If CRISPR became a standard tool in fertility clinics, people might lose their suspicions of it — just as people lost their suspicions of in vitro fertilization in the 1980s. Before long, people might be willing to entertain a new use for CRISPR. Doctors might edit beneficial changes into an embryo’s genes. Parents could give their children all the advantages that scientists have found in our species’ genetic variations.
Since there are always advances in science, parents might postpone having children in the hope that new variations may be found which will give their children better advantages. This will make decisions about when to have children seem the same way as how people wait to buy a phone until a new model is released. The ethicist Robert Sparrow argues that this might lead to a sense of genetic inferiority for earlier generations. He wonders if future generations might find themselves stuck in an “enhanced rat race.”
As is always the case, the problem is the system. If success depends on intelligence, and intelligence can be engineered, then parents feel morally compelled to enhance their children. Parents genetically enhance their children out of love but that love becomes entangled with fear and competition. Some children will suffer or die but they will reason that it is the price of staying competitive. Merit stops being “fair” and becomes biologically rigged from the start. Ethical boundaries shift easily when success is at stake. The most dangerous futures aren’t imposed — they’re gradually accepted. Over time, what once seemed extreme becomes “just how things are.”
This might lead to unfamiliar legal territory. A few cases have been brought by children in the US against their parents for allowing them to be born with congenital diseases. According to these “wrongful life” lawsuits, the parents were negligent for ignoring tests on the fetus before birth and going ahead with it anyway. Some ethicists now wonder if children in the future may sue their parents for not using the latest genetic engineering engineering techniques thereby putting them at a disadvantage with respect to future generations
In The Case Against Perfection, Michael Sandel, an American political philosopher, argues against enhancement. He says that if bioengineering made the myth of the "self-made man" come true, it would be difficult to view our talents as gifts for which we are indebted, rather than as achievements for which we are responsible. What would be lost if biotechnology dissolved our sense of giftedness? This would make us less likely to view our traits as a matter of chance. He writes:
A lively sense of the contingency of our gifts — a consciousness that none of us is wholly responsible for his or her success - saves a meritocratic society from sliding into the smug assumption that the rich are rich because they are more deserving than the poor. Without this, the successful would become even more likely than they are now to view themselves as self-made and self-sufficient, and hence wholly responsible for their success. Those at the bottom of society would be viewed not as disadvantaged, and thus worthy of a measure of compensation, but as simply unfit, and thus worthy of eugenic repair. The meritocracy, less chastened by chance, would become harder, less forgiving.
He gives an example of the real world consequences. Consider insurance. Since people do not know how their fate will pan out, they pool their risk by buying health insurance and life insurance. The actual result is that, over time, the healthy wind up subsidizing the unhealthy, and those who live to a ripe old age wind up subsidizing the families of those who die early. What ends up happening is that that people pool their risks and resources and share one another's fate.
But insurance markets work properly only as long as people do not know or control their own risk factors. Suppose genetic testing advanced to the point where it could reliably predict each person's medical future and life expectancy. Those confident of good health and long life would opt out of the pool, causing other people's premiums to skyrocket. The insurance market will collapse as perfect generic knowledge ends up separating those with good genes from the company of those with bad ones.
One important ethical issue is that the use of such technologies will support ongoing inequalities among military parties. CRISPR is currently an expensive technology. Some developed countries might think of using this technology to further strengthen their defenses and even attack underdeveloped or developing countries. The US military started a program called Safe Genes to gene modify organisms to be used in battle and anti-CRISPR tools to disable bio-weapons. This situation could cause a constant tension, making it difficult to provide an environment of peace and stability worldwide.
There is yet another aspect of the genetic editing of microorganisms to consider, as CRISPR could also be used to synthesize and manipulate pathogens, including smallpox, the Spanish flu virus, avian H5N1 flu virus, and SARS. Anyone with the appropriate equipment could engineer a vaccine-resistant flu virus or invasive species in a crude laboratory. Bio-terrorists might use it to turn common microbes into a pathogenic weapon.
I heard of an economics professor who was teaching macroeconomics (I think it was Gregory Mankiw). He told the students (quoting from memory), ‘Both of us are confused. The only difference is that you are naively confused and I am profoundly confused.’ After this brief discussion about CRSPER ethics, I hope you are profoundly confused.
"May you live in interesting times" is an English expression that is claimed to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse. The expression is ironic: "interesting" times are usually times of trouble. With climate change, AI, and CRISPR, 2050 promises to be very interesting indeed, perhaps more interesting than anyone had bargained for. (2050 seems to be too far in the future but it is a nice number!)
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