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Before your child is born, you have their genome tweaked to boost their stature, build and intelligence. When they head to school, the teacher streams them according to their genetic makeup. And when working life begins, an employer checks their DNA to ensure they are healthy, agreeable and sufficiently extrovert for the role.
It may sound like the worst science fiction. But a new government report warns that genomics is advancing so fast that such scenarios are plausibly on the horizon, with often few laws and regulations to prevent them.
To avoid genomic technologies causing harm to the public, pre-emptive action should be taken now, it says.
“We are still in the infancy of understanding the complexity of genomic data but this is changing very rapidly,” said Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser. “Now is the time to consider what might be possible, and what actions government and the public could take.”
The Government Office for Science consulted 30 experts on science, technology and policy before writing the Genomics Beyond Health report, a 198-page digest of where we...