Ask anyone whether it would be a good idea if we could rid humanity of all its genetic disorders and the answer will surely be a resounding yes.

To prevent a child from inheriting any of the disorders, which we as parents have been lumbered with, would surely be worth every effort that society can afford, and research which aims to do that would appear, at least prima facie, to be a useful development and should be encouraged.

And yet, most of us will shrink from taking steps that conflict with basic ethical and moral stances. We do not perform selection of sex to avoid sex-linked inherited conditions. We do not abort a child with a chromosomal defect like Down’s Syndrome.

But ethical standards are very stretchable and while individuals, communities or countries consider some activities to be abhorrent, others are just as likely to accept them. Moreover, what is considered unacceptable at one period of time may become acceptable to a future generation.

The latest technique in modifying the human gene is referred to as DNA editing. This is a precision technique which allows scientists to detect and snip away an offending gene and replace it with a normal gene.

If you consider the DNA as a very long rosary beads, then DNA snipping can be likened to cutting the chain at a specific point, removing the offending bead and replacing it with a normal one.

Again, most people would agree that this appears to be a fantastic advance in our armamentarium of procedures that will eventually clear the genetic world of lifelong diseases within the community. These techniques are already well advanced and are actually being tested in several laboratories around the world. However, several scientists are sounding alarm bells and warn the general community that these techniques should be forbidden. In a recent paper published in the most widely read scientific journal, Nature, the long-term ethical issues associated with genetic engineering were highlighted.

We need a halt on anything that approaches germ-line editing in human embryos

Firstly, they point out that applying these techniques to the human embryo would be interfering with the right of an individual to the maintenance of one’s own integrity, including the genes.

Unlike treating a child for a temporary condition (including giving blood transfusion or vaccination on the say-so of the parents), changing one’s genetic make-up is a long-term change, and it is arguable whether these should be undertaken without the specific consent of the individual concerned.

Perhaps more significant is the role of genetic modifications within the general population. Once the genes of an embryo have been tampered with, such changes are passed on to the general population.

In other words, the overall genetic inheritance of the human race would be permanently changed. While such a change would be beneficial to the individual, there is a whole world of unknowns resulting from such changes. In particular, modification of one gene may adversely affect the adjoining genes resulting in long-term consequences, including possibly cancer.

A final objection is the well-known one, often referred to as the ‘slippery slope’ conundrum. Once a technique is introduced to deal with the more severe conditions, it would be much easier to eventually use it to correct far less demanding conditions, including the search for relatively trivial improvement of body function or appearance.

As one of the involved scientists advised: “We need a halt on anything that approaches germ-line editing in human embryos.”