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Ronald
Bailey
Mr. Bailey is the science correspondent
for Reason magazine.
Enabling parents to genetically enhance their children is not
going to be as easy as some of us might hope, nor will it happen
as soon as we might wish, but Dinesh D'Souza is right when he claims
in his article "Staying Human" (National Review, Jan. 22)
that one day it will be possible. This prospect frightens him. Why?
First, let's note that D'Souza is not against using genetic
technology to cure genetic diseases, or using germline interventions
to eliminate genetic diseases in future generations, or even using
human cloning to overcome infertility; what he opposes is the use
of "enhancement technologies to shape the destiny of others, and
especially their children." D'Souza denounces such parents as "totalitarians"
engaging in "des potism" and "tyranny."
But his opposition to this practice is fundamentally misconceived.
First of all, he asserts that those of us who see no moral objection
to genetic enhancements "speak about freedom and choice, although
what [they] advocate is despotism and human bondage." This is nonsense.
D'Souza has evidently adopted a notion of hard genetic determinism
that is simply not warranted by biology. A gene that enhances one's
capacity for music doesn't mean that its possessor must become another
Scott Joplin or Keith Jarrett; genes simply don't work that way.
D'Souza, like all of us, has many capacities stemming from his specific
genetic endowment. He could, for example, have become a professional
rugby player or a computer engineer, but he chose not to develop
those particular abilities despite the fact that his specific complement
of genes could have allowed him to.
Giving children such enhanced capacities as good health, stronger
bodies, and cleverer brains, far from constraining them, would in
fact give them greater freedom and more choices. It's a strange
kind of despotism that enlarges a person's abilities and options
in life.
But D'Souza is wrong even on his own terms. He has no objection
to fixing genetic diseases and disabilities, because one can assume
that the beneficiary-the not-yet-born, possibly even not-yet-conceived
child-would happily have chosen to have those flaws corrected. Let's
say a parent could choose genes that would guarantee her kid a 20-point
IQ boost. It is reasonable to presume that the kid would be happy
to consent to this enhancement of his capacities. How about plugging
in genes that would boost his immune system and guarantee that he
would never get colon cancer, Alzheimer's, AIDS, or the common cold?
Again, it seems reasonable to assume consent. These enhancements
are general capacities that any human would reasonably want to have.
In fact, lots of children already do have these capacities naturally,
so it's hard to see that there is any moral justification for outlawing
access to them for others.
Instead of submitting to the tyranny of random chance, which cruelly
deals out futures blighted with ill health, stunted mental abilities,
and early death, parents would be able to open more possibilities
for their children to have fulfilling lives. Genetic enhancements
to prevent these ills would not violate a child's liberty or autonomy,
and certainly do not constitute the slavery depicted in D'Souza's
overwrought analogy.
"The power they seek to exercise is not over 'nature,' but over
other human beings," claims D'Souza. Actually, most of those
who want access to genetic technologies for their children are motivated
by exactly the opposite desire: What they seek is the power to defend
their children against the manifold cruelties and indignities that
"nature" so liberally dispenses, and thus make it possible for their
children to have fulfilling lives. The good news is that would-be
tyrannical parents who buy into D'Souza's erroneous notions of hard
genetic determinism will be disappointed. Their children will have
minds and inclinations all distinctly their own, albeit genetically
enhanced.
Let's look briefly at some of D'Souza's other objections. He asserts
with apparent alarm that "people living today can determine the
genetic destiny of all future generations." This is true,
but trivial: Our ancestors, too — through their mating and
breeding choices — determined for us the complement of genes
that we all bear today. They just didn't know which specific genes
they were picking. The future will not be populated by robots who
may look human but who are unable to choose for themselves their
own destinies — genetic or otherwise.
D'Souza also has egalitarian worries that the "availability of enhancement
technologies will create two classes in society": "Democratic societies
can live with inequalities conferred by the lottery of nature, but
can they countenance the deliberate introduction of biological alterations
that give some citizens a better chance to succeed than others?"
But D'Souza agrees that the type of genetic interventions contemplated
here will likely become available to everyone as their prices go
down. This seems to me to be a recipe for eliminating genetic
inequalities rather than perpetuating them. Once inserting genes
becomes routine and cheap, everyone will have access to it in fairly
short order. As to whether our democratic society will be endangered
by genetic engineering, I maintain that democracy and political
equality are sustained chiefly by the principle that people are
responsible moral agents who can distinguish between right and wrong,
and deserve equal consideration before the law and a respected place
in our political community. Having some citizens who take advantage
of genetic technologies, and others who do not, will not change
that.
D'Souza then accuses those who would allow access to genetic enhancements
of not being "worried about diminishing the sanctity of human life."
But who has a higher regard for the sanctity of life — those
who fatalistically counsel us to live with the often bum hands that
nature deals us, or those who want to use genetic technologies to
ameliorate the ills that have afflicted humanity since time immemorial?
Re specting the sanctity of life doesn't require that we take whatever
random horrors nature dishes out.
Setting aside D'Souza's confusion over the philosophical issues
surrounding consciousness, it is certain that it is our brains (conscious
or not, awake or not), and not our genes, that make us individual
human beings. The case of identical twins proves the point: They
have precisely the same genes, but they are different, sometimes
very different, people. That's why, in recent years, our
society has legally defined death as brain death. Once our brains
are gone, we are gone, even though our bodies — with all their
genes — may live on. The fact is that we respect people, not
their genes.
It is true for genetic engineering, as for all other technologies,
that some people will misuse it; tragedies will occur. Given the
sorry history of government-sponsored eugenics, control over genetic
engineering must never be given to any government agency. But to
use genetic engineering is not, by definition, to abuse it. This
technology offers the prospect of ever greater freedom for individual
human beings, and should be welcomed by everyone who cares about
human life.
Dinesh D'Souza
Mr. D'Souza, a research scholar
at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of The Virtue
of Prosperity: Finding Values in an Age of Techno-Affluence.
The basic difference between Ron Bailey and me is that we have different
views of human nature and human dignity. Bailey's argument, however,
fails not only by my principles but by his own. He is so enamored
of techno-utopian schemes that he is willing to sacrifice the core
libertarian principle of individual autonomy to give children the
"enhanced capacities" he is confident they will come to appreciate.
My wife and I are blessed to have a 6-year-old daughter. Had she
suffered from a serious disease or disability, we would not have
hesitated to take the necessary steps, including gene therapy, to
cure her. Fortunately, our daughter is a normal child who doesn't
suffer from any serious physical or mental disease. In our view,
she is a gift, with her own distinctive potential and personality.
Our job as parents is to help her develop her abilities and fulfill
her promise. So we give her chess lessons and music lessons and
so forth. But, like most parents, we would regard with horror the
notion of redesigning her genetic structure.
Why? Because our children are not our property. We are entrusted
with them, but we do not have the right to subject their distinctive
nature to our will. It's strange that Bailey sees no problem in
invoking a libertarian principle — the freedom to shape oneown
life — in order to justify parents using scientific manipulation
to regulate the genetic makeup of other people. What greater violation
of individual autonomy is even conceivable? If I were to capture
Bailey forcibly, take him to a lab in the Bahamas, and alter his
brain to make him (let us say) more musical and give him ten extra
IQ points, wouldn't he regard it as a profound violation of his
autonomy and dignity? I suspect that Bailey would not be persuaded
by my insistence that I was merely trying to expand his range of
choices.
Bailey insists, however, that genetic engineering is benign because
we can trust parents to look out for the welfare of their offspring.
In general, this is true, but this presumption of the wisdom of
paternalism is typically restricted to a child's years of dependence.
My parents may give me piano lessons, but when I am older I can
choose to give up the piano. My parents may want me to become a
doctor, and thus force me to take biology — but I can choose
to become a writer. By contrast, if parents are able to remake a
child's genetic makeup, they are in a sense writing the genetic
instructions that shape his entire life. If my parents give me blue
eyes instead of brown eyes, if they make me tall instead of medium
height, if they choose a passive over an aggressive personality,
their choices will have a direct, lifelong effect on me. One need
not be a genetic determinist to suggest that people lack the wisdom
to "play God" in this sense. Would Bailey have wanted his parents
to have designed him on a computer, selecting traits that they found
desirable and eliminating those they didn't care for?
The greatest danger of genetic engineering is that we might become
arrogant enough to believe that we can not only remedy nature's
defects but also improve on human nature itself. We should not have
the right to try such experiments out on other people, even our
own offspring. The children are human persons, and to tamper with
their structure in the absence of a clear need — such as to
avoid a specific disease — is a fundamental and impermissible
violation of their integrity.
The ultimate goal of the techno-utopians is to straighten out the
crooked timber of our humanity. This project is likely to fail,
but its success would be even worse: It would mean that we will
have ceased, in any meaningful sense, to be human.
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