A book excerpt and interview with Jamie Metzl, author of “Hacking Darwin”
NEW GENETIC technologies are exhilarating and terrifying. Society might overcome diseases by tweaking individual genomes or selecting specific embryos to avoid health problems. But it may also give rise to "superhumans" who are optimised for certain characteristics and exacerbate inequalities in society.
If we want to avoid dividing our species into genetic have and have-nots—a dangerous reduction in our diversity—or a genetic determinism that undermines our humanity, we’ll need to start living our values. But though we need to be mindful of the dangers, we must also keep in mind that these technologies have the potential to do tremendous good.
To avoid dangerous medical tourism, every country should have a national regulatory system in place that aligns with international best practices and the country’s own values and traditions. We also have to start developing global norms that can ultimately underpin flexible international standards and regulations.
The term eugenics combines the Greek roots for good and birth. Although coined in the nineteenth century, the concept of selective breeding and human population culling has a more ancient history. Infanticide was written into Roman law and practiced widely in the Roman Empire. “A father shall immediately put to death,” Table IV of the Twelve Tables of Roman Law stated, “a son who is a monster, or has a form different from that of the human race.
In the United States, the “science” of eugenics became intertwined with disturbing ideas about race. Speaking to the 1923 Second International Congress of Eugenics, President Henry Osborn of New York’s American Museum of Natural History argued that scientists should: As the eugenics movement played out in the United States, another group of Europeans was watching closely. Nazism was, in many ways, a perverted heir of Darwinism. German scientists and doctors embraced Galton’s eugenic theories from the beginning. In 1905, the Society for Racial Hygiene was established in Berlin with the express goal of promoting Nordic racial “purity” through sterilization and selective breeding.
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