Ethical Dangers of Genetic Engineering.

• Author: Epstein, Ron

Our Genetic Future

What will it be like in a future world where your life started with your parents designing your genes? In addition to screening for unwanted genetic diseases, they select for sex, height, eye-, hair-, and skin-color. Pressured by the current social fads, they may also choose genes whose overall functions are not clearly understood but are rumored to be connected with temperament, intelligence, mindfulness, and perhaps sexual orientation. You may be genetically engineered to be an enhanced clone of one of your parents, or of a celebrity whose genetic heritage your parents have purchased at great price, If your parents are poor, they may be paid to design you with genes tailored for a particular occupation, together with a pre-birth contract for future employment. As in the film "Gattaca," you probably belong to a clearly defined social class according to the degree of your genetic enhancement. Of course there may still be a few weird, unenhanced naturals-by-choice living in the mountains.

From the very first milk you suckle, your food is genetically engineered. The natural world is completely made over, invaded and distorted beyond recognition by genetically engineered trees, plants, animals, insects, bacteria, and viruses, both planned and run amok. Illnesses are very different too. Most of the old ones are gone or mutated into new forms, yet most people are suffering from genetically engineered pathogens, either used in biowarfare, or mistakenly released into the environment, or recombined in toxic form from originally harmless but rapidly mutating engineered organisms. Genetic engineering is so commonplace, you start your own simple experiments with it in elementary school.

Present Causes Lead to Future Effects

That future is a lot more plausible than you might think. How can it come about? Probably from a combination of misplaced, naive altruism, the short-sighted quest for short-term corporate profit, power-domination, and just plain emotionally fueled vengeance. In the 1950s, the media were full of information about the great new scientific miracle that was going to make it possible to kill to all of the noxious insects in the world, wipe out insect-borne diseases and feed the world's starving masses. That was DDT. In the I 990s, the media are full of information about the coming wonders of genetic engineering. Everywhere are claims that genetic engineering will feed the starving, help eliminate disease, and so...