With this and other bioengineering successes, we bring ourselves that much closer to becoming wholly conscious agents of “natural” selection in our own evolution.

So far, there seem to be no serious ethical issues emerging around the use of this technology in single-celled life forms. One may wonder, however, that our bio-engineering technology is also accelerating–at a pace ahead of our ability to recognize the (intentional/unintentional) consequences and repercussions of what we are able to do in a laboratory. Once we start identifying favorable phenotypes (and their corresponding genotypes), and are able to rapidly select and reproduce said phenotypes, it becomes easier to imagine using this technique to effect evolutionary change on a larger (multi-cellular) scale.

While the technology holds tremendous promise for bio-medicine (and even for bio fuels) , it will no doubt become a major issue at future Bio-Ethics symposia as MAGE applications find their way into other realms of human science, medicine and society. There is also the slight possibility of a MAGE variant escaping into the wild, reproducing (and possibly mutating further), and altering ecosystems.

As always, advancements in human knowledge and technology bring with them dangers and unintentional consequences. These are considered “trade-offs” with the beneficial results, and usually, laws and public debate follow these discoveries (and their implementations in larger commercial/scientific practice) in a perpetual state of “catch up”. It is this author’s view that bio-ethics organizations and commissions need to be more proactive in this field–balancing the innovation and medical value with long-term insight into societal repercussions–and that no such trade-off should be accepted without robust, informed, public debate.

M.R.