The genes of tomorrow
Thought experiment. Suppose there was a parallel universe in which every human carries the genes for the Huntington's disease
so that around the age of 40 or so, everyone would develop the symptoms
and eventually die after up to 10 to 25 years. In this universe, the
whole disease of course wouldn't be recognized as a "disease" at all,
but its effects would simply be called "growing old" and considered
natural and inevitable. Now suppose that one day, the scientists in
that universe identify and locate the gene and engineer a "normal"
(from our perspective) alternative so that the person who has this new
engineered gene is like a normal person in our universe. Now what do
you think: would the religious moralists of that universe rise against
these scientists and argue that by artificially lengthening the natural
human lifespan, they have taken away something essential from what it
means to be human, and thus cheapened the value of human life?
I find it difficult to understand why genetic manipulation is opposed so much. After all, the standard line has for decades been that everybody is born, not genetically identical, but still genetically equivalent so that as long as the genes are not "abnormal", it doesn't really matter much which genes you inherit, since the environment and nurture determine everything about you anyways. (One immediately wonders how human evolution is possible at all if there is no important variance for the evolutionary selection to work on. The word "lysenkoist" would also come to mind.) Now that genetic engineering is slowly becoming possible, this tune mysteriously changes. Genes are now the essential core of humanity itself and the holiest of holies so that touching them or even thinking about them is a serious moral offense.
First, riddle me this. Suppose that in the future, genetic selection or engineering makes it possible to make children smarter and stronger, how is this different from putting the children in school or a sports team? The goal is exactly the same, only the methods differ. Perhaps the difference is that the latter is somehow "natural" (there, by the way, is my number one candidate for a zero-information word with no information content whatsoever) whereas the former is somehow denying the child his or her free choice. As if any child actually chose his genes in the first place, or got to choose whether he goes to school or not.
Many opponents of genetic engineering seem to have mentally stuck to an agrarian fascist scenario where the genetic engineering means that a totalitarian jackbooted government forces the people to give birth to specifically engineered workers and soldiers while the smoke ominously rises from the concentrarion camps. Or at least there is a dangerous slippery slope towards this. (For some strange reason, similar slippery slopes never seem to lead from postmodernism or equalism to the Killing Fields.) But that's not how it's going to happen at all. Genetic engineering is high technology that no totalitarian system can possibly develop without itself ceasing to be totalitarian. The science and technology necessary for it will not develop any more than the Internet in a totalitarian system.
Instead, the genetic engineering will come in a commercial form where private companies offer their customers different products, and the people will happily buy them the same way they now buy DVD players and dental care without anything other but the objective differences between different choices forcing them to do this. Naturally all kinds of luddites and theocrats will reject these products at first, but having read about the desperation that some parents have for getting their kids to the best kindergartens, I find it easy to believe that genetic engineering will have a mass market. The upper classes will be the first adopters and the middle class will follow as the Moore's law and other advancements continuously lower the price, and the few holdouts remaining eventually become meaningless curiosities.
One strange argument against genetic engineering is that even the "bad" genes such as the one that causes Huntington are somehow important for the human race and must be maintained for the sake of the future. The same argument is also used against the dystopia where everyone is healthy, strong and intelligent. (For the life of me, I will probably never understand why such a place is supposed to be a dystopia. If you want to see a dystopia, go somewhere where the average IQ is significantly lower than 100.) But again the free market would come to the rescue. Anyone who considers these genes to be important and worth keeping, could choose their own children to carry them, especially if these genes are recessive. But they couldn't force this responsibility on other people the way that they do now.
For the genes whose bad effects are milder, we have all heard the heartwarming stories of the good people who have them and even so (or perhaps due to them) manage to be morally admirable. These stories are amusingly analogous with the stories of happy slaves that used to be popular among the white people in the antebellum South. But just as no slaveowner ever voluntarily became a slave, no healthy person really wants the bad genes to themselves or their children. Actions tend to speak louder than words. (The proverb of misery loving company is probably another handy tool in deciphering the real motivation of a good part of the opposition of genetic engineering.)
In fact, the more I think about it, the leftist opposition of genetic engineering is somewhat misplaced since they actually ought to support it. After all, isn't it deeply and fundamentally unfair that only a few people get to enjoy the benefits of having the best genes? Wouldn't it be better if the playing field was levelled so that more people and eventually everyone could be as strong and fast as the best athletes, as beautiful and attractive as the highest-paid supermodels, and as intelligent as the smartest geniuses? I know I would pay a lot for anything that would make me smarter and stronger, and I suspect most other people would too. And why the heck not? These things are objectively good, not just socially constructed to be an advantage. The equalists should not oppose but truly rejoice the emerging era of genetic engineering, where everyone can be truly equal!
Besides, using genetic engineering to eliminate bad genes is far more humane than the historical method still used today, where the carriers of bad genes are eugenically discriminated against in the sexual selection, leading to much misery and anguish. Speaking of which, imagine what the feminists and fat acceptors would do the moment the genes that determine the targets of the sexual attraction in a human male were discovered. (Or the genes that predispose some men to become rapists.) Some genetic engineering to eliminate "superficiality" might then actually become compulsory!
Another common argument against genetic testing is the possibility of genetic screening for the purposes of the health insurance industry. When the individual's risk for various illnesses can be more accurately determined, the insurance industry can also set the price of insurance to reflect this risk, which discriminates against people with a higher risk. But you know, this argument kind of lost its power to me when it became acceptable for auto insurance companies to determine the insurance prices on the driver's history and other statistical risk factors, such as whether the insurance buyer is a man or a woman. (As a side note, in a world where everybody is an individual and nothing really has any predictive power, the insurance industry still sure can turn out a profit each year. I wonder how they can do this.)
In the current no-knowledge situation, people with a higher risk of various illnesses get to steal money from the insurance companies, which will pass this cost to other insurance buyers. The fact that the high-risk people are unaware of their higher risk is relevant only when it is impossible to easily find out what the risk is. The situation changes entirely when the genetic testing exists. If you refuse to go to a genetic test and this way determine your risk, you are as much a thief as a person who finds a hundred dollar bill and refuses to ask other people present if it happens to belong to them. Why is cheating the unsuspecting insurance company this way any more moral than it is for a used car dealer to sell a lemon to an unsuspecting buyer? Or would this suddenly become moral, if the used car dealer had refused to do a checkup to determine if the car is a lemon?
(Daniel Mocsny once brilliantly noted about this topic that reality is like a hotel in which most rooms are dark and some have been lit. When science proceeds, it turns on the lights in more rooms. And you know what we often find when the lights turn on to illuminate a room? People who had their hands in other people's pockets under the cover of darkness. This observation applies rarely as well as it does with genetic testing.)
Then there is the issue of your children's genes. As I see it, a person who refuses to do the genetic screening or selection, and this way gives birth to a disabled baby, is not much different than someone who drives a car and refuses to look whether the traffic light is green while he drives through an intersection and then runs over a child crossing the street, disabling him. I wonder how well the excuse "We are not meant to know everything, and the very essence of humanity vanishes if we try to unnaturally eliminate risks" would fly in this situation. In general, you get to appeal to ignorance only if there is no realistic way of finding out. If genetic screening is available and you refuse to use it, then you have made a choice, and must carry the responsibility for the results of this choice. The improving technology has this nasty habit to add responsibilities while it liberates: 300 years ago it was perfectly OK for a parent to take their kid to dentist who used the dental technology of that time, but a parent who did the same now would be charged with child abuse. Few people seem to oppose this.
A common argument against genetic screening is that while screening for the Huntington gene and other such obviously bad things is OK, there is a slippery slope of screening against obesity, homosexuality, slightly lower intelligence and what else have you that might have some genetic component. And this is very bad. But in a sufficiently bright future, many things will necessarily be considered bad that are normal today, the same way we consider many things bad that were normal for people who lived centuries ago. In fact, I predict that the average adult of 2005 would look sickly and horrifying to the people of 2205, the same way the average adult of 1805 would look to us. And the last time I checked, it was considered a good thing that things keep getting better so that small and irrelevant annoyances become more important when the big issues have been resolved and forgotten.
But in the end, I am very optimistic. I would, in fact, predict that a hundred years from now, the opponents of genetic manipulation will be considered as ridiculous as we today consider a person who wants cars to have a maximum speed of 3 mph and a man waving a red flag walking in front of them. I hasten to add that such restrictions were necessary in the society unaccustomed to cars, but they make no sense now, and similar restrictions on genetic engineering will make no sense a few decades from today. Meanwhile, the public should be taught the difference between positive and negative eugenics, and to understand why the former is good and the latter is very bad. The word "positive" should be used a lot in marketing this meme.
I find it difficult to understand why genetic manipulation is opposed so much. After all, the standard line has for decades been that everybody is born, not genetically identical, but still genetically equivalent so that as long as the genes are not "abnormal", it doesn't really matter much which genes you inherit, since the environment and nurture determine everything about you anyways. (One immediately wonders how human evolution is possible at all if there is no important variance for the evolutionary selection to work on. The word "lysenkoist" would also come to mind.) Now that genetic engineering is slowly becoming possible, this tune mysteriously changes. Genes are now the essential core of humanity itself and the holiest of holies so that touching them or even thinking about them is a serious moral offense.
First, riddle me this. Suppose that in the future, genetic selection or engineering makes it possible to make children smarter and stronger, how is this different from putting the children in school or a sports team? The goal is exactly the same, only the methods differ. Perhaps the difference is that the latter is somehow "natural" (there, by the way, is my number one candidate for a zero-information word with no information content whatsoever) whereas the former is somehow denying the child his or her free choice. As if any child actually chose his genes in the first place, or got to choose whether he goes to school or not.
Many opponents of genetic engineering seem to have mentally stuck to an agrarian fascist scenario where the genetic engineering means that a totalitarian jackbooted government forces the people to give birth to specifically engineered workers and soldiers while the smoke ominously rises from the concentrarion camps. Or at least there is a dangerous slippery slope towards this. (For some strange reason, similar slippery slopes never seem to lead from postmodernism or equalism to the Killing Fields.) But that's not how it's going to happen at all. Genetic engineering is high technology that no totalitarian system can possibly develop without itself ceasing to be totalitarian. The science and technology necessary for it will not develop any more than the Internet in a totalitarian system.
Instead, the genetic engineering will come in a commercial form where private companies offer their customers different products, and the people will happily buy them the same way they now buy DVD players and dental care without anything other but the objective differences between different choices forcing them to do this. Naturally all kinds of luddites and theocrats will reject these products at first, but having read about the desperation that some parents have for getting their kids to the best kindergartens, I find it easy to believe that genetic engineering will have a mass market. The upper classes will be the first adopters and the middle class will follow as the Moore's law and other advancements continuously lower the price, and the few holdouts remaining eventually become meaningless curiosities.
One strange argument against genetic engineering is that even the "bad" genes such as the one that causes Huntington are somehow important for the human race and must be maintained for the sake of the future. The same argument is also used against the dystopia where everyone is healthy, strong and intelligent. (For the life of me, I will probably never understand why such a place is supposed to be a dystopia. If you want to see a dystopia, go somewhere where the average IQ is significantly lower than 100.) But again the free market would come to the rescue. Anyone who considers these genes to be important and worth keeping, could choose their own children to carry them, especially if these genes are recessive. But they couldn't force this responsibility on other people the way that they do now.
For the genes whose bad effects are milder, we have all heard the heartwarming stories of the good people who have them and even so (or perhaps due to them) manage to be morally admirable. These stories are amusingly analogous with the stories of happy slaves that used to be popular among the white people in the antebellum South. But just as no slaveowner ever voluntarily became a slave, no healthy person really wants the bad genes to themselves or their children. Actions tend to speak louder than words. (The proverb of misery loving company is probably another handy tool in deciphering the real motivation of a good part of the opposition of genetic engineering.)
In fact, the more I think about it, the leftist opposition of genetic engineering is somewhat misplaced since they actually ought to support it. After all, isn't it deeply and fundamentally unfair that only a few people get to enjoy the benefits of having the best genes? Wouldn't it be better if the playing field was levelled so that more people and eventually everyone could be as strong and fast as the best athletes, as beautiful and attractive as the highest-paid supermodels, and as intelligent as the smartest geniuses? I know I would pay a lot for anything that would make me smarter and stronger, and I suspect most other people would too. And why the heck not? These things are objectively good, not just socially constructed to be an advantage. The equalists should not oppose but truly rejoice the emerging era of genetic engineering, where everyone can be truly equal!
Besides, using genetic engineering to eliminate bad genes is far more humane than the historical method still used today, where the carriers of bad genes are eugenically discriminated against in the sexual selection, leading to much misery and anguish. Speaking of which, imagine what the feminists and fat acceptors would do the moment the genes that determine the targets of the sexual attraction in a human male were discovered. (Or the genes that predispose some men to become rapists.) Some genetic engineering to eliminate "superficiality" might then actually become compulsory!
Another common argument against genetic testing is the possibility of genetic screening for the purposes of the health insurance industry. When the individual's risk for various illnesses can be more accurately determined, the insurance industry can also set the price of insurance to reflect this risk, which discriminates against people with a higher risk. But you know, this argument kind of lost its power to me when it became acceptable for auto insurance companies to determine the insurance prices on the driver's history and other statistical risk factors, such as whether the insurance buyer is a man or a woman. (As a side note, in a world where everybody is an individual and nothing really has any predictive power, the insurance industry still sure can turn out a profit each year. I wonder how they can do this.)
In the current no-knowledge situation, people with a higher risk of various illnesses get to steal money from the insurance companies, which will pass this cost to other insurance buyers. The fact that the high-risk people are unaware of their higher risk is relevant only when it is impossible to easily find out what the risk is. The situation changes entirely when the genetic testing exists. If you refuse to go to a genetic test and this way determine your risk, you are as much a thief as a person who finds a hundred dollar bill and refuses to ask other people present if it happens to belong to them. Why is cheating the unsuspecting insurance company this way any more moral than it is for a used car dealer to sell a lemon to an unsuspecting buyer? Or would this suddenly become moral, if the used car dealer had refused to do a checkup to determine if the car is a lemon?
(Daniel Mocsny once brilliantly noted about this topic that reality is like a hotel in which most rooms are dark and some have been lit. When science proceeds, it turns on the lights in more rooms. And you know what we often find when the lights turn on to illuminate a room? People who had their hands in other people's pockets under the cover of darkness. This observation applies rarely as well as it does with genetic testing.)
Then there is the issue of your children's genes. As I see it, a person who refuses to do the genetic screening or selection, and this way gives birth to a disabled baby, is not much different than someone who drives a car and refuses to look whether the traffic light is green while he drives through an intersection and then runs over a child crossing the street, disabling him. I wonder how well the excuse "We are not meant to know everything, and the very essence of humanity vanishes if we try to unnaturally eliminate risks" would fly in this situation. In general, you get to appeal to ignorance only if there is no realistic way of finding out. If genetic screening is available and you refuse to use it, then you have made a choice, and must carry the responsibility for the results of this choice. The improving technology has this nasty habit to add responsibilities while it liberates: 300 years ago it was perfectly OK for a parent to take their kid to dentist who used the dental technology of that time, but a parent who did the same now would be charged with child abuse. Few people seem to oppose this.
A common argument against genetic screening is that while screening for the Huntington gene and other such obviously bad things is OK, there is a slippery slope of screening against obesity, homosexuality, slightly lower intelligence and what else have you that might have some genetic component. And this is very bad. But in a sufficiently bright future, many things will necessarily be considered bad that are normal today, the same way we consider many things bad that were normal for people who lived centuries ago. In fact, I predict that the average adult of 2005 would look sickly and horrifying to the people of 2205, the same way the average adult of 1805 would look to us. And the last time I checked, it was considered a good thing that things keep getting better so that small and irrelevant annoyances become more important when the big issues have been resolved and forgotten.
But in the end, I am very optimistic. I would, in fact, predict that a hundred years from now, the opponents of genetic manipulation will be considered as ridiculous as we today consider a person who wants cars to have a maximum speed of 3 mph and a man waving a red flag walking in front of them. I hasten to add that such restrictions were necessary in the society unaccustomed to cars, but they make no sense now, and similar restrictions on genetic engineering will make no sense a few decades from today. Meanwhile, the public should be taught the difference between positive and negative eugenics, and to understand why the former is good and the latter is very bad. The word "positive" should be used a lot in marketing this meme.
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