This paper examines the ethical and social dimensions of genetic enhancement and eugenics, tracing the concept from Francis Galton's nineteenth-century coinage through contemporary debates. Drawing on Philip Kitcher's distinction between laissez-faire and utopian eugenics, Gregory Stock's maximalist defense of germline therapy, and Michael Sandel's critique of genetic perfectionism, the paper evaluates competing positions on prenatal testing, germline manipulation, and the enhancement of human traits. It considers dangers such as unequal access, social coercion, and the erosion of moral humility, while also questioning whether broadly available genetic technologies might level social inequalities rather than entrench them.
The word eugenics was coined in 1883 by the English scientist Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. He intended it to denote the "science" of improving the human stock by giving "the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable." Since Galton's day, "eugenics" has become a word of ugly connotations — and deservedly so. Eugenic aims merged with misinterpretations of the new science of genetics to help produce cruelly oppressive and, in the era of the Nazis, barbarous social results. Nonetheless, eugenics continues to figure in social discourse in some proposals for human genetic engineering.1
Philip Kitcher, in The Lives to Come, describes laissez-faire eugenics as the eugenics yet to come in this era of prenatal testing and genetic counseling. It is a form of planning populations. According to Kitcher, when we know how to shape future generations, the character of our descendants will reflect our decisions and the values that those decisions embody.2 Laissez-faire eugenics implies attempts to honor individual reproductive freedoms in selecting traits we would like passed on to our children. Kitcher asks whether this attempt is successful and whether the resources of prenatal testing in affluent societies are equally open to all members of the population. Does laissez-faire eugenics help people make reproductive decisions that are genuinely their own?
There are many dangers associated with laissez-faire eugenics, namely discrimination and coercion. If prenatal testing for genetic diseases is often used by members of more privileged strata of society and far more rarely by the underprivileged, then the genetic conditions the affluent are concerned to avoid will become far more common among the poor — they will become lower-class diseases, other people's problems. Interest in finding treatments or in providing supportive environments for those born with such diseases may well wane. Furthermore, individual choices are not made in a social vacuum, and unless changes in social attitudes keep pace with the proliferation of genetic tests, we can anticipate that many future prospective parents — acting to avoid misery for potential children — will have to bow to social attitudes they reject and resent, and may have to choose abortion. In a world of unequal wealth, unequal access is likely, and social attitudes will probably prove at least partially coercive.3
Decisions about prenatal testing must ultimately turn on a social consensus about what kinds of lives are valuable. We can articulate a principled restriction of biomedical technology that distinguishes proper medical uses from abuses born of social prejudice.4 Testing to see if a fetus carries an allele for Sanfilippo syndrome is justified because the lives led by children with those alleles are sadly truncated and may diminish the quality of life of others. Deciding which types of prenatal testing or molecular intervention are acceptable requires us to ask how the tests and interventions would affect the quality of future lives — what kind of life could a child develop into, given what is known about its genotype and the environments that could be provided?5
Utopian eugenics would use reliable genetic information in prenatal tests equally available to all citizens. Although there would be widespread public discussion of values and the social consequences of decisions, there would be no societally imposed restrictions on reproductive choices — citizens would be educated, not coerced. Finally, there would be universally shared respect for difference, coupled with a public commitment to realizing the potential of all those who are born.6
In contrast to Kitcher's minimalist position, Gregory Stock holds a maximalist position with respect to eugenics. He conceives germline therapy as being widely available and morally permissible on maximalist grounds — that enhancement for acquiring intellectual and physical abilities (as well as for cosmetic reasons) is as justifiable as curing disease. Stock offers many challenges to Kitcher's minimalist position and provides reasons and examples in support of them. According to Stock, widespread use of germline cell therapy would almost certainly raise average performance levels and improve health in coming generations, as well as narrow the gap between those with higher and lower potentials. Moreover, if adult enhancements become broadly available, they will lead to a similar flattening of the distribution of individual endowments.7
A rapid, technology-driven process of genetic design may achieve meaningful group-specific change without reproductive isolation. With genetic refinements accumulating in the laboratory rather than in biological lineages, the spread of gene modules would occur through mimetic rather than biological mechanisms. With the advent of germline engineering, human artificial chromosomes would render laboratory conception obligatory rather than optional, and unpredictability would result from intercourse. As society moves closer to becoming a meritocracy, the most talented will mate, and over time this self-sorting will divide society, increasing the distance between the more gifted and the less. Narrowly limited genetic screening and enhancement technology would accelerate such divisions and reinforce privilege, whereas broadly available technology would counteract them.8
Stock argues that, safety aside, there is no obvious reason why we should not try to give our future children the talents we did not have or eliminate deficiencies that held us back.9 By endowing children with improved capabilities, we would take a major step toward equalizing life's possibilities. When we are able to choose our offspring's genetic predispositions, we will probably opt to avoid most of the genetic disabilities and vulnerabilities that afflict us today.10 Stock further asserts that as sophisticated embryo screening and germline manipulation begin to enrich enhancement possibilities, clusters of attributes will be reinforced, which in time will expand rather than reduce human diversity.11
I tend to agree with Stock. At the risk of sounding technophilic, genetic technologies are affecting society at a pace faster than either social norms or the legal system can keep up with — and I think this is for the better. Take, for example, the Huntington's allele: any person carrying this allele has a 100% chance of acquiring the disease. Genetic screening and germline therapy provide reasonable solutions for preventing the birth of an embryo with the Huntington's allele. While Kitcher would agree with this, I do not believe in imposing bans on genetic technologies on grounds of social prejudice. I believe that if the technology exists, parents have a right — or even a prerogative — to enhance the traits of their child according to their own values.
"Sandel warns enhancement erodes humility and responsibility"
"Author rebuts Sandel using Stock's leveling argument"
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