Biotechnology and Society: Ethics, Law, the Environment and Careers

Can doesn't always mean should

Over the last fifteen lessons you have learned how scientists read, copy, cut, paste and edit DNA. Expectation D1.1 asks a different question: what should we do with this power? Science can tell us what is possible and what the risks are. It cannot, on its own, decide what is right. Those decisions are made by people, through laws, regulators, courts and public debate, and you will be part of them as a voter, consumer, patient and perhaps as a professional.

A framework for analysing an issue

1. State the issue as a clear question (for example, "Should Canada approve gene-edited wheat?").
2. Gather the science. What does the technology actually do? What does the evidence show about benefits and risks? Where is the evidence weak?
3. Identify stakeholders and what each stands to gain or lose.
4. Apply ethical perspectives:

• Consequences: Which choice produces the most benefit and least harm, for whom?
• Rights and duties: Does it respect people's rights (consent, privacy, choice)? Does it break a rule we should keep?
• Justice: Are benefits and risks shared fairly? Who can afford it?
• Precaution and stewardship: Could it cause serious or irreversible harm to people or ecosystems?

1. Consider the law and regulation that already applies.
2. Decide and justify, acknowledging the strongest argument against your position.

Issue 1: Transgenic crops and animals

Possible benefits: higher yields; less insecticide on Bt crops; less tillage on herbicide-tolerant fields (which can reduce soil erosion); more nutritious foods such as Golden Rice; less food waste (non-browning apples).

Concerns:

• Environmental: herbicide-tolerant crops can lead to heavy use of one herbicide, and weeds resistant to it have spread in many places. Some insect pests have evolved resistance to Bt proteins, which is why farmers are required to plant "refuges" of non-Bt crops. Canola pollen can carry genes to related plants and volunteer canola plants, so gene flow is real. Escaped fast-growing fish could compete with wild fish.
• Social and economic: a few large companies control much of the seed market. Farmers usually cannot save and replant patented seed. Some export markets restrict GM products, so a GM crop can affect farmers who do not grow it.
• Consumer choice: in Canada, labelling of GM foods is voluntary unless there is a health or safety change.

Major scientific bodies, including the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2016), have concluded that approved GM foods have not been shown to be less safe to eat than conventional foods. Many of the most serious debates are about environmental, economic and social effects, which depend on how a crop is used, not only on how it was made.

Issue 2: Patenting life

Patents reward invention, but should a living thing, or a gene, be owned?

• Harvard mouse (2002): the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a genetically modified mouse, as a higher life form, cannot be patented in Canada (although the process to make it, and the modified cells, can be).
• Monsanto v. Schmeiser (2004): Percy Schmeiser, a Saskatchewan canola farmer, grew herbicide-tolerant canola without a licence. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled 5 to 4 that he had infringed the patent on the gene and modified cells by knowingly growing and harvesting the patented plants, but he did not have to pay the company his profits, because the court found he had not gained any extra profit from the patented trait.
• Myriad Genetics (United States, 2013): the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that naturally occurring human DNA sequences, such as the BRCA1 and BRCA2 breast cancer genes, cannot be patented just because they were isolated, although synthetic cDNA can be.

Issue 3: Cloning and editing humans

Canada's Assisted Human Reproduction Act (2004) makes it a crime to create a human clone and to alter the genome of a human cell or embryo in a way that could be passed on to descendants. So somatic gene therapy (such as Casgevy) is legal and regulated by Health Canada, but germline editing is banned.

In 2018, a scientist in China, He Jiankui, announced the birth of twin girls whose embryos he had edited with CRISPR. The work was widely condemned: the edits were not medically necessary, the risks were unknown, consent was inadequate, and the changes could be inherited. He was sentenced to prison in China. Many scientists have called for strict limits on heritable human genome editing.

Arguments in the debate: preventing serious inherited disease; the risk of off-target and mosaic edits; the impossibility of future generations consenting; fears of "designer babies" and new inequalities; and the views of disability communities, many of whom stress that a good life is possible with many genetic conditions.

Issue 4: Genetic privacy

Your genome is uniquely identifying, cannot be changed like a password, and also reveals information about your relatives.

• Canada's Genetic Non-Discrimination Act (2017) made it illegal to require someone to take a genetic test, or to disclose test results, as a condition of providing goods or services or entering a contract, such as many insurance policies. The Supreme Court of Canada upheld the Act in 2020.
• Direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies hold DNA data from millions of people. When the U.S. company 23andMe filed for bankruptcy in 2025, customers worldwide, including in Canada, worried about who would acquire their genetic data. The company was bought later in 2025 by a non-profit research institute led by one of its founders, and many customers chose to delete their data.
• Police have used public genealogy databases to identify suspects through their relatives' DNA. This has solved serious crimes but raises questions about consent from relatives who never agreed.

Issue 5: Indigenous peoples and genetic research

In the 1980s, blood samples given by members of the Nuu-chah-nulth Nations in British Columbia for a study of arthritis were later used for other research, including studies of ancestry and migration, without the communities' consent. Events like this damaged trust in genetic research.

Today, many First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities insist that research must respect their right to govern their own data and samples. The OCAP® principles (Ownership, Control, Access and Possession) set out how First Nations data should be governed. Canadian projects such as Silent Genomes have tried to work with Indigenous partners and Indigenous governance from the start, aiming to improve genetic diagnosis for Indigenous children, who have often been under-represented in genetic reference databases. When genetic studies leave groups out, the tools built from them, such as diagnostic tests, may work less well for those groups.

Careers in molecular genetics

Molecular genetics connects to many careers, and many involve skills you have used in this unit, from careful lab technique to reading sequences and weighing ethical questions. Requirements vary by province and employer; check the websites of Ontario colleges, universities and professional associations for current details.