A “crisper” traditionally has been a tray in a refrigerator. Hear the term today, though, and as likely as not, people are referencing the acronym CRISPR. CRISPR is to a gene-editing process used to “allow researchers to quickly change the DNA of nearly any organism — including humans.”

We are rightly concerned with North Korea’s threats, and issues such as tax reduction and health insurance are important. Yet CRISPR technology could have much more profound effects on our lives.

Marching Towards the Genetic Manipulation of Human Beings

Two things have advanced CRISPR technology to new levels. It’s just been announced that scientists at a biotech company called eGenesis “have for the first time used gene editing to eliminate a family of viruses in pigs that can be transmitted to people. This step could make pig organs safer for human use.”

And researchers at Oregon’s Health Sciences University have used CRISPR “to correct a disease-causing mutation in dozens of viable human embryos,” according to the journal Nature.

Steve Connor, writing in Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Technology Review, explains that while “none of the embryos were allowed to develop for more than a few days — and there was never any intention of implanting them into a womb — the experiments are a milestone on what may prove to be an inevitable journey toward the birth of the first genetically modified humans.”

We seem to be on an unstoppable march toward the genetic manipulation of human beings.

Consider Connor’s attempt at reassurance: “Never any intention of implanting them in the womb.” So, it’s OK to play around with unborn life, then destroy it, if it is not fully developed?

That disturbing moral perspective aside, it is hard not to agree with Connor. We seem to be on an unstoppable march toward the genetic manipulation of human beings.

Who Makes the Decisions?

First, we’ll justify DNA tinkering in the name of ending diseases and deformities. Then we throw in things like a desired height, complexion and hair color. Then IQ. And on and on.

What happens when the targeted embryo doesn’t meet all the standards desired by his parents? Is it discarded like a piece of paper with a smudge on it? After all, it was “never intended” to be implanted in the womb. Or was it?

And who controls these decisions? Parents don’t always know best; it takes “experts” to decide the embryo’s compatibility with her parents. Right?

After all, the parents aren’t the only interested parties.

The state has an interest in smart and healthy children, doesn’t it? Think of the advances that could be made by a society of genius-level, physically robust people.

The burdens that the ill, the diseased, the mentally impaired and the physically challenged impose on society are great. Shouldn’t they be isolated and destroyed, before we allow them to develop in the womb? We have to weigh personal desires against the needs of and costs to the nation at large. Parents’ feelings shouldn’t override the requirements of a whole country. Right?

We are Made in the Image of God

Obviously, I am teasing out some of the implications of CRISPR technology to a degree it has not yet reached. But all these things are well within the scope of possibility.

God imbues every person with His image, from conception to death.

Men and women, unlike anything else in all the vast creation surrounding us, are made in the image and likeness of God. Scripture calls this God “the Author of life” (Acts 3:15).

As Psalm 139 says, this God wove us in our mothers’ wombs (verse 13). He planned our very beings from “behind and before” (verse 5). We belong to Him who made us.

Why, then, does this personal, all-powerful, infinitely loving God allow so many of us to be born with maladies, some of them severe? Deformities, organic problems, and so forth. Why are we given bodies that can be diseased and, ultimately, die?

Because He allows man’s fall into sin to take its course. He does not exempt us from the effects of sin. Yet He imbues every person with His image, from conception to death. The infant born with merely a brain stem is as precious to Him as the most physically perfect baby.

No Matter How Small, a Person Deserves Protection

In December 2015, testimony before the federally chartered Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C., the distinguished bioethicist David Prentice, Ph.D., said of CRISPR: “We should put a hold on any experiments with human beings and designing a brave new human, and focus our efforts on therapies (including genetic treatments) that address existing patients.”

Dr. Prentice went on to describe “an increasing number of alternative possibilities” to the creation of human persons for experiment and then destruction.

The witness of history isn’t encouraging, though. Ethical boundaries are quick to evaporate when, in the name of “science” — a demanding god — bright people are given recourse to unrestricted research.

It is too easy to draw an analogy to the Nazi experiments on Jews, Gypsies, and other “undesirables” during the Second World War. Tiny embryos do not feel what those tragic victims did.

But they are no less persons. They deserve protection, not predation. Our culture allows and, in some quarters, even celebrates the abortion of the unborn. Such a society is unlikely to impose strict boundaries on the kind of research that takes place. Or on the “treatment” that could follow as designer babies and government-mandated genetic outcomes become more routine.

Ends do not justify means. This truth should convict and instruct as we ponder who we are and who we think we should be.