The costly appliance of science | ||
| Genetic selection has some alarming implications - and could widen the wealth gap | ||
| beyond repair. | ||
| Peter Singer | ||
| 1 | The advance of knowledge is often a mixed blessing. Over the past 60 years, nuclear | |
| physics has been one obvious example of this truth. Over the next 60 years, genetics | ||
| may be another. | ||
| 2 | Today, enterprising firms offer, for a fee, to tell you about your genes. They claim | |
| that this knowledge will help you live longer and better. You might, for example, have | ||
| extra checkups to detect early signs of the diseases that you are most at risk of | ||
| contracting, or you could alter your diet to reduce that risk. If your chances of a long | ||
| lifespan are not good, you might buy more life insurance, or even retire early to have | ||
| enough time to do what you always wanted to do. | ||
| 3 | Defenders of privacy have worked, with some success, to prevent insurance | |
| companies from requiring genetic testing before issuing life insurance. But if individuals | ||
| can do tests from which insurance companies are barred, and if those who receive | ||
| adverse genetic information then buy additional life insurance without disclosing the | ||
| tests that they have taken, they are cheating other holders of life insurance. Premiums | ||
| will have to increase to cover the losses, and those with a good genetic prognosis may | ||
| opt out of life insurance to avoid subsidising the cheats, driving premiums higher still. | ||
| 4 | __5__. The United States government accountability office sent identical genetic | |
| samples to several of the testing companies, and got widely varying, and mostly | ||
| useless, advice. But as the science improves, the insurance problem will have to be | ||
| faced. | ||
| 5 | Selecting our children raises more profound ethical problems. This is not new. In | |
| developed countries, the routine testing of older pregnant women, combined with the | ||
| availability of abortion, has significantly reduced the incidence of conditions such as | ||
| Down’s syndrome. In some regions of India and China where couples are anxious to | ||
| have a son, selective abortion has been the ultimate form of sexism, and has been | ||
| practised to such an extent that a generation is coming of age in which males face a | ||
| shortage of female partners. | ||
| 6 | Selection of children need not involve abortion. For several years, some couples at | |
| risk of passing a genetic disease on to their children have used in vitro fertilisation, | ||
| producing several embryos that can be tested for the faulty gene and implanting in the | ||
| woman’s uterus only those without it. Now couples are using this technique to avoid | ||
| passing on genes that imply a significantly elevated risk of developing certain forms of | ||
| cancer. | ||
| 7 | Since everyone carries some adverse genes, there is no clear line between | |
| selecting against a child with above-average risks of contracting a disease and selecting | ||
| for a child with unusually rosy health prospects. __7__, genetic selection will inevitably | ||
| move towards genetic enhancement. | ||
| 8 | For many parents, nothing is more important than giving their child the best possible | |
| start in life. They buy expensive toys to maximise their child’s learning potential and | ||
| spend much more on private schools or after-school tutoring in the hope that he or she | ||
| will excel in the tests that determine entry to elite universities. It may not be long before | ||
| we can identify genes that improve the odds of success in this quest. | ||
| 9 | Many will condemn this as a resurgence of “eugenics”, the view, especially popular | |
| in the early 20th century, that hereditary traits should be improved through active | ||
| intervention. So it is, in a way, and in the hands of authoritarian regimes, genetic | ||
| selection could resemble earlier forms of eugenics, with their advocacy of odious, | ||
| pseudoscientific official policies, particularly concerning “racial hygiene”. | ||
| 10 | In liberal, market-driven societies, however, eugenics will not be coercively imposed | |
| by the state for the collective good. Instead, it will be the outcome of parental choice | ||
| and the workings of the free market. If it leads to healthier, smarter people with better | ||
| problem-solving abilities, that will be a good thing. But even if parents make choices that | ||
| are good for their children, there could be perils as well as blessings. | ||
| 11 | In the case of sex selection, it is easy to see that couples who independently choose | |
| the best for their own child can produce an outcome that makes all their children worse | ||
| off than they would have been if no one could select the sex of their child. Something | ||
| similar could happen with other forms of genetic selection. Since above-average height | ||
| correlates with above-average income, and there is clearly a genetic component to | ||
| height, it is not fanciful to imagine couples choosing to have taller children. The outcome | ||
| could be a genetic “arms race” that leads to taller and taller children, with significant | ||
| environmental costs in the additional consumption required to fuel larger human beings. | ||
| 12 | The most alarming implication of this mode of genetic selection, however, is that | |
| only the rich will be able to afford it. The gap between rich and poor, already a challenge | ||
| to our ideas of social justice, will become a chasm that mere equality of opportunity will | ||
| be powerless to bridge. That is not a future that any of us should approve. | ||
| The Guardian |