Advances in genetic manipulation are making it possible to design children. Is this ethical? In this blog post, Michael Sandel explores the question.
In his book The Case against Perfection, Professor Michael Sandel discusses the idea of designing children. Unlike choosing a friend or a spouse, where you can take into account the personality and qualities of the other person, you can’t do this with your child. However, advances in genetic engineering have the potential to change this, raising ethical debates.
In this book, Sandel uses William May’s story to frame the debate over whether we should be able to design our children as “manipulating the framework of the world” and the opposition as “seeing the world as it is. This frames both positions: designing your child is called parental arrogance and leads to bad things. On the other hand, it is argued that curing a sick child is about unleashing the child’s natural strengths. The rationale is that treating a sick child does not violate the medical norm of “restoring and maintaining natural human functioning” because the goal is to restore health.
I disagree with Michael Sandel, however, because I don’t think that designing children is limited to behaviors that “strengthen” them. The biggest problem is that the word “reinforcing” has a subjective meaning. Some people would say that changing the body composition of a child who is expected to have a less fat body is reinforcement, while others would say it is not. Genetic design in this direction can also give children a wider range of career choices, which is the opposite of over-educating them. This is the reason why genetic engineering is not akin to eugenics.
In addition, the number of abandoned children with disabilities is on the rise. The Jusarang Community Church in Nangok-dong, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, operates a system called “Baby Box” to raise abandoned children. By October 2013, 18 (8.4%) of the 214 abandoned children in the baby box had disabilities, up 10 from the number of abandoned children with disabilities in 2012. Considering that 0.26% of children under the age of 4 have disabilities, it’s clear that abandonment of children with disabilities is on the rise. In this situation, I don’t think it’s fair to label it as a “blessing” and expect parents to accept it, even though it’s possible to treat children with disabilities before they are born through design. This can put even more pressure on the child and family.
Sandel’s strongest argument in the book is that we shouldn’t design our children. One of his arguments is that it’s no different from eugenics, which is to say that you’re forcing your children to be what you want them to be. However, the “over-education” mentioned in the book still happens, but some people fail and some people succeed, so does over-education lead to better results? The consequences of this are also mentioned in the book, and ADHD is one of them. In other words, over-education does not always lead to good results.
We can expect similar results when we design our children, such as when we over-study them. If all parents design their children for the purpose of universal, clearly therapeutic, “enrichment,” then there will be the same competition that exists in forced education, and many parents will end up with bad outcomes, such as ADHD. In other words, enrichment in the direction of eugenics, which is what Sandel is concerned about, will have bad consequences. Nonetheless, banning enrichment that could give children a broader range of career options is sacrificing the greater good for the lesser.
Edison once said, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% hard work,” meaning that no matter how hard you work, if you don’t have 1% inspiration, you won’t achieve what you want to achieve. On the flip side, even if you have 1% inspiration, without 99% effort, you won’t achieve what you want to achieve. I think that at least through designing children, if children know the direction of their inspiration, they will be able to achieve a better society because they will not experience the futility of 99% of their efforts being in vain.
In many fields of science, paradigms are not easily changed. Small errors are just errors, and large errors are solved if they can be solved to some extent in the current paradigm. This is because paradigm shifts, or scientific revolutions, can be very disruptive. It took centuries for the Ptolemaic theory of celestial motion to collapse and be replaced by the geocentric theory. Similarly, we acknowledge that designing children can be very disruptive to people. However, these discussions are part of the process of setting new ethical and social standards, which could end up being an important step towards a better future.
The question of designing children is not just a matter of scientific possibility, but raises fundamental questions about what it means to be human. If technological advances are inevitable, we will need to think carefully about how we use them. This requires deep reflection on parental responsibility, social ethics, and human dignity. Professor Sandel’s discussion is an important starting point for such reflection.
