Robert Edwards Quotes

Soon it will be a sin of parents to have a child that carries the heavy burden of genetic disease. We are entering a world where we have to consider the quality of our children.

Though social eugenics was discredited long ago, we still often think of the genome in quasi-eugenic terms. When we read about the latest discovery of a link between a gene and a disease, we imagine that we've learned the cause of the disease, and we may even think we'll get a cure by fixing the gene.

I did not want to raise a genetically compromised child. I did not want my children to have to contend with the massive diversion of parental attention, and the consequences of being compelled to care for their brother after I died. I wanted a genetically perfect baby, and because that was something I could control, I chose to end his life.

Individual wishes are driving the possible emergence of eugenics, not the state, because people want children for whom they can be ambitious.

Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring

Is it more ethical to edit embryos or to screen a lot of embryos and throw them away? I don't know the answer.

We recognized in 1996 that, with progress in the field of genetics accelerating at a breathtaking pace, we need to ensure that advances in treatment and prevention of disease do not constitute a new basis for discrimination.

The time to talk about it in schools and churches and magazines and debate societies is now. If you wait, five years from now the gene doctor will be hanging out the MAKE A SMARTER BABY sign down the street.

In the 1920s and 1930s, scientists from both the political left and right would not have found the idea of designer babies particularly dangerous - though, of course, they would not have used that phrase.

My blood runs cold when I hear the 'great news' that we have found a marker for the Down's syndrome gene, which means we can identify it more easily. Why is that good news? It's only good news if you're going to terminate.

No one really has the guts to say it, but if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we?

If we could honestly promise young couples that we knew how to give them offspring with superior character, why should we assume they would decline? Common sense tells us that if scientists find ways to greatly improve human capabilities, there will no stopping the public from happily seizing them.

Reich Committee for the Registration of Serious Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses

Prevent the procreation of persons socially inadequate from defective inheritance, by authorizing and providing for eugenical sterilization of certain potential parents carrying degenerate hereditary qualities.

Man has no right to claim the role of the creator of his likes or to choose their genetic prototypes, thus determining their personal characteristics .

Genetic testing in the future is going to be seen as critical as testing your cholesterol.

Many families would like to avoid burdening future generations with inherited diseases such as haemophilia or severe developmental disorders. But most would think it wrong to edit the genes that influence the 'normal' range of human variation, from eye colour to intelligence or athletic ability.

There is a lot of hype and fear about this much-talked-about prospect of designer babies.

I think the ethics and morals of genetic engineering are very complicated. It intrigues me.

Some forms of motor neuron disease are genetically linked, but I have no indication that my kind is. No other member of my family has had it. But I would be in favour of abortion if there was a high risk.

DNA sequencing opens vast ethical issues. We shall be able to know who has defective genes. What will it mean when we can be sure we're not all born equal? Worked out, the implications will scare a lot of people. Insurance companies will not want to cover those with a genetic predisposition to illness, for example. Here lurk myriad lawsuits.

Our increasing ability to alter our biology and open up the processes of life is now fueling a new cultural war.

I don't think one ought to bring a clearly disabled child into the world.

As a Christian, but also as a scientist responsible for overseeing the Human Genome Project, one of my concerns has been the limits on applications of our understanding of the genome. Should there be limits? I think there should. I think the public has expressed their concern about ways this information might be misused.

My own area of expertise is the genetics of human disease. I was fortunate to be part of the team that found the genes for cystic fibrosis, and Huntington's disease and neurofibromatosis.