Why We Should NOT Embrace Genetic Enhancement (Yet)

Watch out. It’s that time of year again. No, not Christmastime. Finals time! Crazed, sleep-deprived college students pulling all-nighters in the library trying to memorize the entire periodic table or all the important events in American history. It’s during this time of year that many students desperately wish it was actually possible to remember all this stuff. But it is! (Sort of). If genetic enhancements were available today you would never have to study for finals again, according to a recent blog post by Dylan Velasquez. 

In his opening, theoretical story, a girl takes a pill and her mind is enhanced for studying and she remembers everything she reads perfectly. Just read it once and you’ve got it. No cramming necessary 16 weeks later. He goes on to describe how our future might be further “enhanced” by genetic enhancements. Many stressed out college students would certainly share his vision. (“You mean I could sleep during finals week?!”). However, I don’t see the same happy outcome. While my previous objections were moral (see the previous post), this time my reasoning against enhancement is more practical. The reason why we should not pursue genetic enhancement is because of the negative impact it will have on our economy.

The Economy

It shouldn’t be news to anyone that our economy is in bad shape. Velasquez sees enhancement as a way to solve this and many other problems. Simply genetically enhance the population’s mind so that a previously unseen solution can be discovered.

Velasquez claims genetic enhancements would allow people to “quickly advance through grades at an expedited rate because they would never have to review previous material.” He goes on to predict that “the world would see a younger generation of professionals practicing medicine or law and performing their jobs perfectly because they remember all of their training.” But I believe that the consequences of enhancement would only make our situation worse.

Picture taken by meddygarnet

With unemployment as bad as it is already (8.6% with over 13 million unemployed), the last thing we need is thousands of more potential job candidates cluttering up the job world. Most of these super-intelligent (and much younger) graduates would be unable to find work like the nearly 1.3 million recent entrants into the employment hunt. With so many highly qualified (if you consider intelligence to be the main qualification) candidates lobbying for jobs in the same fields, some will be forced to seek jobs in areas other than the one they earned a degree in. Therefore, many of these great minds who were meant to give us solutions will be giving us fast food through a drive-through window in order to make ends meet.

There are more possible side effects to the school system than Velasquez has accounted for (i.e. speed and ability to learn), especially at the collegiate level and it comes back to the economy. The Great Recession has taken a toll on higher education as recently as last year. (Just read the first paragraph of this article to understand how. It will blow your mind). Adding in genetically enhanced applicants to the equation would only make the situation worse.

These applicants would be the most sought after in the world. Being genetically enhanced would be the most convincing aspect of an application like being a National Merit Scholar is today. Competition between schools to add genetically enhanced students to their notable alumni lists would make getting financial aid extremely hard for unenhanced applicants. The students who didn’t get genetically enhanced would probably be the ones who would need aid the most since they likely didn’t get genetically enhanced because they couldn’t afford it. Unable to afford the 4-year college they might have gone to otherwise, these applicants would have to settle for colleges of lower academic standing or community colleges.

Not So Fast!: 2 Problems You Might Have With My Argument

1. How would genetically enhanced people be any different from those who are just naturally smart?

Genetically enhanced people would add a new layer to the higher education hierarchy and there’s only so much money to go around. The genetically enhanced students would receive the aid and scholarships normally given to naturally smart students. These students would then get the aid normally given to average students. And average students, well, they get the short end of the stick. They have to find somewhere else to go, possibly robbing them of the better education that they deserve.

2. Then why don’t we just give scholarships to pay for children’s genetic enhancement?

With what money? You’d have to take away money from somewhere else, but money is already tight as it is. What would we give up to pay to make kids smarter? Also, there are about 4 million babies born in the U.S. every year. Not to mention the millions of children who already exist. I hardly think it’s possible to pay for genetic enhancements for all of them. If you eliminate the upper class children, whose parents can already afford to have them enhanced, that doesn’t do much. Middle and lower class families far outnumber upper class families. There are just too many people and not enough money.

Conclusion

Clearly, these aren’t reasons why genetic enhancements should never happen, just some issues we should seriously consider before pursuing them. Once we recover from the recession, you eliminate much of my economic argument. Perhaps certain colleges and universities could be established as enhanced- or unenhanced-only schools. Once these issues are addressed, then we can focus more on the larger argument which will probably stagnate the widespread use of genetic enhancement for a long, long time: whether there is anything morally and/or ethically wrong with genetic enhancement (for my opinion on the matter, see the previous post).

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To be or Not to be.... Human?

I’ve been thinking about a difficult question for a while now, the same question that many scientists have been stumped by for years: why are genetic enhancements morally wrong? Some people think they aren’t. Others think they’re unfair. While I agree they would promote inequality between the rich and poor, it’s not a good enough answer. Many things in life are unfair. Inherited family diseases, unexpected car troubles, homework on a weekend. Life’s not fair; it’s common knowledge. What makes these unnecessary genetic enhancements morally wrong is that they tamper with human nature.

Before I get into my argument, let me make a distinction. There are two different types of enhancements. There are medically necessary enhancements such as enhanced muscles to restore movement to a car accident victim. And then there are enhancements that aren’t medically necessary, that improve upon features which you just aren’t satisfied with.

In his essay “Good, Better, or Best?”, Arthur Caplan argues that there are two things you must to do to prove this argument (see the section “Human nature inviolate?”). First of all, you have to define what human nature is. Is it personality? Is it our characteristics? Is it our values? Or is it a combination? Second, you have to explain why human nature as we define it now is something that shouldn’t be changed. I agree that these issues need to be addressed in an argument such as this and set out to do so.

First, Caplan supplies his own answers. He says that it’s nearly impossible to pinpoint specific traits that all humans share which could accurately characterize us all as being human. He goes on to state that we’ve been altering our nature ever since the discovery of fire, radically changing the way we live with scientific discoveries and innovations throughout our existence. Therefore, Caplan claims, we shouldn’t treat genetic enhancement any differently than we did the creation of clothing or airplanes.

However, I don’t think Caplan does the human nature argument justice. Human nature is not fashion or technology. Putting on a loin cloth is not nearly as altering as enhancing your brain capacity. When you put on a shirt you can take it back off. When you board a plane, no matter how long you’re up in the air, you will generally come back down and be the same person, barring life-changing experiences or epiphanies. While clothing did help us evolve by requiring less body hair for our survival, the evolution we underwent was a natural one. We didn’t reach inside ourselves and tamper with our DNA; our bodies evolved because of a change outside of ourselves. These enhancements may have altered the way we live but not what we are. What Caplan fails to see is that there are traits that all humans share: our DNA.


While all living things have some form of DNA, humans are very different from plants and animals. The way we are made, as decided by our genetics, is what makes us human. Psychopaths, geniuses, Americans, Europeans, homosexuals, heterosexuals, all of us, no matter how different we look or think or act, have one characteristic in common and that is our genetic makeup created a human being. Because we are all human, we have some other similarities. One of which is limitations, physical and mental.

Granted, our limitations are not all the same. Some people can lift up to 200 pounds while others can only lift 100. But the common factor is that they have a set limitation. You can work out as much as you want, but there is a weight that it is physically impossible for you to lift. Your body can’t handle it. Your muscles will tear. Your bones will break. It’s when you tamper with DNA and genetics, what essentially marks us as human, to enhance someone past there genetically set limitations that you begin to alter their humanity. You make them more than human.

A little tampering goes a long way. For example, about 98.5% of our DNA is shared with chimps. So 1.5% of our DNA is the difference between being a human and being something very different. If we were to change even one percentage of our DNA it could make huge differences in who, or what, we are.
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Image courtesy of Judy Delton

“But what’s so bad with being something more than human?” you might think. “That doesn’t sound so bad to me.” You might see this as our next evolutionary step. Is there something about being human that is worth preserving the species as it is? If you’re religious, your answer might be that we were made in God’s image and thus changing what we are would go against His design. If you’re not or you just don’t agree with that logic, then you might simply err on the side of caution. We don’t know what changing that one percent of DNA might do to us. What if we lost our speech? Or our ability to sympathize with each other? Or whatever it is that separates us from animals? What if enhancing ourselves meant giving up something we’d rather not live without?

The bottom line is that unnecessary enhancements are, well, unnecessary. We don’t need them; we just want them. And what we want is to be better than best. We’re not satisfied with the limitations our humanity has given us. We want to go beyond them. Well, in order to go beyond human limitations you must go beyond humanity. And that’s not a goal I want to see achieved in any lifetime.

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