Here's an idea.
Editing your children's genome could raise questions about
whether or not they are authentic.
In about the last decade, geneticists
have developed the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short
Palindromic Repeats or CRISPR system
that uses the repetitive structure of DNA as a guide
for editing that DNA, allowing, with a suite
of other techniques, for permanent and in some cases
inheritable changes to the genome of organisms,
including humans.
And it's a big deal.
It's such a big deal that J-Lo is producing a crime drama
series about it.
How exactly CRISPR works is beyond my expertise
and the scope of this video.
But luckily, Vanessa from "BrainCraft"
made a whole documentary about exactly
that that's out next week.
You can watch its trailer right now.
And you should watch it once you're done here.
What we're going to talk about now
isn't how CRISPR works, but some of the conundrums
which arise because of how well it works.
In the short time this technology,
and technology like it, has been around--
first theorized 30 years ago, but really only developed
in the last seven, and still being perfected as we speak--
it's gotten up to some pretty insane things,
like removing malaria from mosquitoes,
creating more muscular beagles and drought resistant corn.
There are plans to use it for cancer treatment and even
as a cancer cure.
The first trial for that was in China at the end of last year.
And that trial rose some eyebrows, as have a few others.
Because what we can do with CRISPR
is quickly outpacing conversations
about what we should do with CRISPR.
Like is it ready for human trials?
And if it is, how do we track the consequences
of direct human genome editing?
What lines do we absolutely not cross?
And though CRISPR has widespread applicability,
the most discussed crossable lines
have to do with humans, specifically, human babies.
So in this episode, we're going to walk down a line of lines
and discuss what crossing them might mean for humanity, to see
how we feel about technology developing faster than feels
can be felt. So the blessing and the curse of CRISPR at all
is that it's easy, cheap, and good.
The people who can use it are far flung,
in parts of the world with differing ethical, moral,
legal, medical, economic, and regulatory frameworks.
This creates a tension between the global community
of all humans with a shared genetic identity,
and local communities of some humans, who yeah,
may be willing and financially able to risk it all
to cure their cancer, but may also at some point
be interested in changing someone's eye color,
making them immune to certain diseases,
or simply more muscular, or even increasing their intelligence.
Think like "Limitless," except without the drugs
and we are all Bradley Cooper.
Ah, we should be so lucky.
It may sound like science fiction,
but right now this sort of thing is
more in the realm of science.
That's it, just science--
not just possible, but likely.
Just a month before shooting this episode,
The National Academy of Science and the National Academy
of Medicine teamed up to release human genome editing, science,
ethics, and governance, a detailed study
where they make recommendations for the responsible development
and use of genome editing tech.
They repeatedly stressed that, though the tech has
wide elective applications for humans,
it should be used only for the treatment or prevention
of disease and disability, and not
other less pressing purposes.
But I mean, come on!
We've all seen "Gattaca."
It's worth asking who has the power
to decide what purposes are and are not "pressing."
The worry is one ripped straight from the sci-fi hologram
headlines, with widespread but gate kept technology,
the rich could pay for elective genetic enhancements
unavailable to those without surplus cash.
In time, two genetically divergent populations reify the
divide between rich and poor on a genetic level,
resulting in what Sidney Perkowitz at JSTOR Daily
calls a soft eugenics--
not selective breeding for the good of the species, yuck!--
but a literal genetic differentiation
which emerges via differing access to medical technology.
A related concern has to do with the lives of people
with disabilities.
If people are able to systematically
edit genes responsible for a variety of disabilities,
how does this impact the lives of those who don't or can't
benefit from that technology?
And furthermore, if there are fewer people with disabilities
overall, does it stand to reason that those remaining will
have a harder time getting the respect or resources
they deserve?
That public programs benefiting the disabled
will be unfairly curtailed because their impact has
been quantitatively diminished?
Much like the judgment about what
is and is not a pressing purpose,
we might also ask about what is and is not a disability.
Who decides?
And how does that impact the lives of people
born with those conditions?
One way to read the elimination of disabilities before birth
is as a judgment on the assumed life of that person,
and therefore, of all people with that disability.
That, living with what has been deemed a hindrance,
whether it's deafness, blindness,
Down syndrome, or cystic fibrosis, all of which
have their own very specific and impossible to compare
challenges, is of a lesser quality than a life without.
Any one parent electing that their child not
be born with a genetic disorder may not
be explicitly judging people with that disorder,
only most likely thinking about their own child
and responding to the unfortunate state of the world
where, while the lives of people with disabilities
are not fundamentally of a different value,
they are often treated that way.
How one does or does not purposefully or not make
a political statement when considering
this kind of genetic manipulation
for their own child is a hugely complex conversation.
But there may even be a more base concern
when considering whether to edit your child's genome.
Should you do it, just period?
Besides concerns about soft eugenics and disability,
there is also conversation concerning whether parents
possess the right to determine who their child will
be via genetic manipulation.
This is going to take a little bit to unpack.
Keep in mind this child is still you--
simply the best of you.
First, we should point out that the Committee on Human
Gene Editing again recommends that before inheritable changes
to the human genome are made, we set up a study
to determine the long term, like long term,
like whole generations long term, effects.
The worry is, if we change our children's eye color
or resistance to certain diseases today,
we may endanger the lives of their grandchildren
due to unforeseen genetic ripple effects, which is not
good for, well, humanity.
But for our purposes in this video,
let's assume we have a safety guarantee
for your kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids.
And let's also say that the technology
is available to everyone.
So we're simply talking about parents
deciding various facets of their child's genetic make up.
Decisions that will be passed on to their children
unless they are similarly edited, and so on and so on,
up the family tree.
This is one facet of some arguments against CRISPR
as unnatural or playing god.
Where aspects of a child's development
were mysterious, left up to an inscrutable battle
between nature and nurture, science
can now sweep some or all of the game pieces off the table
and construct a custom genetic victory,
thus resulting in the person most wanted by their parents--
tall like dad's side, smart like mom's side with green eyes
and red hair, because hey, why not
make them stand out in a crowd.
Such a combo of characteristics may be extreme,
though is theoretically possible.
But mom and dad's decision to have a genius ginger beanpole
isn't just one about genetics and abilities and appearance,
but as a result of those things, also life experience,
going beyond the natural and god playing arguments,
we can ask whether the direct influence on your kid's DNA
is OK, because of how involved it is, like helicopter
parenting but for genes.
One way to view this question is as a problem of authenticity.
From a certain perspective, one's genetic makeup
and its lived results are generally
thought to be the conclusion of a naturalistic kind of chance.
So the deliberate configuration of a child
conceivably results in children who
aren't whoever they might have been naturally,
but rather exactly who their parents wanted
because they said so.
Aspects of their existence arise not through a combination
of gene selection, environmental effects, or nurture,
but via box ticking.
The person is, therefore, as one particular argument might go,
not authentically themselves.
They are, rather, their parents' design.
And design is shaped by trends, influenced heavily
by the moment.
Conversation about designer babies
is often couched in ideas about the commodification
of offspring.
You can customize options on your car,
your computer, your social media profile, why not your kids?
Because they're people.
That's why.
And, I mean, to a certain degree, I agree.
It is a little weird, but it's also
complicated for a few reasons.
First, it's sort of always been within the realm of possibility
that one could manually, so to speak,
determine the genetic makeup of one's children
simply by choosing a partner with specific qualities
or by living a certain lifestyle.
One's genome also changes significantly
throughout one's life, thanks to environmental effects.
So the children I and a partner would create today
is different from the one we'd make 10 years ago.
Not to mention, before and during conception,
carrier screenings or in vitro fertilization
can identify and help navigate around aspects
of a child's genetic makeup.
While IVF was controversial at first,
it isn't now thought to produce a person who isn't themselves,
isn't authentic.
Which is itself a difficult concept.
Most modern ideas stem from the Jean-Jacques Rousseauian
perspective that authenticity is an internally derived ideal,
that one finds some form of genuine self
free from external influence by ignoring
the desire for approval or dependence on others.
Related to authenticity are also ideas about autonomy and truth.
That to be authentic, one must know who they are,
act the way they know they are, and in doing so,
be true to themselves.
But how does this work with genetics,
and not like, which band t-shirts you wear.
Can you be a genetic poser?
An ancestors purposeful mucking about with one's genes
certainly sounds like a loss of autonomy to some degree.
Maybe you were doomed to earnestly
ask that question from "I Heart Huckabees" all along.
How am I not myself?"
But also, arguably, designer DNA
is no less purposeful than your parents
choosing a mate or an environment
or an age to have kids, just perhaps a little bit more
direct.
Maybe it's that authenticity is often related
to some kind of search.
To hear philosophers discuss it, authenticity is a process, not
a state of being, but a balancing act between the self
and external forces.
Maybe in being designed, one need not search.
You'd simply know, on paper, who you are.
You're not going to find yourself.
You're only going to find your configuration documents,
and boom!
There you are.
But are you there?
I mean, sure, if you're born with the genes
and characteristics your parents choose from the mutant menu,
as Vanessa calls it, in a way that's you.
But to say this usurps your ability
to become yourself seems to overemphasize
the role of genetics in what philosopher David
DeGrazia calls one's narrative identity--
the process of always becoming one's self through experience
and self-reflection.
Paradoxically, the ongoing process of being authentic
is often thought to require a breath of external experience,
such that one can test against their internal experience.
A custom genome doesn't preclude internal experience.
It just provides another way to understand it.
Certainly one's appearance, ability, and health
determines much of their authentic self,
but to say those things determine it
so completely that one is powerless to become themselves
in the face of their parents' design decisions
seems hasty in the way the phrase the apple doesn't fall
far from the tree always does.
Maybe one branch of the tree hangs over a hill.
Apple falls off the-- rolls down the-- you get what I'm saying.
In the end, I don't think this question
will be divorced from the others related to CRISPR.
My gut says it won't be the technology itself,
but how and by whom it's used that determines how
those babies are considered.
In one scenario, the first children
born of CRISPR or a CRISPR-like process
could, much like the first IVF or test tube babies,
represent a kind of challenging novelty.
But could also, much like IVF babies,
quickly become yet another prenatal biomedical mainstay.
This scenario is highly dependent,
I think, upon the technology being used as recommended,
for disease prevention or treatment and with great care.
But in another scenario, one that
could determine whether certain groups will be seen or not seen
as real or authentic, CRISPR is used only or at
first significantly by a relatively small population who
are lucky enough, for whatever reason,
to have access, exasperating the effects of already vastly
uneven access to medicine and medical technology.
Bad enough would be only the rich benefit
from genetic disease prevention or treatment.
Worse, they may be in a position to choose,
based on their own criteria what besides disease is and is not
a pressing purpose.
And in this situation, maybe people
won't have a reason to worry about if they're not authentic
but rather about if they are?
What do you all think?
Would you edit your child's genome?
In what situation would you?
In what situation would you not?
And how do you avoid the political and social
ramifications of this kind of powerful technology?
Let us know in the comments, and I'll respond to some of them
in next week's comment response video.
And before we talk about what's in this week's counter response
video, a little bit of news.
YouTube has suggested that we stagger
the release of our episodes and our comment responses.
So we're going to try that.
We're going to start to release comment response
videos on Fridays.
So we'll continue to tell you what
will be in them at the end of the episodes.
But then you will have to wait a day or two, depending
upon when we release, to actually see them
because apparently the algorithm likes it more.
And you know what they say about the algorithms.
You-- um, you obey them.
So in this week's comment response video,
which will be out on Friday, we talk
about your thoughts regarding telekinesis as an allegory
for the use of technology.
Once that's uploaded, we'll put a link in the description
or just keep an eye on your sub box.
If you would like to support the show,
Idea Channel has a Patreon.
Thank you so, so much to all of our current patrons.
If you haven't already, don't forget
to check out the trailer for Vanessa's documentary, "Mutant
Menu" that's out the same day as this video.
Or, if it's after May 10th, you can go and watch
the documentary itself.
It's here on YouTube.
We'll put a link in the description once it's out.
If you watch it, you might see some people
that you recognize in it.
[WHISPERS] I'm in it.
We have a Facebook, an IRC, and a subreddit.
And the Tweets of the Weeks are everyone, including [INAUDIBLE]
Becca who responded to Ben Zimmer's tweet
about the history of the pronunciation of gif with team
"zaif" shout outs.
Zaif for life.
And last, but certainly not least,
this week's episode would not have been possible or good
without the very hard work of these muscular beagles.