Maybe you’ve heard. It won’t be long before expectant parents can remodel their fetus as easily as picking out wallpaper for the nursery. Always hated your nose? Well, you can make sure Junior won’t be stuck with it. Worried about paying for your kids’ university educations? Boost their IQs so they can get some decent scholarships. “Why, that’s terrible!” I proclaim, dredging up references to Aldous Huxley and Nazi eugenics programs. But then I stop. Sometimes it takes a while to realize you’re a hypocrite.
You see, I don’t plan to have children of my own. I have Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a degenerative nerve disorder with no cure. It is hereditary. Any child of mine has at least a 50 per cent chance of being born with it.
I will be in pain every day for the rest of my life. Every year there will be fewer things I can do. Eventually, should I be fortunate enough to live that long, there is an excellent chance I will be disabled. Why in God’s name would I risk putting someone else through that? Think of the possibilities, proponents of this technique say. Think of the suffering we can prevent if we can keep people from being born with muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, heart disease. In my own way, I guess I’m after the same thing.
Clearly, I’m in no position to criticize. I certainly wouldn’t want to be the one to tell some kid with spina bifida that nothing should have been done to keep him out of that wheelchair. I can’t even give you any high-minded nonsense about becoming a stronger person through adversity, because I personally have done no such thing. Life is hard enough—we need every advantage we can get, right?
I don’t have any good arguments against mucking about with our DNA. I have vague forebodings (which aren’t known for convincing anybody of anything). I mean, today the trouble is diseases, tomorrow maybe it’s excess body fat. How long will it be before we’re hearing about the hot new personality traits this season? And before you dismiss me as some hysterical neo-Luddite doomsayer, let me say that I have every respect for scientific achievement. I know what it has done for that magic thing we call “quality of life.” I’ve got my aspirin and my indoor plumbing and I like them just fine, thank you very much.
I like progress. Couldn’t it be better directed, though? We might, for instance, try and make life tolerable for the better part of the world’s population before we set about making it any more perfect for ourselves.
I guess what I want to say is let’s not worry about the technology; let’s worry about what we plan to do with it.
