuries-old traditions and trust scientists? What is the overall percentage of detected pathology?

It turns out that according to statistics, every 7000th newborn, boy or girl, regardless of what country he was born in, has a mutation on the maternal side. She does not spare even representatives of the royal dynasties. Everyone knows that Tsarevich Alexei Romanov, the son of Nicholas II, inherited hemophilia (incoagulability of blood) on his mother’s side from his great-grandmother, Queen Victoria of England. Dozens of descendants could say “thank you” to her for this gift of fate (with hemophilia, a person can die even from a banal nosebleed).

And all because, even in the embryonic state, all these girls and boys found themselves in the “wrong” environment of diseased mitochondrial genes and inherited disturbances in the energy process from them. Medical scientists have even found a “hot spot” in mitochondrial DNA, the MT-TL1 gene, in which a pathological transformation or mutation occurs. I wonder what Queen Victoria would say to this? For the sake of the health of future generations, would you allow the possibility of crossing your genes with the genes of another woman?

Of course, we will never know this. But 2,500 of the monarch’s compatriots from the 21st century, judging by the results of a public opinion study, were in favor of “having a child for three.”

Would our women agree to conceive as a threesome?

“It all depends on technology,” a friend who was expecting a new addition to her family told me. - If I were guaranteed that I myself would carry and give birth to my child, that he would look like either me or my husband, but in no case like someone else’s aunt, then, in the event of a real danger of the child inheriting a disease, to avoid I would probably agree, yes.

“We need sick children more than they need us”

"Stop!" - some scientists warn - as if you didn’t come to pay for the healthy influence of the genes of “someone else’s aunt”!

There is a science - epigenetics, which studies the influence of so-called side effects on the main human genome. The development of an embryo in the presence of foreign mitochondria is one of these factors. And theoretically, it can lead to the most unpredictable pathologies or disorders. Some argue that a child can grow up to be different from either dad or mom, having inherited the temperament of mom No. 2. As MK commented at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, experts cannot yet give a 100% guarantee of the ideal reproduction of exclusively maternal and paternal qualities in their heir during a “threesome” conception.

But, as it turned out, this is not the only reason for abandoning the new technology. At a meeting held not long ago at MSMU (Moscow State Medical University) named after. I.M. Sechenov, at the first meeting of the intellectual club VERSUS, dedicated to bioethics issues related to innovation in the UK, respected Russian scientists agreed that society should not make children “to order.” A healthy society, if you like, even needs... sick children. Only in this way will its members continue to remain human and will not forget how to sympathize with their neighbors.

Professor was the first to speak out about the “Three Parents Law” adopted in Britain. Dmitry Balalykin, Head of the Department of History of Medicine, History of the Fatherland and Cultural Studies of Moscow State Medical University named after. I. M. Sechenov. Moreover, in his speech he touched not only on the above-mentioned law, against the background of which, in his opinion, eugenics, which is prohibited throughout the world - the doctrine of human selection, so loved by the fascists in its time - could once again be revived, but also on the problems of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in general ), that is, the birth of children “from test tubes”:

Scientists often promise a lot to patients. Almost always their enthusiasm is sincere, but experience shows that, unfortunately, medical science presents us with too many false expectations. As for IVF, a huge amount of material has recently been collected that indicates serious health problems in children born as a result of in vitro fertilization, he said.

According to Balalykin, test tube children often have weak immunity and a tendency to systemic diseases. The medical historian was supported by a psychologist, associate professor of the Department of Educational Psychology at Moscow Psychological and Pedagogical University Marina Lanzburg, as well as a member of the State Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children, Hieromonk Dmitry (Pershin). He provided detailed statistics and facts confirming the dangers of IVF for both mothers and children:

Children conceived in vitro were 2.4 times more likely to be born with a cleft lip. Defects of the interatrial or interventricular septum of the heart were observed in them 2.1 times more often than in children conceived naturally. In addition, these children more often developed malformations of the gastrointestinal tract: esophageal atresia - 4.5 times more often, and rectal atresia - 3.7 times more often.

The representative of the clergy could not ignore the topic of morality. “When we treat a person as a means to solve problems, this is a suicidal path for society, an example is fascistism. When we help a person in a difficult situation, take care of the sick and disabled, civil society takes on the burden, but it is thanks to these people that we become human. They benefit us more than we benefit them. In this case, this is what humanizes all of us,” Father Dmitry shared his opinion.

“Genes from the second “mother” are as valuable as donated blood”

The chief researcher at the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Sergei Kiselev, disagrees with the fact that the method of giving birth to children from a father and two mothers is dangerous.

At one time, the Japanese scientist Teruhiko Wakayama from the Riken Institute of Physical and Chemical Research was able to produce 26 generations of clones from one mouse, says Kiselev. - Over 8 years, 581 individuals were born. Moreover, at the very beginning, as a result of the transplantation of somatic cell nuclei, not all experimental subjects survived, but then Wakayama learned to perform the transplant operation more cleanly and professionally, and more clones began to survive. This scientist has already proven to us that the epigenetic contribution during nuclear transplantation is practically zero if we have learned to do everything well. No, in theory, of course, everything is possible, but this is equivalent to the fact that all the molecules rotating inside us chaotically, obeying Brownian motion, would suddenly all begin to rotate in one direction and we would all take off. This is theoretically possible, but no one has taken off yet.

What is there to argue about here? - the vice-president of the Russian Association of Human Reproduction, the general director of the FertiMed Center for Reproduction and Genetics, enters into a dialogue, Margarita Anshina.- Even if the frequency of mitochondrial pathology is calculated in percentages, one must imagine that behind each percentage there are thousands of people. How can we deny people the opportunity to have healthy children? Of course, we, too, following the British, should allow the prevention of mitochondrial diseases by having a child from three parents.

- Tell me, where are mitochondrial pathologies more common - here or abroad? - I ask Anshina.

Their frequency is exactly the same, in our country. And if previously children either died or became disabled, now they have a chance to grow up healthy.

- If we legislate these operations, like the British...

I don't think it requires pinning. It's like blood donation - will anyone argue whether it is necessary or not?

- In Britain it took...

I think this happened due to the novelty of the approach - using material from three parents.

- Are there groups of scientists advocating the introduction of this method of childbirth?

The question is not posed that way. You can advocate for easily accessible things when everything depends only on the desire to implement them. The method under discussion relates to genetic surgery or engineering; it is extremely complex, delicate, sensitive, requiring filigree microscopic technology. We don’t have such laboratories yet, and in the UK there may be one or two, everyone else can only dream about it.

It’s a shame, of course, that British scientists, whom we used to make fun of, were ahead of us in the field of medicine, the founder of which is our former compatriot. But every cloud has a silver lining, but Russia has time to think and learn from the mistakes of others. The main thing is that later, when we decide that there is nothing wrong with conceiving from three parents, we still have minds capable of putting this into practice.

With the help of DNA manipulation it is already possible to grow beautiful, smart and healthy children

Britain could become the first country in the world to legalize genetically modified children. Specialists from the University of Bathcame to the conclusion that by changing the DNA molecule, it will soon be possible to create genetically modified embryos. The scientists' conclusions are based on the successful results of animal cloning. The work was published in a new journal Scientific Reports.

Conceiving for three is just the beginning

Genetic experiments to create a healthy generation have long been in development among the British. The country's leading doctors are seeking to legalize appropriate procedures that allow influencing the genes of the unborn child. In particular, we are talking about conception with the participation of three parents - a technique that appeared and was successfully tested last year. The main goal of the technology is to protect the child from the possible development of hereditary diseases. This procedure is also recommended for couples in which the woman’s age exceeds 40 years.

The process of modifying genetic material in the laboratory takes only a few minutes. In a test tube, scientists mix part of the mother's egg, from which components carrying dangerous information have been removed, with a cell from a healthy donor. The resulting egg is then fertilized. A similar change can be made to an embryo. As scientists from Newcastle University who developed this technique say, the participation of a third party will not affect a child conceived in this way. He will be just like his parents, like ordinary children, only without the dangerous part of DNA that causes the disease. Moreover, if the corresponding law is adopted, the child will have three completely equal parents: the donor, if he wishes, will be able to receive the same rights as the mother and father.

The key to beauty and health

Of course, when the idea of legalizing “conception in threes” appeared, many were hostile to it, considering such an intervention unnatural. Skeptics suggested that gene manipulation could soon go in a completely different direction: for example, wealthy parents would want to control the child’s appearance, right down to the color of hair and eyes. According to Marcy Darnovsky, director of the Center for Genetics and Society, the goals of genetic experiments are worthy, but the methods are extremely problematic in terms of medical risks and consequences for society. Experts note that the technology of genetic modification of people should serve exclusively medical purposes and not affect changes in the appearance of future children. “We can go too far with genetic engineering, and we risk slipping into human experimentation and high-tech eugenetics,” Darnowski says.

The fears are not in vain: judging by the current statement of experts from the University of Bath, the time for high-tech eugenics and designer babies has already come. Dr. Anthony Perry, who has been involved in animal cloning experiments for many years, describes in detail in Scientific Reports methods for genetically modifying the genome of laboratory mice into a DNA molecule. At the same time, he claims that the effectiveness of the method is close to 100%. Perry assures that the experimental results pave the way for successful modification of human babies in the near future.

This time, scientists promise not only genetically healthy, but also beautiful offspring. “The ability to construct embryos is no longer a fantasy,” says Anthony Perry, “because genetic experiments have become incredibly successful over the past few years.” It is assumed that scientists will use the developed techniques to adjust the genetic predispositions of future children, for example, to diseases or to select certain qualities.

The smartest nation

Such developments are not limited to the UK. Recently, the US Food and Drug Administration began studying the possibility of allowing changes to a child's DNA during the embryonic stage. The technology is designed to save children from hereditary diseases of their parents.

And in China, the government strongly supports the developments of the BGI company, which is engaged in all kinds of genetic experiments. In particular, it produces a “genius gene” that will help parents get a “smart embryo.” After the necessary tests, they will be offered the best of 10 or 50 possible options.

Scientists believe that it is better to pay several thousand dollars to fertilize an egg and implant a high-quality embryo than to then spend much more on expensive universities. The State Development Bank of China allocated $1.5 billion to BGI for this development. So China has every chance of becoming a country of geniuses.

Will progress win over morality?

Of course, one must be extremely careful when manipulating genes. But what is more important for society - to have genetically healthy children or to think about the ethical side of the matter? Discussions on this topic can be compared with those that took place in the 70s regarding artificial insemination. Then they said that humanity had opened Pandora's box and did not even suspect what kind of monsters it was creating. However, now the artificial insemination procedure is a routine medical operation.

At all times, morality and ethics become the main obstacles to scientific and technological progress. The development of humanity largely depends on the opinions of experts who assess the ethics of using new technologies, including in the field of genetic engineering. But if there is an opportunity to rid a child of a hereditary disease, to choose the healthiest and “smartest” embryo from several options, the sex and color of the baby’s eyes, it is unlikely that in practice any of the parents will refuse this, guided by ethical issues. By the way, in the UK they already carry out routine screening of embryos for Down syndrome and various types of genes associated with oncology. Moreover, society does not protest against such interference.

According to Oxford University professor Julian Savulescu, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics at the Institute of Medical Ethics, genetic intervention, engineering or genetic screening of infants is a “moral duty” of parents because they have a responsibility to raise their children with the best human qualities. qualities, better character. Savulescu says science already knows almost all the ways to genetically modify embryos. In particular, the technologies that exist today make it possible to identify genes responsible not only for health, intelligence and appearance, but also for the formation of personal qualities. So it will soon be possible to screen embryos for all these characteristics. According to Savulescu, this will undoubtedly change humanity for the better.

In the future, people won't have to have sex to conceive. After all, sex is not 100% guaranteed. It is unlikely that reality will take on such a gloomy appearance as it did in the film “Gattaca”; rather, everything will simply be more convenient and more scrupulous. Let's talk about exactly what that future might look like.

Imagine a future in which the process of having a child depends entirely on geneticists. After all, aren't we trying to provide the child with the best education, clothing, nutrition, upbringing... Why not start with the best genetic code possible?

What is this: heresy or sound morality?

Reproduction without sex

Making a person is not difficult - it happens every day and without special training. Traditionally and evolutionarily, sex has served humans as a means of reproduction for millions of years. However, this will change.

Today, more and more couples around the world are turning to in vitro fertilization (IVF) to conceive a child. IVF is an assisted reproductive technology where fertilization occurs by manually combining an egg and sperm in a laboratory dish and then transferring the embryo into the uterine cavity.

Today, about 2% of children are conceived using IVF. This is more than four times more than in 2003. This trend has been particularly influenced by the reduction in costs of this procedure. Today, the cost of in vitro fertilization does not exceed 10 thousand dollars. Surrogacy costs approximately the same amount. Together they help women who suffer from infertility problems or are too old to have a child.

IVF also allows you to fertilize many eggs at once (8 to 10 on average), grow them to the blastocyst stage, and then select the healthiest one for implantation in the mother's uterus.

In the future, IVF may become the standard. So are the Improvement Olympics.

Egg freezing

Nowadays, women are increasingly choosing a career and further education in order to subsequently develop deep concerns about children - the opportunity to have children is reduced by two thirds from the age of 40. But there is a technological solution that could help them solve this problem: the ability to freeze healthy eggs earlier.

Egg freezing can give women the opportunity to give birth when they want - rather than when they have to.

Carl Djerassi, the inventor of the birth control pill, said of the trend: “In the next 20 years, more young people will freeze their eggs and sperm in their 20s and donate them for preservation. They will then forego contraception in favor of sterilization and retrieve their eggs and sperm from the bank when they want to have a child through IVF.”

Designer babies

If you had the opportunity to change your child's genetics, would you do it? What would you do to prevent a birth defect? Wouldn't it be a crime to not fix something that could be fixed?

Since we have created CRISPR/Cas9, a tool that allows us to “edit” the human genome with incredible precision, these questions have ceased to be theoretical and philosophical - and have become very, very real.

Just three years after its initial development, CRISPR technology is already widely used by biologists as a tool to search and change DNA, down to a single letter.

But editing the DNA of these cells or the embryo itself (embryoengineering) makes it possible to correct diseased genes and pass on these genetic corrections to future generations. For example, families could be freed from cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy. This approach could be as important as creating a vaccine against one of the “eternal” diseases.

What is most curious is that public opinion was not particularly negative about the idea of modifying babies. A Pew Research survey in August found that 46% of American adults encourage the use of genetic enhancements in a child to reduce the risk of serious diseases. Despite the fact that the same 83% consider genetic modification, which will make a child smarter, “excessive medicine.”

In the United States, three other centers are actively working on embryonic engineering. China, as well as Great Britain, are showing particular zeal in this area. The goal of all groups is to demonstrate that it is possible to give birth to a child who will not have special genes responsible for hereditary diseases.

If the DNA in a woman's egg or a man's sperm can be corrected, those cells could be used in an in vitro fertilization clinic to produce an embryo and then a child. It would also be possible to directly edit the DNA in an embryo during the early stages of IVF using CRISPR.

Life becomes programmable. These changes await us in the next ten years. But the future will be even more exciting.

Reproduction and exponential technologies

The development of technology in the next 20 years is set to play a gigantic role in shaping our lives. Here, for example, is how this can affect reproduction:

The birth of a child with the participation of more than two people. This April, the first baby was born using a procedure that combined the DNA of three people. Nuclear DNA was taken from the father and mother, and mitochondrial DNA was transferred into the fertilized egg of a third donor.
Giving birth to a child without eggs. Scientists at the University of Bath say it may one day be possible to conceive a child without an egg at all. They succeeded in creating healthy mice by tricking the sperm into thinking it was fertilizing a normal egg. So, one person could make a child using their own cells and sperm. In this case, the child would be more likely to be a non-identical twin than a clone
Artificial wombs. In the mid-1990s, Japanese scientists were able to preserve goat embryos for several weeks in a machine containing artificial amniotic fluid. Today, with its help, it is possible to save a prematurely born fetus that left its mother at a gestational age of less than 22 weeks. This is almost halfway through the pregnancy (40 weeks). Imagine if a mother didn't have to carry her baby for the entire 9 months of pregnancy.

Humanity is quickly moving away from evolution through natural selection and towards evolution through the intelligent direction of accelerated development. Since the advent of birth control in 1960, we have been trying to take control of reproduction.