Designer Genes

There are some blog posts that I have in mind for a long time before they make it to Laelaps, others that are written in a more spur-of-the-moment fashion, usually about one topic or another that has left me aggravated and incised with no recourse except unloading my thoughts on the internet. Imagine the position I was in then, just having finished Armand Marie Leroi's book Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body, being halfway through Stephen Jay Gould's Mismeasure of Man (having just rebuffed some genetic determinist nonsense myself), and fresh from a viewing of Logan's Run when I saw this post at Pharyngula about a New Humanist article about the genetic modification (and supposed "enhancement") of human beings. Normally I don't write about these topics as I am largely ignorant of the pertinent scientific facets of genetics needed for a detailed essay, but given that human "progress" was on my mind due to my recent intake of media, I felt that I should probably say something even if I could only offer more questions than answers.

Up until a few months ago the name "John Harris" didn't have any particular significance or meaning to me; although I would expect the name to be common, I knew no one who had it, personally or otherwise. As chance would have it, though, I caught wind of a new book entitled Enhancing Evolution, a work that seems to have been generally panned since it's release. I have yet to read it myself, but the premise set forth in the synopsis definitely made me sit up and pay attention;

Decisive biotechnological interventions in the lottery of human life - to enhance our bodies and brains and perhaps irreversibly change our genetic makeup - have been widely rejected as unethical and undesirable, and have often met with extreme hostility. But in "Enhancing Evolution", leading bioethicist John Harris dismantles objections to genetic engineering, stem-cell research, designer babies, and cloning to make a forthright, sweeping, and rigorous ethical case for using biotechnology to improve human life. Human enhancement, Harris argues, is a good thing - good morally, good for individuals, good as social policy, and good for a genetic heritage that needs serious improvement. "Enhancing Evolution" defends biotechnological interventions that could allow us to live longer, healthier, and even happier lives by, for example, providing us with immunity from cancer and HIV/AIDS. But the book advocates far more than therapies designed to free us from sickness and disability. Harris champions the possibility of influencing the very course of evolution to give us increased mental and physical powers - from reasoning, concentration, and memory to strength, stamina, and reaction speed. Indeed, he supports enhancing ourselves in almost any way we desire. And it's not only morally defensible to enhance ourselves, Harris says. In some cases, it's morally obligatory. Whether one looks upon biotechnology with hope, fear, or a little of both, "Enhancing Evolution" makes a case for it that no one can ignore. [emphasis mine]

Any time that someone begins advocating the advancement of Homo sapiens, whether by means overtly eugenic or through recent innovations in biotechnology, the warning klaxons start sounding in my head. In the past "progress" for the human race has been bound up in racism, sexism, and discrimination at best, genocide at worst, but in an age when we are potentially on the verge of being able to pick "designer genes" for our offspring it seems that subjective ideals of what is valuable about our species die hard. Curing hereditary diseases that have crippled families for generations is one thing, but being able to pick the eye color, sex, height, potential intelligence, and athletic ability of your child is something entirely different, and it is this prospect that worries me most, as if we all too readily have bought in to the translation of our moniker ("Wise Man") and seek to remake ourselves in the image of whatever appeals to us at the time.

If this entire topic seems intimidating, I can only imagine what the prominent scientists of the last century might have thought about such potential realities for our species. Take this passage, for example, from the conclusion of the 3rd edition of G.G. Simpson's The Meaning of Evolution (1953);

Now we cannot predict for sure whether the future course of human evolution will be upward or downward. We have, however, established the fact that it can be upward and we have a glimpse, although very far from full understanding, as to how to ensure this. It is our responsibility and that of our descendants to ensure that the future of the species is progressive and not retrogressive. The immediate tasks are to work for continuance of our species, for avoiding early self-extinction, settling ideological battles, and progressing toward an ethically good world state. The immediate means not only for these tremendous tasks but also for the future tasks of guiding human evolution lie within the ethic of knowledge. We need desperately to know more about ourselves, about our societies, about all of life, about the earth, and about the universe. We need to balance our knowledge better, to reverse the disparity in discovery in the physical, biological, and social sciences so that the social sciences shall be first and the physical last. We need to realize more fully and widely that technological advances and invention and enjoyment of gadgets are not the most useful sort of knowledge and are relatively quite unimportant (occasionally downright harmful) for true human progress. We need to remember that cultural evolution proceeds only by interthinking, as organic evolution does only by interbreeding. The most brilliant of geniuses is an intellectual eunuch if his knowledge is not disseminated as widely as possible. It is immoral for any man, industry, or nation to reserve knowledge for its own advantage alone.

We need, too, to recognize this supreme importance of knowledge of organic and social evolution. Such knowledge provides most of what we know of our place in the universe and it must guide us if we are to control the future evolution of mankind.

Simpson's vision of "progress" for our kind seems to rest on ensuring our survival as a species first, then making the most of the accumulation of vast bodies of knowledge about the nature of the universe, from subatomic particles to the whole of the universe itself, to help guide us through our continuing social and physical evolution. Still, I have to wonder what upward progress is and what it entails. Living in Western society, physical attractiveness, athletic ability, and intelligence are all highly prized (and have been so for some time), but is this to say there is no value in the achievements of cultures that rarely receive consideration. The music, art, and culture of indigenous peoples throughout the world are just as precious and important as any "classic" work of art or literature you could name, and already what we may consider to be progress or the betterment of our species is really addressing the continuing "upward" development of Western society, the accumulation of riches (both physical and intellectual) by those who already have gathered more than their fair share. (As we'll see later in this essay, such subjective notions of progress for the human race may not be truly beneficial or progressive in terms of natural selection and evolution, so while we may inspire to be wise, chiseled demigods nature may not look so kindly on our aesthetic notions of what is "good" in the fullness of time.) Indeed, just as species are becoming extinct the world over, many due to consequences from the ever-revolving "Carousel of Progress" we've put in motion, so too are native cultures disappearing faster than they can be studied and understood. This trend is hardly new, as Sir Arthur Keith wrote of this trend in 1949 in A New Theory of Human Evolution;

What is to happen ultimately to the tribal folks of Africa and of Australia? If Europeans had left them alone, they would have worked out their evolutionary fate in their own way. The modern world could not afford to leave them alone; the great hungry maw of civilization had to be fed and native co-operation in this task was deemed a necessity which white men had a right to demand. When white men bring European ways of life into native communities, tribal wheels cease to revolve; the tribe or community becomes disorganized, loses heart, and often dies out.

Indeed, if we are to talk about "progress" or genetic enhancement for Homo sapiens, we should not have the audacity to pretend that our ideals are really what everyone, everywhere has in mind. Instead it is a very narrow view of what is desirable vs. what is not, partially fueled by the "Have it your way" consumer culture that is not shared by all representatives of the 6,000,000,000+ humans now inhabiting the globe. We will leave our quandary as to what progress for Homo sapiens is and to whom it applies for now, however, as there is far more in this debate that must be discussed. While the debate about human enhancement largely focuses on potential applications of research and technologies still in their infancy, concern over future genetic manipulation of our species is widespread. While I do not necessarily agree with his dismissal of many important points in his article "The Case Against Perfection" that appeared in Atlantic Monthly in April, 2004, I think Michael Sandel identifies an important point about why such potentials in genetic engineering are so unsettling. After finding many objections to the genetic "improvement" of our species wanting, Sandel writes;

The deeper danger is that ["enhancement and genetic engineering"] represent a kind of hyperagency--a Promethean aspiration to remake nature, including human nature, to serve our purposes and satisfy our desires. The problem is not the drift to mechanism but the drive to mastery. And what the drive to mastery misses and may even destroy is an appreciation of the gifted character of human powers and achievements.

Indeed, given our propensity to take potentially good or useful technologies and go overboard with them without fully thinking out the repercussions, it seems that fully entrusting Homo sapiens with it's own future evolution is about as wise as trusting William Buckland's famous pet bear, Tiglath-Pileser, with the safety of the sweet shop that the carnivore so frequently pillaged to satisfy it's sugar addiction. Such a statement, humorous as it may be, is little more than rhetoric, however, and there are practical concerns with genetic human enhancement that go beyond the Hollywood horror of "going beyond what nature/God intended" (a theme that we'll return to later).

One of the frequent promises of future genetic engineering is the increase in lifespans, one view being that aging is merely an accumulation of diseases that could possibly be weeded out in order to extend the range of human life long past those of the famous Old Testament patriarchs (I would have started a little smaller, perhaps at 150 years first, but it seems that advocates of extending our lifespans like to make grand claims). Again, I am no expert here but I am dubious as to lifespan being entirely dictated by the accumulation of mutations that only express their deleterious effects late in life, the prospect of curing them one by one recalling the efforts of Dr. Frink in one episode of The Simpsons in which he was attempting to find the cure for seventeen stab wounds in the back. Let's assume, though, that such a feat were possible, that engineering humans to live 1,000 years could, in time, be accomplished. Usually the discussion of the hypothetical stops here, the assumption being that the lives of such people would be ordinary, just longer, but we have no reason to believe this is so. Tests in increasing longevity in fruit flies and lab mice have suggested that if you increase the lifespan of an organism you make it more "selfish" in terms of its resources; it is not as active or vigorous, not as interested in mating, and leaves fewer offspring than the "fast and furious" normal types. As author Leroi notes in the book Mutants;

In the future, humans may well be able to engineer themselves, be it by better drugs or better genes, to live as long as they please, but the cost may be twenty-year-olds with all the vigour, appetites, and charm of the middle aged.

Age is not the only aspect of ourselves that we may seek to improve but may be constrained by some unexpected surprises or results. Increase in intelligence is one such trait, although we must be cautious here and note that intelligence is not a number that can be obtained through measurement of the head or IQ tests and ranked on a continuum of everyone in the world; intelligence is variable, and while it is heritable, environmental factors like nutrition and education are vital in realizing what genetic potentials we may possess. Still, some have promised an increase in intelligence or other brain functions without full consideration of how the rest of the brain might be affected. Might artificially engineered geniuses suffer more from depression and mental disorders than others? How will other parts of the brain be affected by these changes? Is there an upper limit to what we can engineer through genetics? I can only wonder as to the social implications of such manipulation as well; what if a child engineered to be smart does not fully realize their potential, or decides not to follow a life path in which they would make the most use of their enhanced brain power? Although some philosophers have worried about autonomy, I do not worry about engineered human being being amoral or thinking they've got no accountability; I wonder what their lives will be like if they make use of that autonomy and do not develop the talents which they were essentially bred to manifest.

Not all proposed applications of human genetic manipulation are as practical, however. There have been various controversies during the past few years over the prospect of the ability of prospective parents to pick the eye color, hair color, etc. of their child almost as if ordering a custom-made doll from a catalog. Such applications are purely cosmetic and can hardly be fitted under the umbrella of progressed proposed by advocates of unrestricted genetic engineering, but (as I noted before) many are not so sure such powers are appropriate for us to wield. Michael Sandel, again in the previously cited article, opines;

May's resonant phrase [that natural parenthood is "openness to the unbidden"] helps us see that the deepest moral objection to enhancement lies less in the perfection it seeks than in the human disposition it expresses and promotes. The problem is not that parents usurp the autonomy of a child they design. The problem lies in the hubris of the designing parents, in their drive to master the mystery of birth. Even if this disposition did not make parents tyrants to their children, it would disfigure the relation between parent and child, and deprive the parent of the humility and enlarged human sympathies that an openness to the unbidden can cultivate.

It could not be more apparent that the genetic manipulation of human beings in the earliest stages of their development are more for the subjective tastes of their parents than anything else. Rather than caring for a naturally born child, no matter how they look or how smart they are, parents will be able to design what they feel are perfect babies, the choice being all about them and having little to do with the interests of the unborn child. It has been argued by advocates of genetic engineering that normally the child wouldn't have any choice over their hair color, eye color, etc. anyway, being instead at the mercy of natural processes, but while it's important to keep the child in mind it seems that such decisions are more about the parents than they are about the child. Yet I think Sandel dismisses the importance of considerations of autonomy too quickly, failing to look at the situation from the perspective of the individual designed (and likely expected to) excel in any number of given areas. Indeed, the problem here is not so much against our sensibilities of a rich minority having an unnatural advantage over "the rest of us" (although this is an issue for consideration) but that we are returning to genetic determinism, only this time we are directly behind it rather than ascribing our subjective hierarchies to race, sex, or divine favor. It is not that the child will lack autonomy and be set on a straight course that they cannot divert from, but the personal repercussions they may experience during their lives from being expected to excel in areas they may never take an interest in; even if we could create a child with the intellectual capacity to be the next Newton, there's no guarantee that they will choose to do so (nor should they be made to do so to the detriment of their psychological and emotional stability).

As I have noted and cautioned above, I am relatively uneducated in this issue and much of what I have to say has probably been said and contested elsewhere before. Still, I feel that much of what is said in the favor of human enhancement is little more than enthusiastic promise of improvement with little consideration of possible repercussions. It is fully assumed that we can improve humans and that we should do so as soon as it becomes feasible, a great tool to not only improve the "haves" but to also raise the "have nots" to a respectable level. John Harris summed the thesis up thusly in a recent Times article promoting his new book;

There are some goods, or qualities, that are so important to have and so disastrous to lack that they constitute a really powerful moral obligation. There are other goods that are marginal, such as aesthetics, except in the case of serious deformities. For example, given how much people value life, to protect them from premature death or give them a longer healthier life expectancy seems to me a powerful obligation. To make someone marginally more attractive is not an obligation but something we have moral reasons to do.

As I noted before, though, such things like a longer lifespan might have unexpected trade-offs, the life of someone who lives to 857 looking quite different than the glorious era we might hope it to be. There will be costs to body functions, physiology, reproductive success, and other factors; to assume otherwise is, frankly, idiotic. Even if we were to go ahead with human enhancement tomorrow, we do not have a universe to create from scratch to best allow us to reach some utopian ideal but instead are subjects to the laws of chemistry, physics, and biology; just because we can conceive of a potential "future evolution" does not necessarily mean that it's possible or even wise to undertake. Still, Harris feels like we must rush to seize the apple from the tree of life before it's too late. In a recent New Humanist article (the piece that spurred the production of this essay), he urges;

We need to consider [enhancement] seriously and soon, because the technology is moving rapidly and presenting us with possibilities undreamed of even a short while ago. New types of regenerative medicine look capable of enabling human tissue to repair itself; new drugs can improve concentration and memory or enable us to function for much longer periods without sleep; brain-computer interfaces are emerging, enabling us to access digital files as we do our own memories; and techniques are becoming available that will radically extend life expectancy from tens to hundreds of years.

What's the rush? Just because we have the ability to do something doesn't necessitate starting up production straight away, especially when biotechnology has progressed so far so fast that many people's heads are still spinning. Harris seems to want to get such medical and genetic "products" to the "consumer" as soon as possible (his is a philosophical school that humans should be able to do anything they like so long as they are not harming others), but I do not feel his same level or urgency about any of his hypothetical advancements. Whether such changes to humanity occur or not, they should be fully researched and contemplated before being put into use; what does it matter if they are available in this generation or the next (remember, we're speaking of modifications that I largely regard as frivolous and unnecessary). Even in terms of disease, a total elimination of diseases might not be beneficial to us in the course of evolutionary time. Take the hereditary disease hemochromatosis, for example. This hereditary disease essentially "locks up" iron that absorbed from food, causing an iron buildup that can cause other later complications like cancer. At one time, however, it might have been beneficial in maintaining sufficient levels of iron in the blood when nutritious food was scarce, although today it's not a good thing to have. Even beyond this, some have proposed that the disease actually helped people who had it survive the Black Death plague, the iron "locked away" in the body being inaccessible to the bacteria that would otherwise use it for their own growth, leading to infection and death, so having a disease that is slower to enact its deleterious effects may have helped some people survive a more immediate epidemic. I seriously doubt that we'll ever truly get rid of disease (many diseases now evolve with us in a type of "arms race"), but I am concerned that if we try to wipe out all disease we will only make ourselves more susceptible to a worse epidemic a little further down the line. Even beyond this, variations are required for evolution to move ahead; if we end up designing our genomes (even mass-producing some, perhaps), what will we be doing to our variation? This wouldn't necessarily be a worry unless genetic manipulation was truly widespread in countries where people could afford it, but it is still something to consider. Whether genetically altered humans would be able to effectively reproduce with natural humans is yet another issue to consider here as well, and as I noted in the opening of this essay, there are far more questions than answers.

Advocates of human enhancement, however, may consider me as a bit of a stick-in-the-mud who feels that human evolution shouldn't proceed any further. Quite the contrary; outside of helping others through medicine, I am content with leaving our evolution to nature, what is favorable today (or even what we consider favorable) might not be in the near future. Instead, I feel that it is advocates of enhancement like Harris that really don't want to see humanity evolutionarily progress by selecting what we value most and selecting for those traits until we get to some ideal point where little if any further change would be needed. Such a program only changes what we already expresses by degree, there perhaps being some biological limits that we just cannot cross no matter how much we might wish otherwise. If instead we are allowed to continue evolving without our direct intervention to the degree advocated by Harris (remember, we are not finished products of evolution) we will certainly change, although we might not change in a way that's consonant with what we value now. Such, at least, is contingency. Such considerations remind us that Eden is a myth, and the argument for enhancement remind me of the long discarded ideas of orthogenesis and vitalism in evolution, only our own species creating the teleology rather than some obscure natural force.

I also doubt that the enhancement of Homo sapiens will be enhancement for all, especially in an age when all-too-many people (including myself) cannot even afford basic health coverage in the case of life-threatening emergency. Genetic manipulations will largely be a luxury of the rich and be cosmetic if they are initially approved, and I doubt if we're ever see a time when genetic enhancements are truly available to all who would wish for them. As others have hypothesized, this might cause a widening of the gap between the highest and lowest classes at a much higher rate, but even if free genetic enhancement was available to all, I have to wonder where we would go from there. If everyone could look like supermodels, ace their exams, and sink a slam dunk, what then would be the next thing to shoot for? Would we try and incorporate traits of animals into ourselves as we've done with Frankenfoods? Would those who did not wish to "improve" themselves be looked down upon, spurned, or otherwise disadvantaged. How would the disparity between the above-average genetically-enhanced people and high-achieving natural people be resolved if the two had to be chosen from for jobs, sports teams, or college? Such are some of the problems that better living through [bio]chemistry still face.

It is strange writing on this topic as many of the arguments seem to be old ones; the methods of improving our own species have changed from the barbaric rooting out of undesirable to the "positive" enhancement of those who can afford controversial treatments. Even if the methods have changed, though, some of the implications may remain constant. Writing out this piece reminded me of what Stephen Jay Gould famously wrote in the introduction to Mismeasure of Man;

We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.

This quote may not seem to make sense in the light of the present discussion, but I feel that it still resonates with one of my main points; genetically enhancing humans is going to have important societal implications for the individuals that are created "unequal" to others and for those who cannot afford such treatments should they become widespread or commonplace, genetic determinism being something we create rather than inferring, although they are still subject to our own biases. We have long known that evolution does not proceed in a ladder-like fashion of progress, so why would wish to impose such a system on ourselves is strange; Darwin removed us from the theological shackles of regarding ourselves as special creations distinct from the rest of nature, yet that's exactly what some now wish to achieve. We recognize that variability is highly important to evolution and we cannot be sure of how natural selection will work on one trait or another in the future, yet we want to remove our variations, perhaps making ourselves more susceptible to the very nature we wanted to distance ourselves from.

Surely, some may clamor for a day when parents can create the baby that they want (giving rise to the strange occasion of a baby being made "for" parents and their values) I do not think that the social implications of such abilities have been thoroughly considered by those who endorse such a future. For all the talk of progress and betterment of our species, precious little is known about how "artificial" humans are going to impact society and biology, what we might consider to be the next logical step in our own evolutionary process (playing our own Victor Frankenstein) perhaps being abhorred by nature. This invocation of the famous "mad scientist" is not the hackneyed appeal to respecting the limits of God or nature, a debate separate from what I've written about there, but is instead a comparison to a man who wished to create a superior kind of being by ended up repulsed by his own creation, abandoning it because he could not overcome his own revulsion to its final appearance. If we proceed with plans the genetically enhance humanity, will we too abandon our creations once they leave the operating room, caring little for how the world affects the people that we have created? They will not be monsters like the amalgamated being of Shelley's novel, but genetically altered humans will be being that require our utmost consideration and care, and without such prerequisites I don't think we are even close to being fully prepared for what we might hope to create.