Ian C. Ellul

When I was envisaging this editorial I was inclined to write about the medical advances being achieved in the field of parasitology. Indeed the WHO has recently stated that there are now only 542 known cases of Guinea worm, also called dracunculiasis, left worldwide, as of 2012, which represent a 48% decrease from 2011. In 1986 there were 3.5 million cases worldwide. The global eradication target date is 2015, which would hopefully place the Guinea worm as the second disease achieving global eradication since 1980, after smallpox.

I was also going to discuss another success story, also centred in Africa. mPedigree is a non-profit company based in Ghana which sells technology allowing people to use their mobile phone to verify if the medicines which they are going to use are counterfeit or not.

However as I was going to elaborate on these two achievements, I came across the 3-person IVF procedure. Basically it involves creating babies with genes obtained from 3 persons. The reason behind this novel technology, which is spearheaded by the UK, is precisely to offset rare mitochondrial disorders, by using mitochondrial DNA extracted from an egg of a 3rd donor. In this case, the UK’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has recommended that the child should have no right to know the identity of the person donating the mitochondrial DNA. Obviously from an ethical point of view this could be a slippery slope. Although the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has clarified that only modifications to mitochondrial DNA will be allowed, what will refrain from an eventual manipulation of main nuclear DNA? 

During the last years we have seen numerous provisions which remind me of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World which I studied during my secondary education. During my lifespan, abortion, sperm and egg donation, surrogacy and a myriad of other technologies, the latest one being illustrated above, have been strengthened in order to facilitate our pains and meet our expectations. The British Surrogacy Arrangements Act was in fact published in 1985, almost 20 years ago, at a time when other populations were amusing themselves with other things such as the release of the first version of the Windows program by Microsoft.

In my opinion one should make available the latest technologies to improve the quality of life of people, however everything comes at a cost. I am sure that not everyone who is currently experiencing this changing paradigm will be paying a price, but society as a whole is inevitably subjected to that price. Our children will need to adapt to an increasingly hedonistic society, which may be more inclined to tweak nature’s course to adapt to its more comfortable and harmonised way of living.

Incidentally last month saw a US federal judge lifting the morning after pill age limit in the US. According to the judge, girls as young as 11 years have a right to gain access to the morningafter pill without a prescription. At times I wonder if I am experiencing a time warp…