Fire and Knowledge

The first child whose genes come at least in part from some corporate lab, the first child who has been “enhanced” from that came before—that’s the first child who will glance back over his shoulder and see a gap between himself and human history.

But here’s the really awful part: he won’t be able to look forward, either. He won’t be able to imagine himself connected with those who will come after him. Because, of course, by then there will be better upgrades. They’ll be Windows 2050 to his Atari. He’ll be marooned forever on his own small island, as will all who follow him.

–Bill McKibben, Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age (2003), 64-5

[Genetically engineered] children will, in effect, be assigned a goal by their programmers: “intelligence,” “even temper,” “athleticism.” (As with chickens, the market will doubtless lean in the direction of efficiency. It may be hard to find genes for, say, dreaminess.)

Now two possibilities arise. Perhaps the programming doesn’t work very well, and your kids spells poorly, or turns moody, or can’t hit the inside fastball. In the present world, you just tell yourself that’s who he is. But in the coming world, he’ll be, in essence, a defective product. Do you still accept him unconditionally? Why? If your new Jetta got thirty miles to the gallon instead of the forty it was designed to get, you’d take it back. If necessary, you’d sue. You’d call it a lemon.

Or what if the engineering worked pretty well, but you decided, too late, that you’d picked the wrong package, hadn’t gotten the best features? Would you feel buyer’s remorse if the kid next door had a better ear, a stronger arm?
Say the gene work went a little awry and left you with a kid who had some serious problems; what kind of guilt would that leave you with? Remember, this is not a child created by the random interaction of your genes with those of your partner—this is a child created with specific intent. Does Consumer Reports start rating the various biotech offerings?
What if you had a second child five years after the first, and by that time the upgrades were undeniably improved: How would you feel about the first kid? How would you feel about his new brother, the latest model?

The other outcome—that the genetic engineering works just as you had hoped—seems at least as bad. Now your child is a product. You can take precisely as much pride in her achievements as you take in your dishwashing detergent. It was designed to produce streak-free glassware, and she was designed to be sweet-tempered, social, and smart. And what can she take pride in? Her good grades? She may have worked hard, but she’ll always know that she was specced for good grades. Her kindness to others? Well, yes, it’s good to be kind—but perhaps it’s not much of an accomplishment once the various genes with some link to sociability have been catalogued and manipulated.

–Bill McKibben, Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age (2003), 59-60

So let’s say baby Sophie has a state-of-the-art gene job: her parents paid for the proteins discovered by, say, 2005 that, on average, yielded 10 extra IQ points. By the time Sophie is five, though, scientists will doubtless have discovered ten more genes linked to intelligence. Now anyone with a platinum card can get 20 IQ points, not to mention a memory boost and a permanent wrinkle-free brow. So by the time Sophie is twenty-five and in the job market, she’s already more or less obsolete—the kids coming out of college just plain have better hardware….

It’s not [, Gregory Stock adds,] “so different from upgraded software. You’ll want the new release.” The vision of one’s child as a nearly worthless copy of Windows 95 should make parents fight like hell to make sure we never get started down this path. But the vision gets lost easily in the gushing excitement about “improving” the opportunities for our kids.

–Bill McKibben, Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age (2003), 34-35

Say you’re not ready [to genetically engineer your child]. Say you’re perfectly happy with the prospect of a child who shares the unmodified genes of you and your partner. Say you think that manipulating the DNA of your child might be dangerous, or presumptuous, or icky? How long will you be able to hold that line if the procedure begins to spread among your neighbors?

Maybe not so long as you think: if germline manipulation actually does begin, it seems likely to set off a kind of biological arms race. “Suppose parents could add 30 points to their child’s IQ,” asks the economist Lester Thurow, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Wouldn’t you want to do it? And if you don’t, your child will be the stupidest in the neighborhood.”

That’s precisely what it might feel like to be the parent facing the choice. Individual competition more or less defines the society we’ve built, and in that context love can almost be defined as giving your kids what they need to make their way in the world. Deciding not to soup them up … well, it could come to seem like child abuse.

–Bill McKibben, Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age (2003), 33-34

I’ll be quoting from Bill McKibben’s Enough over the next few weeks. Here are two terms you’ll want to know:

Somatic gene therapy: Somatic gene therapy begins with an existing individual — someone with, say, cystic fibrosis. Researchers try to deliver new, modified genes to some of her cells, usually by putting the genes abroad viruses they inject into the patient, hoping that the viruses will infect the cells and thereby transmit the genes…. [it is], in other words, much like medicine. You take an existing patient with an existing condition, and you in essence try to convince her cells to manufacture the medicine she needs. (McKibben, p. 9)

Germline genetic engineering: “Germ” refers not to microbes, but to the egg and sperm cells, the “germ” cells of the human being, the basic cells from which we “germinate.” Scientists intent on genetic engineering would probably start with a fertilized embryo a week or so old. They would tease apart the cells of that embryo, and then, selecting one, they would add to, delete, or modify some of its genes. They could also insert artificial chromosomes containing predesigned genes. They would then take the cell, place it inside an egg whose nucleus had been removed, and implant the resulting new embryo inside a woman. The embryo would, if all went according to plan, grow into a genetically engineered child…. We began doing it with animals (mice) in 1978, and we’ve managed the trick with most of the obvious mammals, except one. And the only thing holding us back is a thin tissue of ethical guidelines, which some scientists and politicians are working hard to overturn. (McKibben, p. 10)

As early as 1993, a March of Dimes poll found that 43 percent of Americans would engage in genetic engineering “simply to enhance their children’s looks or intelligence.”

–Bill McKibben, Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age (2003), 32