“What a piece of work is man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel, In apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world, The paragon of animals.”
– Prince Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Act II, Scene 2
Once upon a time, corn used to be grass. Tomatoes were small, bitter berries. Nature did not evolve them. We did. Humans.
We can – this very day- program a protein [called CAS-9] and get it to target any piece of genetic code we want … cut it out, and/or replace it with something else. Using RNA to edit DNA. Like a God. We can do that. Now.
Kids are born with sickle cell because there’s a T instead of a C, or whatever. One transposed letter in their DNA sequence messes up the shape of their blood cells.
There is a gene called SC9A – the pain gene. Cut it out, edit a person’s genome if they have terminal cancer … no pain whatsoever. Is this a diabolical desire? In a healthy person pain serves a purpose, to increase its chances of having a future. But if one has no future, why should they be made to suffer?
We can re-engineer the human genome … now … so why aren’t we? Because Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New world? Because Adolf Hitler dreamed of a super-race?
Too often, Hitler and eugenics are offered as the reason we are not already full-throttle ahead in the field of human genome editing. A geneticist remarked that after delivering speeches on the future of genetics, invariably he received the same comments from different types of people who came up to him afterwards.
The tall blonde trophy wives came up to him and said “Don’t you think all of this will lead to everyone wanting tall, blue-eyed blonde children?”
The nerds came up and said “Don’t you think all of this will lead to people wanting super-smart children?”
The assumption is that some super-child will be desired, but the truth is that a wide variety of attributes would be sought, even in the scenario of “designer-babies” … and a decision would first have to be made to allow for these designer-babies to ever be permitted.
Is it wrong to want to remove Huntington’s disease? Sickle cell? Down’s syndrome? The chance that your child will develop cancer at a young age, or even later? Perhaps it is. Sickle cell carriers learn patience and positivity, they have to.
Man should not attempt to play God. Are we not created in his image? An atheist would say not, but athiests believe in nothing. If an athiest suggests that they believe in doing good and being moral – is that not the central tenet of our higher power anyway? Is not improvement the basis of evolution? Can we be on any other path than that of attaining Godhood?
Why is it wrong to make ourselves healthier, to want to remove misery and pain? Who are we to say to everyone: “Thou shalt suffer!” … and to the athiests, is that not one reason why you chastise the idea of God? For the permittance of suffering?
Why blame the tool? Do we outlaw knives because they can be used to kill people?
If we can be Gods …. Amen.
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