Directing Envolution

It is part of our biology that we can transcend our biology.

—Ronald de Sousa

Introduction

New technologies like CRISPR gives new possibilities for human genome. Human genetic composition—once seemed natural and unalterable—is increasingly under our rational and scientific scrutiny. Many say the line should never crossed, but why? Is human genetic engineering innately and fundamentally morally wrong? In this essay, from a utilitarian perspective, I want to argue that human germline enhancing genetic engineering is (1) morally permissible per se and (2) morally desirable in some foreseeable applications. I want to first identity the subordinate relationship between the creatures (humans, specifically) and their genetics. By doing so, I hope I can prove that there is nothing morally unchallengable or sacred about our inherited genetic sequences. Secondly, I want to propose a few practical directions where human genetic engineering is necessary and effective in advancing human happiness. 

Human Nature, Human End

Genome and Individual Organisms

The most simplified interpretation is that genes are the “blueprints” or “programs” of organisms that set up the frameworks of the organisms’ basic motivations and behaviours (Kitcher, 2001). Genes that “seek” (no consciousness implied) to survive by indirectly tasking their carriers to maximize the latter’s chance of survival and propagation. Therefore, organisms developed from their genes are teleologically organized entities based on their genes. In the case of humans and many other sentient animals, genes develop a system of pleasures and pain to “instruct” the organisms to pass on the former. For example, humans gain pleasure from having sex and commonly experience pain from events that increase the likelihood of death, such as injuries; they even directly feel fear from death itself, which is arguably irrational. However, the harmony between the goal of genes and their organisms is shattered when organisms gain pleasure from something that does not increase or even reduces the likelihood of the replication of genes. Let’s use an analogy where parents establish a system of monetary rewards for their children based on how many times they clean the house in order to keep the house clean, but the children exploit the system by intentionally messing up the house and cleaning frequently, in which case the natures and goals of the parents and the children divert. Such a diversion is more frequent than many would think when it comes to human genes and humans. Essentially, “natural selection is not a process that acts for the good of the species or even for the good of the organism. Natural selection acts on human traits not because they enhance human wellbeing, but because they increase biological fitness: a morally neutral, technical term in biology that refers to an organism’s expected reproductive success” (Powell, Kahane, Savulescu, 2012). Senescence, for example, is a trade-off for reproductive chances and abilities during youth with a healthy and long life in old age (Williams 1957), which in most cases, favours the replication of genes rather than the overall and aggregate quality for individual humans. Especially when the technological and societal progression is taken into account, gene-related problems like anxiety (Gottschalk & Domschke, 2017), depression (Shadrina, Bondarenko, Slominsky, 2018), diabetes (Ali, 2013), obesity (Loos & Yeo, 2021), jealousy (Kupfer, Sidari, Zietsch, Jern, Tybur, & Wesseldijk, 2021) are detrimental to individual wellbeing even if they benefited survival in hunter-gatherer societies. The even more evident contrast is that wealthy families in developed countries choose other forms of entertainment over child-bearing.

Utilitarianism

What should individuals do when their genetic predispositions are in conflict with their individual pain-pleasure calculation? It seems apparent that the faults are on the genes and individuals should be entitled to pursue their wellbeing regardless of the replication of their genes. As Jeremy Bentham (1781) puts it, “[n]ature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.” Classical utilitarians often lack direct logical proof of the objective correctness of utilitarianism (Lazari-Radek & Singer 2017), probably due to their unfamiliarity with the biotechnology of genes and individual organisms. With current updated knowledge of genetics, it is fair to say the “nature” in Bentham’s declaration is analogous to genes, while “mankind” means individual humans. From such an evolutionary and teleological point of view, we infer that the purpose of human life is to pursue happiness (a goal determined by genes), even if the process means overriding or controlling the genes in some ways. This view has two problems, the first is Hume’s argument that we can’t infer what ought to be from what is. This is a valid criticism, but my response is simply that, unless you do not want to infer any meanings at all, the only way you can squeeze a tiny bit of normative purpose out of our positive world is by understanding human fundamental moral purpose from the very purpose humans are created for. Imagine, what is the purpose of a software that is programmed to calculate Pi? Calculating Pi that is! Imagine, in another parallel world, organisms there are genetically programmed to pursue something called “ssenippah,” what is the purpose of these organisms? Pursuing “ssenippah” that is! The same is true for organisms in our universe, what else can surpass the biological predisposition of pursuing happiness as the ultimate moral goal? The second criticism is that, if you derive human purpose from its origin (genetics), how can you defend the human point of view when the two are in conflict? I will say this is only place where even utilitarianism has to accept some subjectiveness. Because again, if we resort to genetics alone and that even that can be technologically modified, there is none we can really derive from. Therefore, I will adopt utilitarianism as the fundamental ethical criterion in this essay.

The Moral Duty of Artificial Selection

The genetic technology offers morally relevant possibilities that we cannot ignore. Using Peter Singer’s example, once you know that there are starving African children and you can easily help them, there is a moral burden on you to do so. It used to be the case that the nature and evolution are dominant and our reason and science is pale. But as society progresses technologically, social fabrics are increasingly scrutized. Many features that were seemed normal and natural are labelled “injustices” and uprooted, such as women’s necessary role in child-bearing. I argue that such scrutization must extend to our biology. As mentioned above and will be mentioned below, it is incorrect to assume that the current genetic program—the result of brutal natural selection—is the most ideal formulation against all possible alternatives for humans. Psychologists know that humans are in many ways biased in favouring the old against the new. Such psychological mechanism makes sense because our previous stage of civilization is relatively slow and stable and there is a good reason to behave conservatively—those who do survive and propagate such genetic tendency. Even in our protagonist-antagonist classics, it is often that the antagonists act first and the protagonists counteract, because we just subconsciously weight the current state of affair to be more morally justified, so if the hero acts first, that makes them see naturally questionable. However, this intuition is often problematic for ethical debates. Take the experience machine for example, many refuse to enter it because they prefer their current “real” world. Nonetheless, if you tell them that supposing the current world is “fake” while the world in the experience machine is “real,” their answers remain unchanged. Fundamentally, this is not about realness, this is about psychological conservatism. A rational person should discard endowment effect and sunk cost, viewing the possible genetic transformation not as a change from traditional “A” to the novel “B,” but as two equally staged “A” and “B” that are only be evaluated by their consequences on human wellbeing. The burden of proof against “A” to “B” (genetic engineering) should be the same as that of “B” to “A” (rejecting genetic engineering). If “B” can be proven to produce better results than “A” can, then it is a moral imperative to adopt artificial selection over the past natural selection. For example, which is the optimal level of tendency of violence? If we have reasonable evidence to suggest it is below the current level, then the violence tendency of the next generation should be lowered. (I want to note that I do not want to endorse a strict binary of natural and artificial human selection, because the entire human civilization is a structure of artificial selection.)

Hacking Humans

The “ability to hack humans” is a concept proposed by Yuval Noah Harari (2018). He argues that human minds are essentially algorithms developed through natural selection. With today’s co-revolution of information technology and biological technology, it will soon be possible to hack humans like hacking a computer program, to predict and control human emotions and behaviours. A similar scenario is illustrated in the TV show Westworld: Season 2 (Nolan, 2018) where a park collects tourists’ biometric information and behavioural patterns and subsequently deciphers and concludes each tourist’s identity and consciousness into a manual—a literary demonstration of “every person’s life is a story.” In a mind-boggling experiment, researchers attempting “to predictably and efficiently reprogram cells to perform computations and carry out specific biological tasks” used CRISPR to successfully program human cells to obey 109 logical circuits (Weinberg, Pham, Caraballo, Lozanoski, Engel, Bhatia, Wong, 2017). In another experiment, researchers programmed “synthetic [transcription activator-like] proteins” that “were not only functional in plant cells, but also in human cells and activated targeted expression of exogenous as well as endogenous genes” (Geissler, Scholze, Hahn, Streubel, Bonas, Behrens, Boch, 2011). Even more miraculously, a team of scientists built the first computer-designed living robots (Xenobots) from frog cells in 2020 (Kreigman, Blackiston, Levin, and Nongard, 2020) and made those robots self-replicable in 2021(Kreigman, Blackiston, Levin, and Nongard, 2021). Recalling the terms “programmable” and “casual genetic variations” mentioned above, humans and their genes are not only analogous to computers, they can be reprogrammed or even rebuilt from the bottom up and redefined as a species. This is not unfathomable, since human DNA is made up of just four symbols—adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T). Although the “nurture” part is out of the scope of genetic engineering and this essay, it seems that humans will shortly be in total control of the “nature” and its influence.

Benefits of Human Genetic Engineering

Many applications are already proposed to enhance humans genetically—from removal of inheritable diseases to better memories. I want to focus on three important particular benefits that only human genetic engineering can promisingly deliver.

End of Genetic Selfishness

I talked about human nature in section 1, but here I want to retrace society’s nature. Throughout human history, humans established their societies both based on and in constraints with human genes. Social structures needed to, on the one hand, ensure some human genetic tendencies such as reproduction and survival under stable conditions; on the other hand, restrain other individuals’ genetic impulsiveness such as killing and raping. The formation of such an awkward balance is due to the irreconcilable contradictions between or even within individuals. Furthermore, the contradictions initially emerged due to their evolutionary advantages under natural selection. I will firstly explain the contradictions between individuals in this subsection and subsequently explain the contradictions within individuals in the last subsection of this section. As depicted in the first section, natural selection is often nasty and cruel for individuals in competition because they pursue exactly the same limited resources to survive and reproduce. Selfishness, thus, is a dominant strategy (compared with total selflessness and altruism). Even in societies today with abundant physical wealth, some degree of selfishness is taken for granted in the economic and ethical theories without questions. However, what is the ethical ground of privileging oneself over others in the distribution of wealth and pleasure? At least from a utilitarian point of view, there is none. Most humans have very similar capacities of feeling pleasure and pain, their subjective experiences are almost equally important. Selfishness, despite how pervasively accepted, is essentially a form of discrimination, which is not only immoral but also irrational. It is also extremely unjustified that in a system, the richest person has 200 billion US dollars while the poorest are unnecessarily starving to death; it is evident that the marginal return of one dollar to the billionaires is much less than the marginal return of one dollar to the starving. But such a system is justified to many because “people are selfish and they are allowed to be selfish” they say, “they work and earn by themselves and are entitled to more wealth that would have created more aggregate pleasure if in the hands of others.” One can rationally imagine that when individuals have different demands, society should disregard selfishness and distribute in a way that maximizes collective gains. However, a selfless society is evolutionary difficult because the Nash equilibrium for people in a selfless society is to take advantage of others. Due to genes’ goal of replication, often at the expense of others, individuals soon enter the prisoners’ dilemma scenario where people uncontrollably, driven by their genes, to accept a society with lower total and average pleasure where they can gain from exploiting others but are often more vulnerable to being exploited. 

Another even more irrational universal phenomenon of human psychology is jealousy/envy, which is even contradictory to the assumption of rational and selfish Homo economicus. A Harvard study let participants (who are students and staff at Harvard and presumably smart) choose between living in a place where they earn 50,000 and the neighbours earn 25,000 and living in another place where they earn 100,000 and the neighbours earn 200,000. More than half of the respondents preferred the former scenario, where they enjoy seeing neighbours poorer at the expense of their own living standards (Solnick, Hemenway, 1997). However, jealousy, again, is a survival fitness. For example, people are often more jealous of their neighbours than the billionaires, because jealousy in this way prompts more efforts to realistically surpass the reference group and win the competition in your small circles (Ramachandran, Jalal, 2017). Fortunately, humans know their weakness, they establish rules in an effort to constrain their genetic selfishness and jealousy. However, a fight against genes is tough; rule-breaking frequently appears and is destabilizing to the society, especially when it is unnoticed or even rewarded. There are only two conventional reactions to rule-breaking: loosening the rules due to high maintenance costs and allowing predatory behaviours or tightening the rules with more surveillance and constraints. Neither way seems promising. 

What if, instead of pursuing the impossible and painful mission of simultaneously indulging and restraining the genes, we reprogram the genes to work in our favour? What if we no longer build our society based on our genes, but build our genes based on an ideal society? What if humans, as individual organisms, tame and transform their parasitic genes into selfless and altruistic genes that recognize happiness for all? Kim, Sherman, Sasaki, Xu, Chu, Ryu, Suh, Graham, and Taylor (2010) found that selfishness or individualism is related to “a genetic variation on the oxytocin receptor gene OXTR at rs53576” where “[i]n individualistic European Americans a guanine (G) is more prevalent at this position, but in collectivist East Asians an adenine (A) is more common” (Sonne, Gash, 2018). This might be related to the fact that “oxytocin reduces fear and anxiety, increases trust, reduces xenophobic outgroup rejection, increases monogamous behavior, increases empathy and conformity with in-group members” (Sonne, Gash, 2018). As mentioned in the first section, jealousy also has a genetic cause (Kupfer, Sidari, Zietsch, Jern, Tybur, and Wesseldijk, 2021). If we do the trick by genetically getting rid of the selfish and jealous elements, humans can still have motivations and desires, but this time they care for more sentient lives. This may sound far-fetched, but why do family members often care so much about each other even at the sacrifice of their own? This is not only a cultural construct, it has its roots in the genes—a consideration for descendants and a motivation to pass down the genes. We do not need to fundamentally reprogram the relevant genes (which is also an option), we can simply substitute the selfish criterion with an altruistic criterion and leave the framework unchanged, so that, as Confucius and Mozi said, we treat others’ families like our own. 

Although I focus on selfishness in this subsection, there are also many other types of social contradictions rooted in genetics. For example, due to biological and evolutionary reasons, generally speaking, men favour having sex with multiple women to have many offsprings, while women are more inclined to stick to one man for security. This sexual conflict, like other zero-sum games with selfish players, cannot be resolved without sacrifice. Unless genetic engineering is used to make all men and women have the same inclination. Or, we can simply substitute the genetic disposition of having sex to shaking hands and people can get the equivalence of sexual pleasures by shaking hands, which is arguably a more dignified convention. For other sex- and gender-related issues, inequality often arises out of differences and equality is extremely difficult to be achieved with consensus when differences are presented. Therefore, using genetic engineering to altogether eradicate sexual differences, which has already served its historical purposes, will be the necessary ultimate solution to sex and gender inequalities.

Better Genes for Better Society

Another problem about current human genes is that even if the genes’ objectives happened to historically align with individual organisms’ objectives and there were no contradictions between or within individuals, such alignment might have expired in the face of rapid technological and social changes. As mentioned in section 1, elements like anxiety and obesity had survival strength in hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies because they were constantly under threats and at the margin of death. But anxiety today more likely results in mental disorders and emotional torture rather than an increased chance of survival. Similarly, obesity today does not keep people away from death (from starvation) but derives chronic diseases. There are many more examples of unconformity. Irrational, emotional, hateful, arrogant, and tribalist people might have had survival fitness due to their resilience and explosive power, but are more and more detrimental to the civil discourses today. Conservative and orthodox people might be better suited to protect what their families have already had, but they become increasingly unadaptive to today’s ever changing world of the information age. In addition, people, especially teenagers, are not evolutionarily fitted to sit and concentrate on study or work for hours nonstop because, for most of history, ancestors in their age were chasing deers and constantly attentive to surroundings. This is also partially why the social construct theory of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) argues that ADHD itself is not a disorder and is only regarded as problematic after the industrial revolution (Timimi & Timimi, 2015). Natural selection is a slow and gradual process, much slower than technological change nowadays, not to mention that the mechanisms of natural selection are mostly incapacitated since successful and wealthy people worldwide have fewer births. Therefore, there needs to be a push for the genes to catch up with their time, which can only be efficiently done by genetic engineering. In addition, genetic engineering can be the ultimate fix for systematic injustices of immutable characteristic. By eliminating sex and difference in skin tone (the material base of genders and races), their discrimminations can be entirely uprooted.

Pain-thresholds and Hedonic set-points

As mentioned above, interpersonal competition often becomes a prisoner’s dilemma under natural selection; but even if the society is perfectly altruistic and harmonious, it does not mean people can achieve perpetual happiness. We see that humans strive to meet their desires under enormous stress. When they finally succeed after emotional turmoil, they conversely sense disappointment, meaninglessness, existential absurdity, nervousness, and soon fear that can only be compensated with setting and chasing a new goal. Seemingly, people just cannot be settled and grateful for what they already have, they endlessly need more. This phenomenon of striving to acquire happiness but ends up with enduring dissatisfaction and unhappiness is sometimes referred to as the hedonic treadmill, which was developed not because it provides the largest amount of pleasures for individuals but because it forces individuals to endlessly improve themselves to increase the replication chance of their genes by means of emotional torture. It can be worse, it may actually be the hedonic Penrose stairs, where people think they are becoming happier by each step but only to eventually find out their improvement brings new forms of suffering that cancel out the happiness so they have been and will be stagnating on the same level eternally.

Throughout human history, there has never been a lack of political, social, and economic systems proposed in the promise of perpetual happiness and peace of mind. But such attempts would be futile, or at least incremental because they fail to address the constitutional genetic structures of humans. Human genetic engineering is essential because it is the sole tool that can directly adjust the pain-thresholds and hedonic set-points of human genetics and biology. To visualize the concept of hedonic set-points, one can think about those who are depressed and others who are regularly happy. Both depressed and hyperthymic people have genetic patterns (Greenwood, Akiskal, Akiskal, 2012). It is the same for the feeling of pain, some people feel more physical pain than others due to variations in the SCN9A gene (Majeed, Ubaidulhaq, Rugnath, and Eriator, 2018). What if we engineer all humans to respond to things with more emotional positivity and less physical and emotional pain? In David Pearce (2007)’s terms, human genetic engineering can help all humans “adopt a motivational system driven entirely by adaptive gradients of well-being” and become “characteristically energetic, productive and creative.” Those who are engineered to imitate hyperthymic and less pain-sensitive people will be “blissful” but not “blissed out,” because this process does not eliminate hedonic treadmill or homeostasis of happiness, it merely “shift[s] our hedonic set-point to a vastly higher level.” Yes, there will still be some suffering and discontent (to a lesser degree) across the world, but imagine someone who gets out of depression after effective treatment, their vastly encouraging and empowering mental improvement can be enjoyed by everyone on the planet.

Objections to Human Genetic Engineering

The Organizing Committee of the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine proclaimed in 2018 that: 

The variability of effects produced by genetic changes makes it difficult to conduct a thorough evaluation of benefits and risks. Nevertheless, germline genome editing could become acceptable in the future if these risks are addressed and if a number of additional criteria are met. These criteria include strict independent oversight, a compelling medical need, an absence of reasonable alternatives, a plan for long-term follow-up, and attention to societal effects.  Even so, public acceptability will likely vary among jurisdictions, leading to differing policy responses.

Most of the objections against human genetic engineering are about its safety and technical predictability (Cavaliere, 19), but in this section, I will not talk about technical safety or specific procedural research guidelines. I want to focus on, assuming human genetic engineering is mature and able to achieve the hypothesis and predictions of previous sections, the ethics of the consequences of human genetic engineering applications.

Playing God or Human Dignity

Some claim that genetically engineering humans is an act of playing god and/or is a violation of human dignity. The “playing god” or “human dignity” narratives contain no substantial arguments because they do not point to or even imply any specific unethical consequences. In my opinion, millions of humans every day being in an iron box that is 5-kilometer-high seems much more anti-god or anti-humans to me. In addition, if gods have good intentions, or humanity means giving humans better lives, then I think genetically engineering humans to live much happier and more colourful lives is exactly what gods and humanity—whatever they are—want.

Eugenics

Some claim that human genetic engineering is a form of eugenics, which is immoral, so human genetic engineering is also immoral. But why is eugenics immoral? A broader definition of eugenics may include every behaviour that intends to in any sense improve the genetic compositions of certain individuals or groups, which is also my own definition. Therefore, when humans are selecting their mating partners based on their height, appearance, health, intelligence, and so on and attempt to have a child with good physical and mental qualities, they are engaging in an act of eugenics. When a pregnant woman and her husband quit smoking in order to give birth to a healthier baby, they are engaging in eugenics. When a couple decides to conceive a baby at their prime age so that their baby is more likely to be healthy, it is eugenic. Not to mention all other forms of prenatal testing to avoid birth defects. In addition, the identity of the person or institution carrying out eugenic acts will not affect the eugenic acts of their acts. For example, City of Richmond Public Health Protection Bylaw No. 6989 (2000) stresses that “drinking distilled spirits, beer, coolers, wine and other alcoholic beverages during pregnancy can cause birth defects.” Although there is no moral judgement in the wording, this may be viewed as an example of Canada’s state-endorsed eugenics. Even if the identity does make a difference, it is simply a difference of degree rather than a difference of kind, and the moral consideration should not be too different. Therefore, eugenics is pervasive and often beneficial to all involved. If the cost of no eugenics is to intentionally bring people with severe disorders to this world and impose suffering on themselves and others, given that their disorders could be prevented, then anti-eugenics is much more evil than eugenics. 

However, the most severe state-sanctioned legal eugenics by Western governments may be the criminalization of incest even between consensual adults. According to the Canadian Criminal Code (1985), anyone committing of incest is liable to at most 14 years of imprisonment. The eugenic incest prohibition is a blatant violation of fundamental human rights, as acknowledged by the German Ethics Council (Singer, 2014). Being an activist on the legalization of incest for years, I advocate to repel the discriminatory incest prohibition law. Even if incest prohibition has a eugenic purpose, which I do not fundamentally oppose, it is poorly designed and executed. I propose that, instead of banning sexual activity between family members, we should gradually replace it with a mandatory requirement of prenatal testing for all humans and a ban on the births of people with severe genetic disorders, which is much more respectful of human rights. Of course, the government should provide necessary assistance in prenatal testing or even genetic engineering technology that ensures people with heritable diseases are entitled to healthy babies. The ban of incest rather than defective births is a hypocritical attempt to hide blatant human rights abuse and eugenic thinking that should be openly examined.

In the end, eugenics itself is not immoral, its morality depends on its case-by-case consequence. Eugenics is like schooling, both aim to improve human qualities and both can have extraordinary or devastating results based on their concrete implementations. Genetically engineering humans is a form of eugenics that unambiguously has enormously beneficial potential when properly centrally regulated.

Informed Consent

Another objection against human genetic engineering is that all the descendants that will be affected by germline modification can not possibly give their consent prior to the modification. This argument is seriously misplaced as no one born in any situation with any genetic conditions could give consent prior to their births. Did the persons with depression-inducing genes who are forced to live more miserable lives agreed to be born into depression? Many have the illusion that, because human genetic engineering is something novel, its application makes giving birth, originally a morally positive or neutral behaviour, a highly controversial and unethical one. But the fact is, every birth is an experiment whose subject or even victim did not give informed consent. The involvement of genetic technology makes this process more controllable, but it does not change the nature of the lack of consent. Some young adults today struggling in an economy with low wages and high inequality complain that their parents should not have given birth to them in the first place. They also think that being born into a family is like drawing from a deck of cards, some of them are just unlucky to be born ugly, dumb, and poor. Their complaints, despite being unhelpful or even deleterious, have legitimate grounds. However, I do want to thank those who proposed the “informed consent” argument against human genetic engineering because they make all of us rethink the responsibilities attached to having kids. Rather than deflecting or ignoring such responsibilities that exist regardless of the involvement of genetic technology, one should directly face them by maximizing their children’s genetic quality.

Socioeconomic Disparities

Apart from practical safety concerns, the socioeconomic inequality concern is probably the most crucial and well-guided objection. Many presume that it is always the rich who get to use the best technologies. When human genetic engineering technology is legally introduced, there will not only be an economic, social, and political gap between the elites and the masses, but also a biological or even speciesist difference that divides the society. However, it should be noted that such an argument is against the practical use of human genetic engineering under an assumed societal condition rather than human genetic engineering itself. This is similar to the privacy issue, where most are not against collecting and analyzing data per se, but the use of those data under specific organizations. Nonetheless, historically the government’s data collecting ability has been greatly enhanced, such as in the cases of ID numbers or CCTV, to the benefit of the society. Similarly, given the apparent and enormous benefits of human genetic engineering, one should be careful rather than dismissive of its application in the belief that humans are not capable of using it appropriately. After all, this is a highly empirical argument, whose answer depends on specific circumstances.

But there are still a few things we should consider first. For example, one need not wait for human genetic engineering technology to appear to realize the problematic arrangements of socioeconomic resources. Even if human genetic engineering stays illegal, the wealthy can still exploit the rest from a thousand different approaches, which I presume needs no more explanation. Also, with the possibility of engineering all humans to be better, we can rethink the socioeconomic structure from the bottom up. For example, is capitalism still needed if the incentive is changed from selfish to altruistic? Moreover, only when human genetic engineering is emphasized and promoted, can it be spread to everyone quickly. When most humans become more benevolent, rational, and brave, a fairer system can be constructed.

Even if we take a pessimistic and conservative assumption that human genetic engineering is hijacked and exploited by the elites, it is still the case that genetic engineering technology is not the cause of unfair socioeconomic disparities, it merely has the possibility to magnify it. Other new technologies such as airplanes, artificial intelligence, stock market, banks, and so on, also unproportionately benefit the already rich. Should they be banned? Eventually, if one really wants to solve the problems of the structure, they should put their efforts into reforming the system itself rather than rejecting all new changes that almost inevitably benefit the powerful due to the current system.

A more sophisticated argument goes as follows. What if the elites conspirated to only engineer the rest of the population to make them kind, altruistic, optimistic, and more easily exploitable? In this case, the current unfair system will be reinforced and the possibility of overturning it will infinitely diminish since the altruistic poor share the enjoyment of the rich and have no incentive to challenge the system. I admit that this argument is unnervingly compelling. Nonetheless, although altruistic utilitarians do not mind the identities of the receptors of happiness, they do care about the aggregate amount of total happiness. Assuming diminishing return still holds, a polarized distribution of resources generates less amount of happiness than a more egalitarian one does. Therefore, the altruistic populace will still oppose, say, building a fancy mansion for the richest person instead of building 100 apartments for the poor.

Survival Harm

In response to the proposed adjustment of pain-thresholds and hedonic set-points, some argue that doing so may do more harm than good because, without the system of mental and physical pains, many will put themselves into dangerous situations (such as being ignorant of inflammatory wounds due to the lack of pain) like people with congenital insensitivity to pain and anhydrosis (CIPA) do. As explained in the pain-thresholds and hedonic set-points subsections, rudimentary genetic engineering does not eliminate the entire system, it just makes pain less unbearable without losing its survival purposes. For example, when I had acute appendicitis I was tortured by immense pain before and after the operation. What accompanies the physical pain is the mental suffering from the losing abilities and energy to perform daily tasks. I asked myself, do I need to experience this much pain to realize something is wrong with my body? Perhaps instead of immense pain, a feeling of nauseous or discomfort, or even simply a loss of the normal state of happiness will do.

David Pearce (2014) actually has another long-term plan on top of the proposal explained in the pain-thresholds and hedonic set-points subsection. He thinks it is possible to replace the role of pain play in directing behaviours to avoid dangers with something like unconditional reflex or survival instinct that are coded in the genes. This is, however, harder to fathom and achieve, so I will not further investigate it in this essay.

Loss of Diversity

This argument against human genetic engineering is that it will make all humans like uniform machines that exhibit no individual uniqueness, which makes human society not only boring and spiritless but also prone to disasters. The first proposition I take out from this line of argument is that most humans want the same thing, which is precisely my point. Most humans justifiably want to be happy rather than painful, they want to be healthier and smarter. Are they wrong in thinking and doing so? Absolutely not. Think about free public education that firstly makes kids more homogeneous, it provides most of the population what used to be a privilege of the few. The fact that humans in industrial societies are more alike compared with those in agricultural federal monarchies is a sign of equality and progress, which means most humans are now competing on a more equal footing. The diversity narrative in this context may well be the strategy of elites who do not want the lay people to share their advantages. After all, diversity itself has no intrinsic values, it also quite often results in inequality and discrimination. To me, a world where the diversity of depressed and hyperthymic people does not exist is a much happier world. In addition, when people are energetic and happy, they are brave enough to pursue more diverse activities and discover their interests. Take the public schooling example, students may initially be homogenized due to the standardized curriculum, but gradually they learn more about themselves and societies and are better equipped to achieve self-actualization. It is the depressed, disadvantaged, and unschooled who are stuck in limited opportunities, self-denying, fear of the unknown, and isolation. So it is not necessarily the case that a world of human genetic engineering in absolute and objective terms will be less diverse than today’s world (where teenagers subscribe to highly uniform social media and celebrities as their reference).

The second part of the diversity argument addresses the survival risk of human civilization. Its logic is correct, but one only needs to look at the practical case of genetically modified agricultural crops. Monoculture plantations are normally more prone to diseases, but genetic engineering can build genetic resistance inside the plants. In addition, adopting human genetic engineering does not mean we need to destroy all older DNA information. Realistically speaking, humans will record and store all their genetic information in some computers; and when disasters hit, let’s say a nuclear disaster, they can react quickly by pulling out the more useful and adaptive genes and injecting them into humans for them and their offspring to surmount the obstacles.

Now, let’s see it through the perspectives of those “diversified.” We first need to acknowledge that the diversified people in the scenario where genetic engineering is possible and easy are “made to be diversified” (choosing the current stage is also a choice). My hypothesis is also that these people tend to be disadvantaged and suffer more than the genetically enhanced. Take the sickle-cell disease for example, we know that sickle-cell disease is evolutionarily selected to protect the carriers from malaria. Let’s also say that malaria is currently extinct, but its possibility of resurgence is not ruled out. Therefore, we keep a tiny portion of population with sickle-cell disease (whether through intentional genetic modification or intentional ignorance of those who carry the disease) so that once the malaria is back, these designated survivors can reconstruct human civilization. However, the cost is that these people tend to suffer greatly and are more likely to die painfully. Is this a good deal? To be honest, it also depends on the possibility and severity of potential harm (the malaria resurgence) and I as an utilitarian is not fundamentally against this idea. However, the question is what is the potential harm being prevented from having a portion of the population blind? From the A Quiet Place scenario? To me, such a mandated sacrifice is not empirically justified in contrast to a world without any future blind people unless the crisis is being materialized.

Conclusion

The heart has its reasons, which the reason does not understand. But when we do, the reason should override the heart. The applications of centralized generational human germline genetic engineering I advocate are undoubtedly a grand social engineering. It will be criticized, and rightly so, as an embodiment of technological optimism and the fatal conceit. Many of us may be terrified by the possible evil it can bring, but many forget the sheer amount of suffering caused by having the unfit genetic sequence that we kave now because they always keep them out of the calculation. Moreover, I want to remind the readers that our society has been and is constantly engineered by numerous actors and there is not a natural state of affairs in society. The question should not be whether people are entitled to change the world, but which way of changing the world can bring the most human wellbeing. Rather than committing evil by ignoring our responsibility and capacity to cure current social ills, we should explore the potential of human genetic engineering and proceed in a democratic, attentive, and rational fashion that independently examines the cost and benefits of each incremental application. This essay can definitely be improved by responding to more counterarguments more forcibly, especially the eugenics argument. Connection can also be made between the ethics of human genetic engineering and the philosophy of emotion.

—-Atlas, 2021.11.16

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