Genetic engineering is the art of manipulating a child’s genes to produce traits that parents want. This has the potential to reduce genetic diversity and thus our ability to adapt to the environment, and it has the potential to increase social inequality. Therefore, genetic engineering should be considered carefully.
As genetic engineering technology becomes more advanced, it may be possible in the near future to manipulate a child’s genes to make them taller or smarter. When a parent manipulates a child’s genes before they are born so that they have the traits that the parent wants them to have (disease-free, healthy, stronger, etc.), this is called genetic engineering of the child. Michael Sandel has argued that eugenics is not an attitude of accepting children as gifts, and that it is not right. However, some people have come out in defense of genetic engineering, arguing that it is a way to develop children, just as parents educate them. Advances in technology have brought many benefits to humanity, but they also bring with them ethical issues. I oppose the genetic engineering of children because it reduces the ability of humanity to adapt to its environment by tampering with genetic diversity.
Some people argue that genetic engineering doesn’t take advantage of genetic diversity. They argue that people value different things and want different things, so even if parents are allowed to design their children’s genes, everyone will design their children in different ways. Parents who value the arts are more likely to give their child genes that enhance sensitivity. A parent who values their child’s humanity might give them genes for good character. While these arguments seem to make sense on the surface, there are many problems with them.
As they say, values vary from person to person. However, there are some values that are universally valued because we are all human. These include health, appearance, and wealth. No one wants to get sick or die. No one wants to be sick or die, and no one wants to be ugly. No one wants to be poor and have nothing to eat. Because these are universally desired values, any genetic engineering design that can genetically realize humanity’s desires will inevitably violate genetic diversity. Furthermore, such a design could exacerbate social inequality. Only those who can afford genetic engineering will benefit from it.
Others argue that there are genes that are universally beneficial for environmental adaptation. For example, genes that make us resistant to disease, or genes that improve intelligence. But this argument ignores the diversity and complexity of the environment.
There are no absolute good or bad genes in the environment. For example, the large size of dinosaurs was advantageous in the Mesozoic climate, but disadvantageous during the Ice Age because they lost a lot of heat. Another example is sickle cell anemia: in a malaria-free environment, people without the sickle cell anemia gene are at an advantage, but in a malaria-prone environment, people with the sickle cell anemia gene are at an advantage. It’s unlikely that humans will ever live in only malaria-free environments or only malaria-prone environments (this is the age of globalization), so there’s no guarantee that a particular gene will always be advantageous.
Some argue that with genetic engineering, our genes can keep up with changes in the environment. In reality, our genes are adapted to the environment of the Paleolithic era, not the environment we live in today. Currently, humanity is facing a number of problems because genetic changes have not kept up with environmental changes. Obesity is a prime example of this. The Paleolithic environment that our genes were adapted to was nutrient-poor. It was naturally more favorable for the environment to store excess energy rather than excrete it. In order to store more energy in a limited body, it would have been more advantageous for Paleolithic humans to store energy in the form of fat, which has the highest energy storage per unit mass. So the trait of storing energy in the form of fat survived and remains in humans today. However, this ability to store energy in the form of fat has now become a poison for humanity in the form of obesity. As you know, obesity is now a serious disease that causes many social disabilities and secondary complications such as hyperlipidemia, hypertension, atherosclerosis, diabetes, fatty liver, and joint abnormalities. They claimed that genetic engineering could be used to solve these problems. This argument is tantamount to sacrificing the future to solve today’s problems.
However, this won’t work because the environment is changing “too” fast. Currently, a generation is roughly 30 years, and environmental change is much faster than that. Take the obesity example I mentioned earlier. According to one scholar, humans have been hunting and gathering for 150,000 generations, farming for 5,000 generations, the industrial revolution for 10 generations, and only the last two generations have been living with refined foods. In other words, environmental change is accelerating. At this rate, the environment could change dramatically within a generation. The fact that if 70% of the population is genetically engineered, 97% of the population will have the gene by the third generation shows that genetic engineering is not a means of keeping up with environmental changes.
Another problem with genetic engineering design is that it can interfere with the natural evolution of humans. Through the processes of natural selection and mutation, humans have been adapting to their environment for thousands of years. If these natural processes are disrupted by human intervention, the long-term viability of the human race could be jeopardized.
So far, I’ve been thinking about whether we should genetically engineer our children. I am opposed to genetic engineering of children because it reduces genetic diversity and thus the ability of humanity to adapt to its environment. It has been argued that genetic engineering will not reduce genetic diversity because different people value different things, but this is unlikely to be the case because there are some things that are universally desired by humanity. We’ve also discussed the idea of universally beneficial genes, but there are no such genes. The environment is changing too fast for genetic engineering to keep up with it, so genetic engineering is not the right choice for the future of humanity.
