When Gregory Mendel, the father of modern genetics and a Catholic priest to boot, established the ways of genetic inheritance, we thought that we had understood the whole way that our inheritance patterns work. Darwin's evolutionary theories developed completely independent of Mendel's work simply confirmed the latter's work. However, this was only the beginning. Today, after discovering the structure of the DNA molecule thanks to Watson, Crick and young Rosie, we know that inheritance patterns are also determined by other factors that are not so inherited, but established rather, through direct contact with our physical and social environments.
These environmental inherited patterns are established by the methylation patterns (methyl - CH3 groups) stuck randomly to our DNA, which either switch on particular genes (sections of DNA) or switch them off. This newly discovered phenomenon is called epigenesis and its study, epigenetics. The simple smoking of a cigarette, even second hand, is well known for example to not only be able to carry out mutations in single genes but also alter epigenetic changes in our DNA that can lead to the switching on of silent cancer genes. Not all the genes in our body are switched on, many are also switched off. This explains why certain illness traits show up in individuals in the course of our lives as genes start to be switched on slowly or not so slowly. Hypertension, diabetes, asthma and even cancer are often not evident at birth, but usually appear around the much notorious forties, sixties and eighties of a person's life. It also explains why people with the same genetic code such as identical twins exhibit certain different physical characteristics such as colour of eyes or hair or possibly even different sexual or social patterns of behaviour.
So, in effect, we are not simply lumped with a set of genes by our parents at birth and that is the end of the story. Our genes are continually being switched on and off by the physical and social environment around us. A nurturing family, a dirty physical environment, an education, can make a big difference in what is switched on and off in an individual. The social sciences have long pointed out these issues. However, it is not only the external environment that determines epigenetic patterns. One form of epigenesis called paramutation is also determined by the internal environment of our own cells. Genes, especially gene pairs inside a cell, actually send small chemical molecular RNAi signals to each other affecting how the cell itself develops. Whether it develops as a heart cell or a kidney cell or a muscle cell or a cancer cell or whether it develops at all! Genes from different chromosomes of the same homologous pair (human chromosome DNA molecules come in pairs, one from the mother and one from the father) even physically touch each other, which allows them to develop or not. The X and Y chromosomes in the human embryo (zygote) are two such chromosomes! Unless they physically embrace irreversibly within a single nucleus during the later process of fertilisation, human development is unable to continue as epigenetic patterns for normal development cannot be set.
New human embryos conveniently clear the epigenetic patterns of the parents so that they are completely free to develop their own epigenetic patterns as their development occurs and thereby independently directing their own development epigenetically separate from the mother in which they grow! This is not completely true however. The exception that proves the rule in this case is the inheritance of so-called imprinted genes from the mother and the father, so called because the imprinted epigenetic pattern is inherited whole in toto from the mother and the father and this process is also essential for normal human embryological development. If the sperm pronucleus in the early product of fertilisation (ootid stage) is experimentally replaced with a maternal pronucleus from another female egg, so that in the early ootid there are not one male and one female pronuclei prior to fusion into the first single human nucleus, but rather two female or two male pronuclei, then development is arrested! In humans, this is also manifested in the formations of so called imprinted diseases. The mutation of a single gene coming from the mother in a homologous pair of chromosomes does not lead to the same disease in humans if the single gene mutation occurs on the father's chromosome. For example, in gene number 11 of chromosome pair 15, the mother's genetic mutation leads to a disease called Prader Willi Syndrome in children, while a mutation of the father's corresponding gene in the same set leads to a genetic disease called Angelman Syndrome. Two very different diseases caused by the different inherited epigenetic patterns on the same gene but on homologous chromosomes.
Other social factors at play also exhibit the inheritance of epigenetic factors. During the Second World War, due to the hunger issues that were imposed on specific populations such as those in Malta, epigenetic patters in human individuals were changed by the lack of food, and these patterns were passed on to their children for several generations before being lost. This was very carefully studied in the Dutch population studies emanating from the Dutch Hunger Winter during the Second World War! The list is endless.
I have often said that the best parents for a child are its genetic ones. Not only because there is a nurturing emotional link, but also a genetic one which established the identity of the child. The inherited epigenetic patterns in children also pre-dispose to this identity-linked development. This does not mean of course that every parent does in effect care for his/her children or that accidents do not happen that leave children parentless. However, these are the exceptions that prove the rule. The state has emergency mechanisms in place to look after children who find themselves in these situations. Adoption is an option which saves these situations, as is the care order option that can be issued by a State Minister to protect a child from irresponsible parents. However, we all know that this is not a rule but an exception.
The state makes a fundamental mistake when it starts to apply rules of exception and contingency and replace them as rules of regularity and normality. To remove the child from abusive parents or find an adoptive home for children is one thing, as it saves a bad situation, to purposely create children to be raised without their own genetic parents, is crazy to say the least. Children are not social commodities to supplant the wishes of individuals in or out of a relation. The use of surrogacy or the donation of gametes across the board or other technologies to create three, four or five parent family extensions is a direct corruption of the fundamental rights of children according to natural law and a betrayal of their personal identity requirements. In philosophy it is termed the distinction between necessity and contingency (emergency). One must distinguish between a regular situation and one that occurs because of an emergency. But to legally create contingencies as the norm is completely crazy and will have profound social and personal repercussions for the individuals in the process, particularly the children. It is not fair to play about with the lives of children like this especially with the science of genetics and epigenetics still unfolding rapidly. What we do know already tells us to tread carefully rather than throw caution to the wind.
In this issue, one of the main principles of bioethics, that of non-maleficence, is paramount. Primum non nocere, first do no harm. The principles of beneficence, justice and autonomy also play an important part in the lives of children that we bring into the world, but for the sake of votes, we allow people to do what they emotionally want in order to commodify their personal use of children. Before we rush off to create a cosmopolitan society, meaning one which is valueless, we must first make sure we give children what is fundamentally their first right, the right to be brought up in a nurturing family that has generated them genetically. Only in the accidental absence of this should the state intervene to contingently safeguard children's development rights by saving the situation. It's a simple process of distinguishing the head from the tail if, of course, one knows where one's head or one's tail should be in the first place!
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