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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