Gene Drives on the Horizon Advancing Science, Navigating Uncertainty, and Aligning Research with Public Values (2016) / Chapter Skim
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4 Charting Human Values
4 Charting Human Values
Pages 63-85
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From page 63... ...
The chapter begins with a brief overview of the scholarly debate that has unfolded over the last few decades about genetic engineering. Using the case studies presented in chapter three, the committee explored in depth three broad categories of concern: The potential benefits and harms of gene drive research for people, The potential impact of gene-drive modified organisms on the environment (understood both in terms of outcomes for people and, for some individuals and cultures, as a con cern about the environment in its own right)
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From page 64... ...
. Just as gene drive technology builds on earlier kinds of genetic engineering, ethical debates about gene drives are likely to build on these earlier considerations.
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From page 65... ...
Additionally, there are significant potential environmental benefits and harms, and how to understand the values relevant to the potential environmental outcomes can be challenging. Although other genetic technologies have raised questions about environmental outcomes, the power of a gene drive to alter an entire population or species, perhaps even to bring about the local or global eradication of a species, is a meaningful expansion of the human capacity to alter the shared environment (Esvelt et al., 2014; Oye et al., 2014; Caplan et al., 2015; Webber et al., 2015)
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From page 66... ...
Case Study 2, on human malaria, describes a gene drive intended to prevent mosquitoes from transmitting the protozoan parasite that causes malaria, a major cause of human illness and death worldwide. Malaria occurs predominately throughout the tropics, but it can also occur in temperate zones, typically when travelers visit areas where malaria is present and bring the disease home with them.
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From page 67... ...
The benefits of a gene drive that restored Palmer amaranth's susceptibility to glyphosate could include improved crop productivity and economic gains for farmers. Agricultural uses of gene drives in low- and middle-income countries could have a significant impact on human welfare.
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From page 68... ...
POTENTIAL HUMAN HARMS OF GENE DRIVES Many of the possible harmful effects of gene drives have to do with environmental outcomes, which are considered in the next section. However, some gene drives pose potential harms to human well-being if they do not function in field release as expected.
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From page 69... ...
Identifying the potential harms of a proposed field release will require case-bycase analysis and include use of a structured, systematic, and reasoned methods to investigate and model the possible outcomes, making use of everything known about the relevant species and ecosystems. Cost-benefit analysis may also be useful for modelling the possible outcomes of regulatory or policy decisions about gene drive research and use.
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From page 70... ...
The closest analog to what gene drive technologies can accomplish in the shared environment is the use of genetic engineering to confer beneficial traits to threatened species, with the hope that, if genetically altered organisms were released in the environment, the engineered traits would drive through the population under the "natural" pressure of evolution. This kind of application is known as "facilitated adaptation." One example of facilitated adaptation is the effort now under way to impart resistance to chestnut blight to the threatened American chestnut through the transferring of genes from wheat, grape, Asian chestnuts, and other organisms (Newhouse et al., 2014)
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From page 71... ...
Competition with other birds for similar nesting and feeding sites could also occur, thereby modifying the diversity of other fauna. Similar environmental benefits are at play in Case Study 4, which describes gene drives to suppress non-native rodent populations on remote islands such as are found in the Pacific.
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From page 72... ...
As previously noted, a gene drive to modify or eliminate Palmer amaranth in the American South, considered in Case Study 6, could affect closely related wild species as well as to food crops in other parts of the world. Spotted knapweed, the target of a gene drive considered in Case Study 5, is pollinated by insects, including butterflies; so as a result, there may be unintended environmental consequences that would require further research before such a gene drive is pursued.
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From page 73... ...
Gene drives' unique mode of altering the shared environment poses special challenges, and perhaps also special opportunities, for those who take a preservationist stance toward the natural world. Genetic engineering techniques in general are sometimes perceived as intrinsically unnatural (President's Commission, 1982; Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 2015)
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From page 74... ...
Following the news in 2016 that Zika virus, transmitted by the mosquito Aedes aegypti, might present a significant public health threat, some discussion appeared in the popular media about whether mosquitoes in general should be eliminated -- those that are annoying as well as those that pose public health threats. In principle, some might also propose to use gene drives to make wild species more aesthetically pleasing.
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From page 75... ...
Questions of justice differ from questions about potential benefits and harms in that they are more about who than what: They are about who would be affected by the benefits and harms, who will be able to conduct research into gene drive technologies and study the release of gene-drive modified organisms, and who will make the decisions about whether to pursue the benefits and risk the potential harms. They are questions about the distribution of potential benefits and harms, about liberty, about the nature of legitimate decision making for matters affecting the public.
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From page 76... ...
. In other words, justice require procedures that allow both broad public decision making about the development and use of gene drives and local community decision making about specific proposed releases of gene-drive modified organisms.
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From page 77... ...
Other Analyses of Gene Drives and the Issues They Raise There is no well-developed public debate yet about gene drive research, as there is about genetically engineered organisms in agriculture. In the academic literature to date, only a few analyses have addressed at length the ethical issues raised by gene-drive modified organisms.
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From page 78... ...
. These concerns are most significant for possible field releases of gene-drive modified organisms, but scientists engaged in gene drive research have also recognized the importance of ensuring that laboratory work is conducted safely (Akbari et al., 2015)
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From page 79... ...
Perhaps precisely because the appropriate language for identifying, expressing, and weighing these value considerations is unclear, the scholarly commentary calls for public discussion of gene drive technologies, and it holds that this discussion should occur both at a broad, societal level and at a local, community level corresponding to the site at which a gene-drive modified organism might be released. Public engagement is usually understood in these works not merely as a process of informing the public about gene drive technologies, nor merely as a process of winning the public's acceptance, but as a process in which the public has meaningful opportunities to deliberate and contribute to decisions about whether and how to use gene drive technologies.
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From page 80... ...
The fact that gene-drive modified organisms would be deliberately introduced into wild populations and comparatively less managed environments may cause some members of the public to see them as even more unattractive than other genetically modified organisms. On the other hand, gene drives systems might turn out to be less threatening than other genetic technologies if they can be put to significant conservation purposes and if they are not seen as reflecting corporate interests and a disregard for the environment.
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From page 81... ...
However, widely shared commitments to protect human welfare and the environment also provide reasons to develop public policy guidelines that may constrain research on gene drives or the releases of genedrive modified organisms. Integrating precautionary measures into the research process can help to balance these potentially conflicting commitments -- for example, by using structured tools to assess potential benefits and harms, by providing ample opportunities to gather further information about potential outcomes and revisit decisions about how to proceed, and by ensuring that people who will be affected by a proposed release are integrated into the decision-making process.
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From page 82... ...
2015. General Overview of Gene Drive Research in Different Organisms.
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From page 83... ...
Regulating gene drives. Science 345(6197)
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From page 84... ...
2015. Is CRISPR-based gene drive a biocontrol silver bullet or global conservation threat?
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From page 85... ...
2001. Viewing invasive species removal in a whole ecosystem context.
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