基因筛选技术可以实现“定制”孩子，你会选择吗？【经济学人精讲】第456期

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本文选自《经济学人》11月9日文章。私人定制在当下越来越流行，你可以定制衣服、定制手机，但你有没有想过“定制孩子”？如果条件允许，你是否会定制一个聪明、漂亮、健康的孩子？这不是科幻，现在人类在生命科学领域越走越远，已俨然扮演起上帝的角色。转基因技术让人类获得更加饱满高产抗虫害的粮食，而美国的两家公司已经在研究如何优化孩子，让孩子拥有健康、长寿的最佳基因特征。该研究已经初有成效，通过他们的研究成果，父母可以挑选长得高、长得好看、最重要的是聪明的孩子，不过前提是能付得起费用。我相信从技术层面，人类可以实现“定制孩子”，你同意这样做吗？欢迎留言。

由于篇幅较长，本文节选原文标题和全文重点段落进行精讲。

选文精讲

The new genetics 新型遗传学

Modern genetics will improve health and usher in “designer” children

现代遗传学会改善健康，引入“设计”儿童

It may also provoke an ethical storm

它还可能引发一场道德风暴

SOMETIME NEXT year, if all goes to plan, a gay male couple in California will have a child. The child in question will have been conceived by in vitro fertilisation. In this case a group of eggs from a female donor are now being fertilised by sperm from both fathers (half from one, half from the other). Of the resulting embryos, the couple will choose one to be implanted in a surrogate mother. An uplifting tale of the times, then, but hardly a newsworthy event. Except that it is.

• surrogate mother: 代孕母亲；surrogate: 代替的、代理的

如果一切按计划进行，明年一对加州的男同性恋夫妇将会有一个孩子。这个被讨论的孩子将是通过体外受精受孕的，在该案例中，一组来自女性捐赠者的卵子现在被来自两个父亲(两位男同性恋夫妇一人一半)的精子受精。在产生的胚胎中，这对夫妇将选择一个（胚胎）植入代孕母亲体内。这是一个振奋人心的故事，几乎没有什么新闻价值，除了一点。

Where the story becomes newsworthy is around the word “choose”. For the parents, in conjunction with a firm called Genomic Prediction, will pick the lucky embryo based on a genetically estimated risk of disease. Such pre-implantation testing is already used in some places, in cases where there is a chance of parents passing on a condition, such as Tay-Sachs disease, that is caused by a single faulty gene. Genomic Prediction is, however, offering something more wide-ranging. It is screening embryos for almost 1m single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). These are places where individual genomes routinely differ from one another at the level of an individual genetic letter. Individual SNP differences between people rarely have much effect. But add them up and they can raise or lower by quite a lot the likelihood of someone suffering a particular disease. Generate several embryos and SNP-test them, then, and you can pick out those that you think will grow up to be the healthiest.

这个故事的新闻价值体现在“选择”上。这对父母将与一家名为“基因组预测”的公司合作，根据从基因角度对疾病风险的估计，来挑选幸运的胚胎。这样的植入前测试在一些地方已经使用了，在某些情况下，父母有可能会遗传如由单一缺陷基因引起的黑蒙性痴呆这样的疾病（给孩子）。然而，基因组预测提供了更广的服务，它对胚胎的近100万个单核苷酸多态性(SNPs)进行筛选，正是这些地方的个体基因组通常在个体遗传字母的水平上彼此不同。人与人之间的个体SNP差异很少有很大的影响，但是把它们加起来，它们可以大大提高或降低人们患某种疾病的可能性。生成几个胚胎，然后进行SNP测试，你就可以挑出那些你认为长大后最健康的胚胎。

 

         

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