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Here are some excerpts from "Redesigning Humans" written in 2002 by Gregory Stock, former director of UCLA’s Program on Medicine, Technology and Society:
Future parents … will be able to select their children’s [genetic] modules from an expanding common library of enhancements. (p. 192)
People’s genetics would become a manifestation of their parents’ values and predilections. (p. 191)
[There will be] a genetic bazaar where all parents can obtain equivalent talents and potentials for their children. (p. 190)
Rare, special attributes such as photographic memory or extraordinary athletic ability may become both more extreme and more commonplace. (p. 193)
Once we can fashion our children’s biological predispositions, many cultural and personal influences will feed directly into biology. (p. 194)
Future sources of parental dissatisfaction are easy to predict. Some parents will forego germinal choice technology and end up wishing they had used it. (p. 148)
If such interventions become commonplace, the result will be revolutionary, because it will be a major step toward equalizing life’s possibilities. (p. 190)
Provision of free universal access to … [germinal choice technology (GCT)] would align better with our ideals of equal opportunity for children and might be surprisingly affordable. (p. 186)
The gifted of today ultimately may not welcome such a leveling, because it would diminish the edge their children enjoy and make society very competitive, even for the best endowed. (p. 190)
Strong voices will oppose [germinal choice technology (GCT)], but most of the warnings … will come from people with the most to lose – the well-endowed elite. (p. 190)
Critics like Leon Kass … aren’t worried that this technology will fail, but that it will succeed, and succeed gloriously ... [and] tear the fabric of our society. (p. 12)
Policymakers sometimes mistakenly think that they have a choice about whether germinal technologies will come into being. They do not. (p. 172)
Prohibitions are easy political gestures. But once GCT arrives, enforcement will be nearly impossible. (p. 166)
Government abuse is what we must fear, not germinal choice technology (GCT). (p. 199)
Direct human germline manipulations may still be a decade or two away, but methods of choosing specific genes in an embryo are in use today to prevent disease. (p. 2)
Artificial chromosomes … might allow cheap enhancement for the many. (p. 186)
The arrival of safe, reliable germline technology will signal the beginning of human self-design. (p. 3)
William Saletan in Slate has bravely grappled with the racial achievement gap. Although everyone is morally equal despite their race, dramatic differences in NAEP test scores, SAT, GRE and other tests persist between the races. According to Saletan:
Research is constantly finding new gene-trait correlations and group differences. If your faith in equality depends on an ethnically or racially even distribution of all ability-influencing genes, you're in trouble ... People of your race may be on average faster, smarter, or more volatile than people of my race.
If this is true, it will be hard to argue that differences in achievement outcomes between the races are due to discrimination, since they're actually caused by genetic group differences.
Yet race is a poor proxy for genetic differences. It's too blunt an instrument. In the age of Obama, when a half-white man can proudly call himself black, Saletan asks whether race is still a meaningful concept:
Why categorize and measure students by race? Aren't there better ways to organize the data? … Does that category really help? And what message does it send to kids when headlines assert a persistent "racial gap"?
Then he answers his own question: “We're prone to tribalism”. We like to think of ourselves as part of a group. We identify with our race, because it's like our own extended family.
But self-identifying with race also has consequences. It invites stereotypes. According to Larry Elder,
[blacks are only 13 percent of the population, yet] account for 37.2 percent of all those arrested for violent crimes, 54.4 percent of all robbery arrestees, and are the known offenders in 51.3 percent of all murders
It's a short leap for someone reading that volatility may be genetic to erroneously conclude that all blacks are genetically more volatile, which accounts for their higher crime rate. And that's a big problem. Humans have an innate tendency toward prejudice.
So, like Saletan, I wish tests and surveys would stop tracking race. I wish society would drop the whole idea of race. Being more “volatile” is not a defining black characteristic. It’s probably caused by a set of genes that both blacks and whites share, perhaps in different frequencies on average. We should understand volatility and intelligence in terms of underlying genes, not race.
But tribalism is also part of human nature. Society will not easily forgo its racial distinctions. Perhaps we’ve reached the limit of where our innate categories of understanding will bend to reason, until we alter our nature itself. But genetic enhancement is still decades away. So the immediate future will be about expediency – full of its distasteful Missouri Compromises – not moral truth.
Interestingly, Saletan reaches the same conclusion that I do:
the convergence of meritocracy with genetics is leading us inexorably toward eugenics.
I don't like the term eugenics, with its implication of government-sponsored tyranny. But I do believe in personal reproductive choice, including genetic enhancement of one's children. This won't happen without a fight, however, as society's genetic elites (perhaps with good intentions) attempt to limit access to genetic testing, ban reproductive choice, and ultimately maintain their genetic advantage. Fewer than 30% of adults has a college degree, because the genes for traits like persistence, tenacity, and ability to defer gratification are rare today.
Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, was recently sent a (flawed) open letter requesting greater oversight of genetic tests:
At the core of personalized medicine is advanced [genetic] diagnostic testing that improves a physician's ability to assess whether an individual patient is or is not likely to benefit from treatments for his or her disease or condition. Advanced diagnostic testing is becoming the standard of care for many diseases.
Accurate, reliable, and timely advanced diagnostics offer enormous promise, but poor quality testing can harm patients and waste scarce resources. Therefore, it is critical that regulatory oversight of these innovations (and innovators) strike the right balance between assuring patient safety and embracing policies that encourage the incorporation of rapidly advancing scientific methods and knowledge.
Sounds reasonable. We all want "accurate, reliable, and timely advanced diagnostics" for disease. So what's the problem?
The problem is that the letter makes several wrong assumptions about what these genetic tests are all about. Here are my issues:
It's the claim about the gene function that the letter writers are trying to control, under the guise of regulating genetic tests. The government is being urged to regulate all claims on gene function. Yet we have over 20,000 genes. Is the government going to control information on all of these? Again, most genetic diversity is not disease-related.
Why not allow anyone to make claims on what our genes do, in a great marketplace of ideas? We're smart enough to consider the source, and make our own decisions. We don't need the government intervening to block the free flow of information about ourselves.
There's also the question of fairness. Some genetic variants give you greater energy-level, intelligence, charisma, and resilience, often leading to higher pay and social status. Since most doctors already have these innate qualities, they're simply trying to keep their talents rare (and salary high), by having the government block access to genetic information by the rest of us.
David Brooks, writing in the New York Times, tries his best to summarize the latest research on genius:
The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q. ... Instead, it’s deliberate practice ...
Public discussion is smitten by genetics and what we’re “hard-wired” to do. And it’s true that genes place a leash on our capacities. But the brain is also phenomenally plastic. We construct ourselves through behavior.
In Brooks' view, you can take anyone off the street and turn them into a genius. All you have to do is "create a sense of affinity" and infuse them with a "desperate need for success" and arm them with "ambition". Once you've instilled this passion, they will be driven to practice, practice, practice. And with practice comes talent.
Even if you ignore contradictory research (also in the Times) that genius brains are physically different from average brains (and that "the ability to focus for long periods of time" is probably also innate), Brooks' argument is fundamentally flawed. First, how do you get someone interested or motivated in something? It has to resonate with their innate desires and traits. You can't just arm someone with ambition. It has to come from within. Genes place a leash on our capacities, because they determine what things interest us enough to practice them.
If someone gives you a pat on the back and words of encouragement, chances are you'll practice for a while just to please them. But unless you're self-motivated and innately self-confident, you'll stop practicing as soon as it gets lonely to do so. Yet a true genius doesn't need approval. He or she is a force of nature, and practices day and night without approbation.
What Brooks doesn't understand is that our genes (and the body and brain they develop) are designed to be triggered by environmental cues. Since we all differ genetically, we have different interests and motivations and passions. Motivation is innate, it's not something you can instill. It's a rare quality, which is why leaders are so highly paid for their rare gene variants. This obviously makes the case for greater redistribution of wealth even as it undermines the basic philosophical foundations of both major political parties.
