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| Charles Darwin |
To begin, let me state a humble fact. Charles Darwin was a good scientist and an even greater thinker. He published one of the most influential books of all time,
On the Origin of Species, in 1859. He gave us this wonderful idea. No, I'm not just talking about evolution; I'm talking about survival;
natural selection. Ingrained into our society, the concept is perfectly reasonable to us now: some creatures thrive while others die off; and this process is desirable, and its beneficiaries are naturally superior. When Darwin published this concept, it was revolutionary.
Darwin's principles stirred the world's imagination and understanding, stimulating evolutionary science and advances in everything from economics to politics; it was a driving force behind imperialist thought in the western world, led to Social Darwinism (of course), and was influential to many of the world's leaders. His work had another effect; along with encouragement by Sir Francis Galton, Darwin's cousin, who believed humanity was moving "toward mediocrity;" his ideals led some very creative people around the start of the twentieth century to decide they needed to better the gene pool of the human race, and eliminate some of our less desirable qualities.
Enter
eugenics.
Eugenics had two main forms of application. "Negative eugenics," which utilized sterilization and restrictions on sexual partners and marriage (and later genocide); and "positive eugenics," which encouraged reproduction in certain, exclusive peoples; all of this was thought up in hopes of creating a better, brighter human species. This was supposed to be
natural selection in action. Oddly enough, it's not very natural at all. Never the less, eugenics took root in many countries. It started in the United States, but quickly became a favorite of the German leaders. I think you see where this is going.
As the children of those touched by World War II, we aren't even done swallowing the Nazi pill. The modern world views Adolf Hitler, his political party, and anything they supported with repulsion, with reactions ranging from suspicion or cautious curiosity, to outright aggressive rejection. And why not? The Nazis were evil incarnate, right? And even though it wasn't his original idea (it was the United States'), eugenics obviously influenced Hitler, and his party, as it did so many others. After the war, we were done with anything closely resembling eugenics.
Fast forward into the future, to the early 21st century. Evolution in one form or another has been all but universally accepted. Mass communication and relative political stability have increased travel and exchange; the political, social, national, cultural, and ethnic lines are blurring. We are mixing, often literally, and more often than not peacefully. Despite tough times, we are
surviving. But as we learn to naturally increase our gene pool, and naturally share culture and ideas, science is taking the future in a radical new direction.
Enter the
designer baby.
Fertility has always been a problem, but we've begun to overcome it; advances in assisted reproductive technology (ART) have come a long way.
Artificial insemination (AI) and
in vitro fertilization (IVF) were practiced in livestock in the 19th century; in 1909 you have the first human pregnancy by a donor sperm, and by 1978 you have the first human IVF. By the late 1990's we began to fully map the human genome and we successfully cloned a sheep, Dolly. Over the past decade, there have been even more advances.
Now we are at the point where fertility clinics are offering many wonderful things to prospective parents. Athleticism, intelligence, beauty, and even less obscure qualities like height, hair color, eye color, and complexion; all these are being boasted about as perfectly plausible by the doctors and scientists heading these clinics. So far the most vocal about these claims has been Dr Jeffrey Steinburg, Director of the Los Angeles Fertility Institute--which boasts a 100% gender selection rate. Dr. Steinburg was a pioneer in IVF advances, and helped establish a thriving clinic in LA, which specializes in ART and IVF. Despite this professional and impressive background, Steinburg outright started advertising his claims of "cosmetic medicine," all for a reasonable price of around $18,000. Public backlash was intense and immediate, and he has since put the project on hold; it's hard to ignore protesters and claims of eugenics when you're trying to run a discreet business.
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| This man can make your baby look anyway you want. |
Despite these cosmetic boasts, so far the main implementation in variations of ART has been to create children capable of offering donor blood or cells to a sibling, as in the case of Adam Nash and James Whitaker, born in 2000 and 2003 respectively. Adam and James were both created using a process called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to make sure they were free of diseases that their older siblings possessed, and have both been successful in providing donor tissue and blood for their respective siblings.
There are still plenty of other reasonable reasons why ART and fertility clinics are a sound investment for the future of our society. Infertility isn't going away, in either men or women, and this technology was created specifically for that. And there are many people in our society who are seeking to have children but are not capable for various reasons, including gay and lesbian couples. Despite many of the issues surrounding it, ART is a perfectly suited choice for many people wishing to have children.
The real issue boils down to necessity versus possibility. Helping those incapable of having children is well and good; screening for disease is generally accepted by now, though even that process has its opponents. But what are the ramifications of being able to choose all the traits of your child before she is even conceived? The child will have no voice in his or her future, and will live with the fact that he or she was created exactly to the specifications of his parents. How will this affect these children socially? Will they be accepted as normal? Will they view themselves as artificial? Is this at all what nature seems to support, a natural selection? Some claim that these procedures are acts of control outside of our means and knowledge; that we are playing god. But if we can actually do it, and the technology is there, ready to be used, what will happen to our species? What will happen to our society and the children we've engineered?
It's no longer science fiction, to think our scientific advances could have wide and substantial repercussions on the society as a whole. And the task is set before us. We can't close pandora's box, and we have to consider what we've learned with intelligence and forward-thinking. What will happen to our society and our species, now that we've come this far? What can we do to prepare ourselves for the impact these advances will have on our society?
