Endorsing Infanticide?

Doctors predict that in a matter of years they will be able to remove an egg cell from a woman, fertilize and grow it as an embryo in a test tube, and then implant it in the mother or even in the uterus of a volunteer, where it will continue to develop until delivery.

But doctors have yet to come up with an answer to a moral question that this awesome ability will raise: What should be done with the mistakes, the children born deformed or defective as a result of science's attempts to manipulate life?

Last week a scientist whose work has helped to make engineering—and even creation—of life a possibility tackled this dilemma head on. Dr. James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix, the master molecule DNA, urged that doctors attending the birth of laboratory-conceived human babies be given the right to terminate the lives of the infants if they are grossly abnormal.

Watson's statement, made in an interview in the A.M.A.'s new socio-economic magazine Prism, is no casual endorsement of infanticide. Watson believes that doctors have not fully considered the potentially disastrous consequences of their interference in natural processes.

Despite the fact that many normally conceived babies are born defective, he says, the chances of error are even greater in a baby produced by artificial means. Thus the laboratory-conceived baby ought to be considered in a different light.

Legal Status. Recognizing the difficulty of special legislation for these babies, Watson proposes a redefinition of the legal status of all newborn infants.

He points out that although some abnormalities can be detected before a baby is born, most defects are not discovered until after birth. Thus "if a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice that only a few are given under the present system," says Watson. "The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so chose and save a lot of misery and suffering."

Watson's suggestion is bound to shock his colleagues and bring an outcry from the nonscientific community.

That may be exactly what Watson wants. He believes that test-tube conception experiments now under way in England could open the door to widespread genetic engineering and, ultimately, to cloning, or the creation of multiple genetic copies of an individual.

Watson, who does not look forward to such prospects, believes that an informed public would share his apprehension about these experiments and might take steps to stop them.