On Rights and the Right to be Genetically Engineered


On Rights and the Right to Be Genetically Engineered: A Transhumanist Perspective

Imagine a scenario in which a mother could be given medicine to ensure that her child would be born without debilitating congenital illnesses. In such a world, should access to this medicine be considered a human right?

Before you jump to any conclusions, consider the question reformulated in this way:

Imagine a scenario in which the technology existed to genetically engineer embryos to ensure that they would be born without debilitating congenital illnesses. In such a world, should being genetically engineered be considered a human right?

Intuitions may differ with regard to these two questions. I am interested in the distinction between them, and in potential answers to both of them.

How are the questions distinct? Of course, one striking difference is that medicine seems to be a more pleasant turn of phrase than being genetically engineered. The former evokes Florence Nightingale, while the latter calls to mind Frankenstein’s monster. The rhetorical distinction is loaded with terrible baggage grounded in the tragic history of the19th and 20th centuries. Anxiety over the very concept of genetic engineering is at least part of the reason that documents like the European Union’s convention on human rights and biomedicine have historically prohibited altering the gene pool as a crime against “human dignity,” as if the matter were totally non-contentious.[1] By the same token, the US National Institutes of Health refuses to fund gene-editing research on embryos.[2] This terror at the very prospect of genetic engineering stems at least in part from awareness of the evils historically committed in the name of pseudo-scientific eugenics. The aims of transhumanists, however, are not those of the racist eugenicists; the latter attempted to murderously destroy human difference, while the former at their best seek to level the playing field between individuals in a welcoming, non-judgmental, and racially neutral context offering new medicines to as many people as possible as non-invasively as possible.

Genetic engineering is a form of medicine presaged by current forms of treatment. Even now, for example, there exist tests empowering couples to choose between embryos before they are implanted into the womb on the basis of how statistically likely they are to develop there.[3] At the same time, fetuses are often screened for developmental disorders, etc. Though the associated technologies are in their infant stages (pardon me for a pun), the ability to select between embryos on the basis of their complete genetic profiles and to even begin editing those profiles through the use of methods like the CRISPR interference technique may eventually become a widespread social norm. This adds a sense of immediacy to the first form of the question and raises a variety of further questions. For example, to what degree should embryonic selection be subsidized by insurance? If national laws forbid parents from selecting between embryos on the basis of certain genetic qualities, would they in fact be justified in doing so? How can we edit an embryo’s DNA when the embryo itself cannot give consent? Is consent a matter of concern for an entity which according to many intuitions is little more sophisticated than an individual sperm or egg? If consent is a meaningful concept for an embryo, how can we justify compelling an embryo to be born in the first place? Etc. At the same time, the second form of the question differs from the first insofar as it seems to me to imply that parents would have an active obligation to engineer their children if it were true, which is a contentious prospect, particularly given the precarious current state of the associated technologies.

It is my conviction that social progress at its best evolves in such a manner that people of all creeds, kinds, and classes should be increasingly empowered to harness the transformative power of technology and medicine to enhance their lives and protect themselves from random accidents of fortune. This is why I believe in transhumanism, the central arguments of which are bound, for me, to the notions that sensitivity to unwanted pain should inform institutional policy, which in turn ought to aim to minimize citizens’ agony and maximize their happiness by means of the expansion of their potential to make meaningful contributions to society at large through the expression of their “rights;” and that the most effective means of doing so is the promotion of education and the development of new medicines and other beneficial technologies created at the most efficient rate possible through the promotion of synergy among the independent institutions of economics, politics, and academics, collaboration hitherto confined to times of total warfare, non-coincidentally bound to conditions conducive to rapid eras of technical progress. These ideas are investigated both in the first part of the essay, where I explore the characteristics of human rights, and in the conclusion, when I reflect on future policy.

In the middle part of the essay, I suggest that access to effective genetic engineering in the form of screened in vitro embryonic selection should likely be considered a human right even at the present juncture, and certainly when gene-editing becomes a cultural norm. Yet I also come to the conclusion that the right to be genetically engineered cannot currently be understood according to the traditional thematics of human rights for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that given contemporary levels of technology, it is not possible to genetically modify an embryo in the womb itself, and even the most cautious in vitro modification is hugely controversial. Embryos destined to be born might be argued to have the “burgeoning right” to at least be born in possession of a sound mind and all five senses in working order if there exists medicine to ensure this, though the human right of parents to give birth to children completely naturally might trump such burgeoning rights according to the intuitions of different cultures depending on the degree of invasiveness of the associated technologies. Though a future age may think my intuition quaint or even prejudiced, if being engineered were any kind of right in 2016, it would suggest that the results of natural intercourse which are always hazardous and random in the status quo would somehow be declared morally off-limits, a conclusion too advanced for the current century, and too intolerant for any century.

If genetic engineering becomes cheap, effective, and efficient enough, however, I imagine that the vast majority of parents will surely adopt it in short order to maximize their offspring’s chances for health and happiness. Those who choose not to do so will likely be in such a small minority that the creation of a coercive apparatus compelling them to do so would only sully the futurist cause and the interests of freedom and diversity in general. For this reason, whether or not it is a human right to be genetically engineered to enjoy certain baselines of existence (a question depending to a degree on the state of the available technology), the rights of parents to prenatal genetic healthcare should always be considered paramount.

I. On Human Rights and Access to Genetic Engineering for One’s Children


I seldom encountered a persuasive argument that anything could be considered a “human right” beyond appeals to authority, intuition, or social utility. For example, consider the right to freedom of expression. Why does it exist? One might say that the right is enshrined in documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and has been fundamental to the Western tradition since the days of Greece and Rome. But these would be appeals to authority. Simply asserting that something has long been considered a norm does not necessarily mean that the norm is just or universally applicable. Another might say that the ability to openly communicate feelings and opinions is fundamental to the operation of democratic forms of government, and that a free marketplace of ideas will lead in the long term to the best discourse and the most progress for society at large. But these would all be appeals to social utility. A right should be something fundamental to all individuals qua their humanity, and not necessarily something grounded in what is best for society as a whole—otherwise, for example, things like gross public torture could be justified for the sake of preserving national security through the promotion of deterrence. A final person might say that we are all fundamentally free to express ourselves in a state of nature, and society exists to defend our liberty rather than to infringe upon it. But these would be appeals to our intuitions about what constitutes the state of nature and what the goals of an ideal society should be in relation to that fanciful construct.

If the core arguments of cultural and moral relativism should be taken seriously, it is difficult to imagine how the existence of human rights can be universally defended through appeals to logic alone. Even in the relatively straightforward case of freedom of expression, it is clear that there exist gross differences between cultures with respect to intuitions about what constitutes the limits of acceptability. While most societies would agree that the freedom to yell “fire!” in a crowded theater in hopes of inciting a panic should be curtailed by force of law, the question of whether incendiary hate speech or religious slander should be tolerated is a matter of hotly contested opinion. In a postmodern sense, asserting that something is a right is tantamount to coercively imposing your “truth” onto others, and with every assertion of moral authority comes discursive baggage and problematization associated with the expression of power. If everyone has a “right” to be genetically engineered, for example, what does that mean about the “rights” of parents to decide about what is best for their own developing embryos by deciding not to genetically engineer them? And what might the “right” of an embryo to be genetically engineered imply about the “right” to abort that embryo altogether? Or about the right of a child to sue parents for wrongful birth? Some “rights” are mutually exclusive with each other, and our intuitions about which rights to privilege will surely diverge depending on our respective philosophical, moral, and social perspectives. To assert the existence of a right is ultimately a deeply political action.

Defenders of universal human rights must inevitably grapple with these relativistic thinkers, who insist that “morality” is ultimately something manufactured, constructed to suit the intuitions of the culture which originates that morality, and thus the product of a kind of self perpetuating cycle where doctrine recapitulates and reinforces custom, and custom recapitulates and reinforces power. It comes as no coincidence that that which is called right or wrong, good or evil, often parallels the values that would best prop up mighty individuals at the head of great social hierarchies. An example of this phenomenon is the appropriation of Christianity by Roman imperial authorities in the fourth century AD, when the government emphasized aspects of the doctrine most amenable to the ends of the increasingly authoritarian state. Injunctions to be obedient to slavemasters were accentuated at the expense of, say, calls for the rich to radically renounce their possessions. In any time or place, the powers that be will pick and choose what religious laws to emphasize and which to let slip to the wayside. Yet beyond asserting that one’s moral practice is in line with God’s law, philosophers , politicians, and prophets have all had great difficulty proposing a set of concrete principles universally compelling to all rational members of every human culture.

Of course, the great achievements of Locke and the eighteenth century revolutionaries who followed him cemented the idea of universal human rights to life, liberty, and property in the popular imagination. But on close examination, where do these rights really come from, and what are their limits? Are they in fact universal in any meaningful sense, or are they constructed to suit the exigencies of specific geopolitical situations?

The difficulties inherent in these kinds of questions inspire many down the road of moral relativism. But I cannot find it in my heart to follow in their footsteps, even if I agree with them that “rights” are ultimately constructed, partly on the basis of appeals to authority, partly on the basis of intuitions about fairness, and partly on the basis of social utility given the current level of technological development. Setting aside appeals to authority, let’s examine intuitions about fairness and the relationship between rights and social utility.

The concept of the veil of ignorance might be employed to suggest why rights might be afforded to others in a just society from a purely rational perspective, on the assumption that without a set social identity, an individual is a kind of “pure subject” whose intuitions are not self-interested. It stands to reason that if we were to design a just society without foreknowledge of our social identity, it would be one which would ensure a level playing field for all members from at least certain vantage points. This idea might be employed to defend, for example, the promotion of certain social welfare programs, since the threat that you might be born indigent suggests that blinded by the veil of ignorance, you would prefer for such programs to exist than the alternative. However, from an anonymous rational perspective, one might equally well value being born into a society that taxes its people less and encourages scientific innovation more, under the theory that technological progress ultimately alleviates more burdens than any well meaning lawmaker, and that the more entrepreneurs are taxed, the less they might be capable of taking risks and investing in new technologies. So, the veil of ignorance does not necessarily illuminate how an ideal society should be constructed without avoiding the perils of subjectivity, for no pure subjectivity can exist.

How then can the specter of individualistic intuition be escaped? It seems to me that intuition can be narrow, grounded in one very iconoclastic viewpoint, or broad, found across many cultures. Most broadly speaking of all, from the perspective of all mortals with hopes and dreams capable of feeling pain, nature left to its own devices is often more beautiful than it is good. Human societies join together to promote the ends of frail human beings, since the law of the jungle favors only the strong, and there is no justice but the victory of the sharpest jaws. The laws and moral principles crafted by different civilizations are in some sense a reflection of the local geography (for example, we might expect to find values associated with hospitality in harsh terrains), the customs of neighboring cultures (for example, ideas about strategies to appease the gods might be borrowed from a nearby civilization), and spontaneous indigenous invention (for example, a unique creed might be written in a specific culture.)

Yet it further seems to me that given the randomness of birth and the fundamental equality of all mortals with respective to their frailty, most major world religions, legal systems, and moral philosophies emphasize the imperative of not treating others in ways that you yourself would not want to be treated under the same circumstances. This was Hillel’s silver rule; Jesus expanded upon it by actively urging people to treat others as they themselves would have themselves be treated. (But how one would like to be treated is not necessarily how others would like to be treated, and in this ambiguity there often proved to be much room for oppression and consternation as one culture tried to foist its beliefs onto another with threats of gunfire and hellfire.)

As a human capable of feeling pain, my intuition is that given the choice between two paths, the road associated with the least amount of unwanted pain for the smallest number of humans and the greatest amount of happiness for the most people should be chosen if there is no other real difference between the branching roads. Of course, the fantasy of the Aztecs was that their gory sacrifices appeased the gods and upheld the peace and prosperity of the state and cosmos alike; in the case of the ancient Roman games, the message was sent to the plebs that social outcasts would not be tolerated, leading, reasoned the Caesars, to less pain in the long run by deterring others from emulating the victims of the lions. This was a dark spin on traditional utilitarian arguments that emphasize the importance of maximizing benefit. Unfortunately, what constitutes “benefit” or utility is obviously subject to debate.

But perhaps we can all concur as rational and cooperative human beings capable of feeling pain that disutility in the form of unwanted pain should be minimized if it all possible, and particularly when there is no rationally proven difference between two paths except that one contains more unwanted pain than the other for the greater number of people for no greater purpose whatsoever than upholding brute hierarchies of power in a terroristic context. When considering the existence of a social institution associated with the oppression of a victimized minority group which claims to be in pain, ask yourself what supposedly virtuous ends that oppression serves—if the answer is chiefly “supporting the powers that be by instilling obedience to convention through terror,” the institution is likely an oppressive rather than a progressive one, particularly when its victims are random people who broke no law. This perspective begins to make the Aztec pyramids and the Roman Colosseum seem like reprehensible institutions regardless of one’s cultural perspective, though the Aztecs claimed their rites upheld a sacred cosmic balance, and the Romans emphasized the importance of their spectacles as a social leveler. Ultimately, though, the institutions inculcated more vice and dehumanization than virtue and love, and hence led to a path of greater pain and misery than more humane and joyous alternatives. (Indeed, Christianity’s elimination of both institutions stands among its greatest achievements.)

Insofar as all of this is true, what could be more painful, more brutal, or more bound to terror than a path entangled in the tendrils of the circumstantial genetic jungle? A world without genetic engineering is one in which we are all effective sacrificial victims to the romantic notion of an unchanging, single, sacred Human Nature, and in which we are all gladiators armed for the battle of existence unevenly by an indifferent mob of sperm and eggs. Inaction in the face of our slavery is horrifying, but justified by the fact that we take the horrors of life for granted as a necessity because they have accompanied civilization from time immemorial, and dystopian science fiction has made us fear a better future.

The injunction “do unto your neighbor as you would have your neighbor do unto you” becomes less problematized from the perspective of affording each other rights and freedoms than from the vantage point of trying to hoist specific religions upon one another. Behind a veil of ignorance, for all of the difficulty of finding common ground beyond individual subjectivity, one thing that most people would likely agree upon is that regardless of who they are destined to become, at the point they are all compelled to live in an unjust world, they should at least be afforded fundamental freedoms in line with the technological progress of their age if they do not infringe upon the freedoms of others, in addition to certain safeguards against unwanted pain, under the principle that they should be compensated for being forced to exist in the first place, and they will be happiest the more readily they are empowered to grapple with the vagaries of fortune, and the more protected they are from the brutality of illness. If this is the case, one would seem to prefer a society in which genetic engineering were at least a possibility, since if someone is going to be compelled to be born, he or she would likely hope for a healthy genetic profile. A world in which such engineering were forbidden on face would lead to more random misery, and hence a path of greater pain for more people. And for what? To uphold an unjust status quo in which random minorities monopolize healthy genetic profiles at the expense of the majority, who are obedient to the supposed necessity of being slaves to the genotypes bestowed by nature because it is “dignified” to be the dupe of chance.

Transhumanism accentuates the inherent benefits of new medicine ensuring a baseline of existence free of gross genetic illness. In the future, perhaps an enhanced human imagination itself will lead to less human suffering in the long term, since more medicines produced by more geniuses will mean that we will be increasingly liberated from the genetic and circumstantial wheel of fortune, our leaders channeling their energies into technological research bound to life-affirming constructive technologies rather than those leading to existential destruction. The more inclusive of potentially meaningful contributions the academy, government, and market become, the more rapidly all of this will be achieved. In the future, robotics and computing will transform the landscape of what it even means to be human. We must embrace the idea that it implies more than the brute fact of our animalistic existence. The true “human” is the “human imagination” in an age in which our species’ spirit is empowered to transcend and transform its very form. From the bounty of technological progress and automation can come human liberation and transcendence if the transition into the new epoch is handled with mercy and a sense of equity. The more happy, healthy, and intelligent humans are born, the more meaningful contributions to the arts and sciences can be made, and the less disutility there will be for everyone on earth.

II. On the Right To Be Engineered

Genetic-Engineering.jpgIn recognition of all of this, I want to call conscious attention to the fact that because I am a transhumanist, I want to privilege a perspective on this question of genetic engineering that would do the most to further a movement which, as I understand it, calls for increasing access to pioneering medicines for all people.   At the same time, however, in addition to considering this “political” dimension to the question, I also want my opinion to be grounded as much as possible in the use of logic that would be meaningful for all rational, compassionate individuals. As I have said, beyond appeals to authority, I think that while “rights” are partially socially constructed, they can still be grounded in fundamental and perhaps even universal human intuitions about fairness. Ultimately, they are a form of compensation. No one asked to be born, but we are all compelled to exist on a planet in which gross inequities exist and physical and emotional pain run rampant and many of our dreams do not come true. So long as we live, we agree to play a game whose rules we did not write, and in the midst of this struggle we feel some sense of empathy and commiseration for other sailors, who are all in the same leaky boat as we are.

Humans are mostly self-interested, but also quite social and cooperative, which can sometimes run against self-interest. I believe that this is the real reason we value an abstract universal “right” to things like freedom of expression. Our intuitions as rational humans capable of feeling pain tell us that it is wrong for the strong to randomly oppress the weak and for the majority to silence all dissent, and our social structures mandate that such a state of affairs cannot long endure in harmony with progress and willful cooperation. With respect to society at large, the community could not function without legal and political institutions to ensure that might alone did not determine justice, or the many who are weak would eventually overthrow the few who are strong. With respect to our rational individuality, we would all like to be treated as dignified autonomous agents whose perspectives are worthy of respect, and so we value the rights of others to the same freedoms that we value for ourselves, providing a model for friendly reciprocity and preemptively defending ourselves from the retribution of agents who would be right to resist dehumanization.

With all this being said, we can consider the case of genetic engineering along analogous lines. People who believe that being genetically engineered is a right might present the following arguments. No one asked to be born, but not only do we compel our children to exist in the first place on earth as it is, we also compel them to be members of society with all of its inequities, and to follow its laws, which are often unjust. In return for the twin sacrifice of existing at all and functioning in a community that might constantly disappoint and pigeonhole them, individuals are repaid by society by being legally assured of certain rights—freedom of speech, the right to hold property, etc., privileges which would in fact be undermined by the brutality of sheer force and randomness in a world without laws and strong community life.

The right to be genetically engineered would be directly in line with these other kinds of rights. By genetically engineering embryos, we would compensate future humans for forcing them into existences that they did not choose. We would ensure that they would grow up to be individuals best equipped to pursue their happiness through the unhindered use of their five senses in bodies that are free from physical pain. Our community’s body of scientific knowledge could liberate them from the brutality of the circumstantial and genetic wheel of fortune with all of its inequities and empower them to begin life on a level playing field. Behind a veil of ignorance, it would seem reasonable that most individuals would rather be born in a world which ensured that he or she was healthy and in possession of all five senses than one in which the matter was left to random chance. For all of these reasons, the right to be genetically engineered could be understood as something fundamental. Indeed, it might be especially important that genetic engineering be articulated as a right, or the fruits of genetic engineering might only be enjoyed by a select few instead of guaranteed to all members of society by the government. This is particularly true since in the deeper future, in the thematic shadow of increasing automation, higher degrees of intelligence than ever before may be needed to secure employment, and the restriction of such abilities to the wealthy could set the stage for revolution.

Beyond these arguments, we could also bring up reasons related to social utility in the form of fewer people born in need of constant expensive medical attention; the creation of a larger population of hardy and ingenious agents able to make meaningful contributions to the arts and sciences in the long run; and even appeals to authority in the form of the traditional relationship between the development of new technologies and the extension of rights to new groups. (In fact, for those who consider embryos fundamentally human-like in nature, the idea of their right to medicine before birth seems especially compelling, in contradiction to the idea that certain religious perspectives might, on face, reject genetic engineering. One would rather safely engineer a single embryo if possible than choose between several on their basis of their genetic profiles and abort the rest.)

However, while these are good reasons why parents should have the right to engineer their children, there are nevertheless other reasons to believe that being genetically engineered should not be articulated as a universal human right just yet. We cannot assume that the intuition that it is best to transcend nature is universally valid from all perspectives. Even behind a veil of ignorance, a rational person might choose to be born into a society which radically valued parental rights rather than in a world which might coercively mandate forms of genetic engineering without sensitivity to the long term health risks in the form of, say, the consequences of meddling with linked genes. If the right to be genetically engineered were taken seriously and enforced by the government, the loss to individual parental rights would be severe. Certain disorders along the autism spectrum and illnesses such a bipolar disorder are often associated with great ingeniousness—the automatic elimination of all genes demonized as pathogenic might result in a less imaginative, diverse community in the long term, to say nothing of leading to a slippery slope where parents will increasingly deliver genetically similar children, more prone to be wiped out by random circumstance in the form of disease.

At the same time, insofar as even the mandatory use of inoculations is controversial in our present age, trust in the transhumanist movement would likely be greatly undermined in a world in which its adherents began clamoring for the rights of all embryos to be engineered given the primitive current state of technology; in fact, there would likely be acute and active resistance to its measures among parents, retarding the movement to bring medicine to more people in the long run. To make matters worse, the idea that being genetically engineered is a right carries prejudiced assumptions about the inherent value of one form of rational conscious life over another, suggesting that those who are engineered are so superior that all beings have an inherent right to be just like them. Anyone with mentally handicapped loved ones knows that in the most important ways, all people are equal. At the same time, implying that the embryo has a right to anything at all might imply value judgments about “personhood” that would touch upon the abortion debate (though one could make an argument that there is a distinction between embryos who will be brought to full term and embryos in general.)

Despite all of this, however, I am deeply persuaded by arguments that in a world in which people did not ask to be born, society owes its children the possibility of access to medicine that could help to level the playing-field for them and ensure maximum chances for a happy and healthy adult life regardless of the wealth of their parents. In the future, were it possible for embryos to be given cheap medicine ensuring at least a bare minimum of physical well-being, I might be persuaded that those embryos destined to be born have a right to at least certain baselines, and I would certainly engineer my own children this way. But given the current state of technology and my commitment to parental freedom, I think that while it might not be best to articulate being engineered in itself as a human right at the present juncture, access to genetic engineering in the form of prenatal care and optional screening for one’s embryos before implantation should definitely be deemed one.

III. Quo Vadimus?


I am deeply concerned that in the status quo, the rich will in short order have access to technologies that will ensure their children will be born with a lower likelihood of random genetic illness than those born to parents without access to the same kind of wealth who conceived their progeny the old fashioned way; remember, we are on the cusp of being able to hand pick embryos based on their genetic profiles, from which it is but a short step to overt gene editing. It is worrying that in a world which does not discuss genetic engineering using the language of human rights, access to effective genetic engineering in the form of strategies like the selection of embryos based on their genetic profiles will increasingly be left to the whims of the free market, mapping genetic health on top of socio-economic differences. This worrying fact is not a reason to ban such practices altogether, however, but to subsidize them for all people and to fund research to perfect them. Indeed, they could never be effectively banned across all cultures. Societies that forbid them would be fighting a losing battle.

Of course, whether I should be allowed to genetically engineer my children to be born with their five senses is different from whether I should be able to engineer them to have features like blond hair, though by choosing my mate, I am effectively crudely genetically engineering my children anyway. Questions about acceptable limits to genetic engineering (for example, parents who might deliberately choose to engineer their children to be deaf) should not distract us from recognizing that in fundamental ways, the ability to choose what our children will look like and how they will be raised is the most fundamental natural “right” of all from the perspective of the individual, and the right to genetically engineer is only an extension of this prerogative. Until there are great advances in medicine, to insist that all parents should be compelled to engineer their children would be just as unjust and counterproductive as insisting that all parents should be compelled not to engineer their children for fear that the potential of a slippery slope should stop us from talking cautious first steps on a great and meaningful journey.

Unfortunately, we are now living in an age when genetic engineering is in its infancy, and risky procedures are only just beginning to be performed on embryos. We will not know the long-term health effects of some of these operations until the children are grown, and until now, genetically engineered embryos are destroyed as a matter of course. There have been recent calls to ban pioneering cheap genome editing techniques, and scientists in China have made waves by beginning to “edit” the DNA of embryos despite the misgivings of their peers in the West, leading to calls for a ban.[4] While the risks of the technique are real, I think that the ban is in fact misguided and even smacks of cultural imperialism (one scientist in the New York Times even wrote of the “moral authority” of the scientific community in the US to determine the course of the research.)[5] At the same time, there have been other recent developments which are more promising, with Britain beginning to permit cautious exploration along new frontiers.[6] The future is anyone’s guess, but policies will likely vary by nation. Any sort of transnational moratorium would be hugely unjust.

As we have seen, in the near future, effective genetic engineering in the form of the selection of the fittest embryos suggests that the progeny of those who have sex the old fashioned way without access to thousands of dollars worth of counseling in fertilization clinics will be markedly disadvantaged unless they are subsidized for similar treatment. In the long term, one could well imagine a scenario in which women could have the choice for embryos both to be brought to term outside of their bodies and to be engineered according to a variety of potential prerogatives likely partly to be determined by the democratic process. Such technology would do a great deal for the promotion of transhumanism, to say nothing of the rights of embryos destined to be brought to term, divorcing us from the necessity of aborting the other embryos. Feminism would also be promoted by women’s liberation from the necessity of bearing a baby inside one’s own body. But the development of an artificial womb or at least technology to engineer a child within a womb without harming a mother is a long way coming. One wonders if the United States had focused on such goals with as much passion as it did the journey to the moon or increasingly more lethal weaponry, such technologies might already exist. Were there to be an advocacy for the creation of such technologies and the alteration of language banning it on face in major world documents on the nature of human rights, true progress would begin to come about.

Ultimately, if societies can justify going to war and killing millions of people and spending millions of dollars in the name of higher causes, societies can also justify empowering a small number of parents to genetically engineer their embryos to maximize their prospects for health and happiness in the long term despite the risks of the attendant procedures, particularly given parents’ right to abort a child in the status quo or give birth to it at random when it did not ask to be born, subject to every cruel genetic shift of fortune. (Years of technological refinement may still be required, however, before the techniques become safe enough for regular use.) Some day, if the genetic profiles of a variety of individuals are examined, a library of genotypes probabilistically likely to be physically and intellectually rigorous could be formed, and we could build a greater generation than the current one without succumbing to intolerance for difference or limiting the fruits of the technology to the wombs of the few. The time will soon come to empower parents to take cautious risks by genetically engineering their progeny to ensure the possibility of a better life for their children and the possibility of a better future for all of us in the form of more meaningful contributions from the gifted. The only alternative is delay, inequity, and eventual social instability as the medicines are unevenly distributed across classes and countries.

[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/535661/engineering-the-perfect-baby/

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/feb/01/human-embryo-genetic-modify-regulator-green-light-research

[3] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-test-lets-women-pick-their-best-ivf-embryo/

[4] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11558305/China-shocks-world-by-genetically-engineering-human-embryos.html

[5] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/science/biologists-call-for-halt-to-gene-editing-technique-in-humans.html

[6] Britain’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority recently permitted scientists at the Francis Crick Institute to use the CRISPR-Cas9 editing technique on human embryos. For a report on the contentious decision, see https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/feb/01/human-embryo-genetic-modify-regulator-green-light-research

4 thoughts on “On Rights and the Right to be Genetically Engineered

  1. Science is going in this direction whether we like it or not. Yes, to stave offa disease is good. Get rid of too many would have the people who rely on our illnesses for profit lobbying against it. Would the GE go to far and alter perfections in looks? Would it be only available to those with the money to party for it? Profit runs everything.

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