Motus Mentis

Today’s Times reported that it is now possible to read almost all of a fetus’s genome simply by taking blood from the mother and saliva from the father. Lurking behind the headlines is an idea, once heartily embraced by Progressive intellectuals: eugenics.

Thanks to certain mid-20th-century events, eugenics nowadays is generally thought of as entirely beyond the pale: on a par with slavery, torture, and child labor. (This is largely because it is a manifestation of what is now officially The Very Worst Thing Of All, discrimination.) Eugenics comes in two forms: the bringing into existence of superior stock through selective mating, and the culling of inferior or unwanted strains through sterilization, birth control, and abortion. (Indeed, the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, made it abundantly clear that her aim was to improve social conditions, and the nation’s human stock, by reducing the number of babies borne by the “unfit”.)

Despite the ostentatious disapproval that greets any whiff of eugenics these days, there is nevertheless an awful lot of culling going on, so it’s pretty clear that it’s not the idea of selective abortions that bothers many people. In particular, the culling of female fetuses seems to be surprisingly popular, both here and abroad. That isn’t eugenics per se, because a) reducing the number of female children does nothing in itself to foster desirable traits or eliminate unwanted ones, and b) the motivation isn’t to improve the community’s human stock, but rather to optimize a private couple’s parenting experience. (This latter motive, which unlike eugenics is based on no altruistic or social goals whatsoever, serves to make sex-based culling even less ethically defensible than eugenics, it seems to me — but people do plenty of it anyway, without evident social opprobrium, or even remorse of conscience.)

So! What will happen when parents can have their fetus’s complete genome in hand for a few drops of blood and spittle? How many of them will bring babies with ghastly, disadvantageous (and more to the point, costly!) hereditary afflictions and deficiencies into the world? Few, I’ll wager. Private choice may soon achieve much of what the old Progressive eugenicists sought to accomplish by government fiat.

Of course, this is only the beginning. Let pass another brief interval, and we will be able not only to read the fetus’s genome with ease, but will also have the ability to modify it as we like — or even to design it from scratch.

Imagine: sitting at a computer screen, the mother and father will select traits from each parent — his nose, perhaps, and her cheekbones — and then sprinkle in custom features taken from a range of available genes on offer from commercial bioengineers. The file representing the finished genome will be uploaded to a manufacturer, who will use the data to generate actual DNA. (This last part is already available — you can send a genome off to have it built for you, and get a little vial of DNA in the mail a few days later.)

Next the mother’s egg will have its nuclear DNA replaced with the customized version, then will be implanted in her womb. (Or maybe not, in a few more years — pregnancy is so inconvenient.) Nine months later, presto! — a bespoke bouncing baby.

Do you think I’m exaggerating what genetic-engineering technology can do, and will soon be able to do? I assure you I am not.

Now all of this will cost money, of course. Not everyone will be able to afford it. And the babies that issue from this process will of course possess all of the innate advantages that a first-rate genome can provide. It seems reasonable to expect, then, that there will be rather a divergence between those who can afford to have their babies this way, and those who can’t.

Should be interesting.