The future of humanity

Liberal eugenics and its justification

Liberal eugenics is usually contrasted with its antithesis, authoritarian eugenics. The latter form of eugenics was prevalent in early twentieth century especially in America, Britain, and Europe where genetic decisions as to what specific genetic features were desirable or undesirable were determined by the state rather than individual parents. Authoritarian eugenics was a double-edged sword—it was undoubtedly Janus-faced—such that it was subdivided into ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ eugenics, albeit with the same negative telos of discriminating those who were generally considered physically and mentally ill and producing the best breeds of human beings (Levine, 2017). Positive eugenics encouraged people of putative good health to reproduce together so as to promote good birth. This practice was axiomatic from the so-called Fitter Family Fairs in the United States wherein ‘fit’ families vied for prizes at local county contests and this garnered robust support from public health departments across the United States (Stern, 2002). Similarly, the Nazis promoted selective breeding for the Aryan race so as to ‘purify’ the German population and exclude non-Aryans. Negative eugenics precluded those deemed ‘unfit’ —mental imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, idiots, and the poor—from reproduction. Once again, the Nazi regime comes to mind here as it forcibly euthanised and sterilised persons whose lives were—based on the Nazis’ erratic pseudoscientific hierarchisation of humanity according to races—considered unworthy of life. These two strands of eugenics were intimately entwined; hence it is rather impossible to distinguish between them as eugenicists almost always combined tactics for both prevention and improvement (Levine, 2017, p. 8).

Liberal eugenics is based on technological advancements and could take the form of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and genome editing (somatic and germline). In the case of PGD, couples first undergo in vitro fertilisation (IVF) to produce embryos which are tested to find out if they are affected by the family’s inherited condition; the embryos are transferred to the uterus only if they are —after biopsy—considered unaffected by the family’s inherited condition. Ben-Nagi et al (2016) posit that genetic diseases are divided into three categories: monogenic (single gene) disease, mitochondrial disorders, and chromosomal abnormalities. In the case of gene editing, there are available technologies—like CRISPR–Cas9—which make editing human genomes possible: somatic gene editing affects only the patient’s being and some of his or her cells whilst germline editing is passed on to future generations because it affects all the organism’s cells, including sperms and eggs (Lea & Niakan, 2019). As an ideal, liberal eugenics (whether from PGD or genome editing) departs from the authoritarian tinge characteristic of Nazi eugenics in that it leaves every genetic decision over offspring characteristics —about which desirable hereditary features to be selected and which undesirable hereditary features to be expunged—to individual parents devoid of government or state intervention (Agar, 2004; Caplan, 2004). What was once the exclusive preserve of the state is now thus within the domain of parental choice. With the main intent of distinguishing liberal eugenics from its horrifying historical predecessors, Fox (2007) explicitly highlights its three main features; its ideal is that decisions about offspring biology ought to be: (1) voluntary, (2) individualistic, and (3) state-neutral (pp. 3-4). To begin with, in the liberal eugenicist imagination, decisions about offspring genetic makeup should be voluntary in that they are made within the spheres of liberty rather than coercion. This ideal contrasts with the old eugenics which relied on forced sterilisation, racial cum sexual segregation, and miscegenation laws. Second, eugenic choices regarding offspring biology should be individualistic implies those eugenic decisions should be made by individual families—and parents—rather than by the state and, moreover, that the intended benefit of the eugenic intervention should be for the welfare of the potential offspring rather than the state’s overall welfare. The third feature of liberal eugenics stresses state-neutrality—this means value pluralism in the sense that, given that individual parents’ preferences and conceptions of the good life will always differ and that they will almost always desire different goods for their offspring, the state should allow individual parents to enhance their offspring however they may wish. Based on these defining features, it could be inferred that the ultimate objective of the liberal eugenic ideal is to expand or maximise the reproductive choices of individuals— and this contrasts with the atavistic old eugenic programme that limited reproductive options to few individuals and groups whilst excluding many deemed unfit (Mukherjee, 2016, p. 275; Goering, 2014).

One would not be hard-pressed, I think, to decrypt the core features of liberalism—the political tradition whose ideological bailiwick is equal respect for individuals as free, self-determining, autochthonous beings with the rational capacity to choose their own values and goals even whilst respecting the liberty of others (see Raz, 1986)—implicated in the liberal eugenic ideal. Individuality, liberty, state-neutrality: these are the basic tenets of the liberal tradition, for they take us backward to the libertarian arguments of John Stuart Mill and forward to John Rawls’ and Joseph Raz’s anti-perfectionist and perfectionist versions, respectively. Most importantly, these core features of liberalism pinpoint the significance of autonomy in the liberal society. What autonomy presupposes is that the individual is in control of his/her own destiny, making successive decisions amongst an adequate range of options—it is, in Raz’s (1986) own words, the ‘ideal of self-creation’ (p. 370) such that the individual chooses for themselves the best life option amongst a wide range of equally reasonable options without coercion. Thus, devoid of apposite mental abilities, independence, and adequate range of options, one loses autonomy. Although autonomy is a matter of degree—no one, I think, is completely autonomous since our individuality flows directly from our sociability—its indispensability as much for moral and value pluralism as for individual agency is generally uncontested (Appiah, 2005; Hurka, 1987).

What—the inquisitive enquirer may interject—is the justification for an ideal which usurps the liberal language of autonomy for genome editing intervention? Liberal eugenicists, Fox (2007) posits, defend the ideal from two important standpoints: first, that genome editing of offspring is a mere addendum to individual parents’ procreative liberty given that reproductive decisions reflect more on the individual’s body and identity rather than the state, thus the state should leave genetic decisions to the hands of individual parents provided those parents can afford it; and second, that since individual parents are entitled to nurture their children—providing them with the best education, healthcare, good nutrition and so on—without state interference, they should as well be left to make decisions regarding their offspring’s genomes (pp. 4-5). Parental autonomy in respect of procreative liberty and childrearing is thus invoked as a justification for genomic intervention (Green, 2007, p. 127; Glover, 1984, p. 53; Hughes, 1996, p. 99).

It could be quickly realised that the liberal eugenic ideal is justified from what Carens (2013) would term ‘cantilever arguments.’ Whilst arguing for a particular moral view, the cantilever strategy begins by taking some assumptions for granted, and then moves further to demonstrate that those assumptions have implications for other, perhaps more contested conundrums. This is precisely, I think, the strategy liberal eugenicists appropriate to their own purposes, for they commence—in both justifications for parental sovereignty over offspring genomes—from the fact that accepting individual parents have procreative liberty and autonomy over childrearing practices, we must also agree to the idea that they— individual parents—should have the liberty to edit the genomes of their potential child. But is this syllogism founded on robust cantilever arguments—or, as it were, analogies—plausible for the liberal society committed to autonomy?

Paternalism, liberalism, eugenics: Misconstrued connections?

Liberal eugenicists’ contention about the extension of childrearing and procreative liberties to the domain of genomic intervention seems plausible taken at face value, for individual parents in liberal societies have a reasonable degree of autonomy in these two spheres. Paternalism toward children is justified on the basis that they do not yet possess autonomy—that they lack the mental capacities, meaningful range of options, independence to be really autonomous. Fox (2007) contends that one has to have the ‘faculty’ and ‘facility’ of autonomy to be precluded from paternalism, and because children do not possess the faculty—knowledge, experience, emotional and cognitive skills—required for autonomy, they surely cannot enjoy the facility of autonomy; they cannot, in other words, claim that paternalism toward them is unjust (pp. 8–9).

But that is just one side of the story. To resist liberal eugenicists’ cantilever arguments, it seems to me that we must challenge the analogy itself and show how the novel consequence that flows from previously taken-for-granted assumptions runs counter to liberalism. Liberal eugenicists miss the point that although autonomy is not generally applied to children, the liberal state interdicts abuse and neglect of children by individual parents and mandates healthcare and education for children regardless of individual parents’ values and conception of the good life. In some cases, the state strips individual parents of custody rights if it is ascertained that they are incapable of caring for their child, perhaps in consequence of untreated substance abuse or other pernicious cognitive incapacities. Paternalism toward children admits of gradations, so that it is not absolute. Children may be non-autonomous (in the strictest sense of the term) but they definitely do have basic rights that the liberal state protects so as to facilitate their assent to autonomy. In the case of the State v. Garber (1966), for example, the Kansas Supreme Court refused the plea of the Amish to preclude their children from attending state-accredited schools because this prevents the children from developing their capacities for autonomy. The state acted in this case as parens patriae—it protected the child’s best interests that could have been constrained by parents. This autonomy-promoting education has been defended by states since time immemorial (Levinson, 2002). The cantilever arguments deployed by liberal eugenicists does not hold much water from the viewpoint of liberal principles—it is, to put it simply, a fallacious analogy that fails to consider the opposite side of the coin which briskly defeats their vacuous ideal.

Joel Feinberg (1980, pp. 124–126) discusses children’s rights by distinguishing amongst four different kinds of rights. First, there are rights that both children and adults possess—the right to life, for instance. Second, there are rights only children possess, those that could be termed ‘dependency-rights’ for they are derived from the dependence of the child on others for basic necessities of life including food, water, healthcare, shelter, and clothing. Third, there are rights which are exercisable only by adults—the freedom of religion, say. And finally, there are rights which must be saved for the child until she attains adulthood. There is the possibility that these ‘rights-in-trust’ can be sullied by adults in ways that might preclude the child from exercising them when she achieves adulthood. Consider, for example, the right to marry or choose one’s spouse. Although children do not possess this right on legal and social grounds, they will have that right when they attain adulthood. If the child is now irrevocably betrothed to someone, this would constrain her exercise of the right to marry when she attains adulthood. There are many kinds of rights in this fourth category which—although akin to adults’ autonomy rights—are not equivalent to autonomy but demand respect by adults. Indeed, for each and every autonomy right that autonomous adults hold, there are corresponding right-in-trust that children who are not yet autonomous possess until they attain adulthood when they can exercise that right. Taken together, therefore, all the many rights-in-trust constitute what Feinberg orthogonally dubs the ‘child’s right to an open future.’

I highlighted Feinberg’s idea here in part because it is important for the dissection of the potent implausibility of liberal eugenicists’ conflation of paternalism, liberalism, and eugenics. Even if it is maintained that individual parents have the liberty and right to edit the genomes of their potential offspring, the argument liberal eugenicists employ in justifying this ideal falls short of liberal principles, not least because paternalism is not absolute as children have rights whose violation could result in the undermining of the child’s future autonomy. And since eugenics directly touches upon that which irretrievably enable or disenable a child’s future autonomy, it is foolhardy from the point of reason, I think, to absent state intervention all for the purpose of ensuring that the so-called ‘genetic supermarket’ (Nozick, 1974) reigns supreme in a capitalist world of commodification. There is no contemporary liberal society—none, at least, that I am aware of—that leaves all decisions regarding child upbringing to individual parents. Why, then, should we leave all decisions about genome editing of prospective offspring to parents?

Liberal eugenics vis-à-vis the future of humanity

I have so far been discussing the justificatory arguments brandished in support of the liberal eugenic ideal and how those seemingly reasonable arguments mistake the woods for the trees. What I want to do in this section is critique the morality of the liberal eugenic ideal to pinpoint the loopholes that might constitute harm to the future of the liberal community and to future of humanity should it be accepted root and branch. The liberal eugenic ideal of genetic control, so it seems to me, is potentially harmful due in part to (1) the irrationality of individual parents,

(2) its potency in exacerbating divisions along identity lines, and (3) the probable undermining of the child’s future autonomy.

To begin with, humans are not always rational; it would not be a crude overstatement, in fact, to aver that irrationality is part of human nature so that rationality is rather an aspiration—and not a condition—for human agency. The concept of ‘irrationality’ can be used in four different senses: first, when reasoning seemingly does not conform to the fundamental principles of logic and probability; second, when beliefs are badly backed by evidence and in contradiction with the science of the day; third, when behaviour deviates from norms of morality and rationality such that it compromises the agent’s functioning; and finally, when emotions—or instincts— drive decisions over and above deliberation (Bortolotti, 2015). Depending on the context that these four instances of irrationality occur, individuals displaying any of these features can be considered ignorant, insane, foolish, and, mirabile dictu, even unwise. The implicit assumption of liberal eugenics is, I think, that individual parents are rational agents who always know what is in the best interest of their potential offspring; thus, the state should not intervene in genome editing interventions not least because it is totally unnecessary. ‘If I know what is in the best interest of my children,’ so the argument goes, ‘why should the state encroach upon my autonomy?’ Even the enthusiastic liberal perfectionist would find it hard to disagree with the force of this type of argumentation. Green (2007), as it appears, is the fiercest exponent of this peculiar view. He rejects Feinberg’s ‘right to an open future’ in consequence of the fact that, for him, individual parents are both guardians and gardeners whose love always prevails (p. 114). Precisely because individual parents, in his staunch peroration, always protect and shape children so that they can develop to maturity as they will, there is absolutely nothing morally harmful, then, with individual parents choosing traits for their children through genetic interventions even though it does not guarantee an open future for their children. But he ends with a cautionary note: it is not simply sufficient for parents to assume they know all that is in their children’s best interests; they must as well ensure that their judgements are in consonance with those of the ‘most informed members of society’ (p. 216). Green’s argument is somewhat compelling for it appeals to what almost everyone would entertain. But the basic problem with the argument is that it is basically unsound, for—taken to its logical conclusion—it amounts to an argumentum ad passiones, an appeal to emotions with its stress on the overriding principle of parental love that knows no bounds, that sort of love that negates harm that might encumber the child’s right to an open future. But even more problematic is the notion of the informed members of society. Just who these informed people might be is a subject of contention because humans are products of many cognitive cum social biases: it could turn out the putative ‘most informed members of society’ are profoundly uninformed (see Hayry, 2010).

Robust evidence from both psychology and cognitive science lucidly demonstrate that humans are so susceptible to backsliding, heuristics and inconsistencies in a plethora of circumstances (Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Kahneman, 2011). To empirically demonstrate human irrationality let me give an example with procedure invariance—with two given options, if one prefers A to B, then one should stick to this preference regardless of how the preference is framed. Yet research participants choose A over B in most cases when they are asked to choose directly, but are almost always ready to pay more to acquire B rather than A. If participants are asked whether they would prefer to live for twenty years with headache five days per week, or to live for ten years with headache five days per week, most participants choose the latter option. However, when they are asked the number of years of good health ten and twenty years of recurrent headaches would be really worth, most of the participants match the former option (living with headaches for twenty years) with a higher number of years with the healthy life than the latter (living with headaches for ten years) (see Stalmeier et al., 1997). Humans everywhere are prone to these kinds of inconsistencies in their deductive and inductive reasoning.

The point I am hinting at with the exploration of our cognitive/psychological capacities is that humans have a ‘bounded rationality’ (Simon, 1957) so that their best choices are subject to cognitive limitations. If this argument is dispositive and axiomatic, then it seems to me that we do not always know what is best for us, nor are we always cognisant of what is in others’ best interest. Individual parents, to put it bluntly, are not always rational since some of their choices are largely products of deep-seated cultural biases. Take, for example, the infanticide of twins amongst the Ibibio people in south-eastern Nigeria during the late 1800s—many parents thought that the birth of twins was the result of an evil curse, that the father of one of the infants must have been an evil spirit, and that the mother had done evil. What was therefore in the best interest of both babies is to abandon them in some clay pots in the jungle to die. Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)—an atavistic practice carried out by parents in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to satisfy social norms of inclusion—which is an attack on bodily integrity of girls with far reaching implications for girls’ future life is another instance of the tension between parental choice and a child’s right to an open future.

Sometimes a putative virtue is, alas, a vice and that is due in part to individual parents— whose beliefs are deeply embedded in the larger social structures—having problematic—and, indeed, irrational—all-good-things-considered choices. This is one of the main reasons, so it seems to me, we cannot really rely solely on parental love to safeguard the child’s anticipatory autonomy rights in a liberal society, for when these types of conflicts—between parental best choices and children’s anticipatory autonomy rights—happen, the child might be at a defenceless situation. Indeed, to leave every genome editing intervention in the hands of parents without any iota of regulation is to assume—however wrongly—that they are at all times rational: this will be, in my view, potentially harmful to the liberal society because by selecting certain characteristics parents would limit their future offspring’s freedom by placing extra burden of expectation on them that could be far removed from liberal commitments to children’s anticipatory autonomy rights. On this note, Sparrow (2011) is right, I think, when he posits that liberal eugenicists face an impasse: if parents ought ideally to control offspring’s future genetic well-being, then there is the likelihood they will choose in ways that (1) are quite contrary to liberals’ beliefs, and (2) may—as a probable consequence of market pressures and social mores—result in homogeneity from tyranny of the majority (p. 515); but, again, returning genetic choices to the state would also imply the rebirth of authoritarian eugenics. Balance between the extremes must be struck.

Besides the ‘irrationality rationale’ liberal eugenics has the potency of marginalising different identity groups. The so-called expressivist objection—the argument that selective reproductive technologies and genetic interventions express previously implicit prejudices toward people with certain forms of impairments or embodiment by communicating the view that their lives are not worth living—is the most prominent argument deployed by disability rights activists, bioethicists, and feminists to unravel the potential harmfulness of genome editing interventions (Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 2018, pp. 83–84; Asch, 1999; Saxton, 2000; Hofmann, 2017). Despite the plausibility of the expressivist argument, the real meaning of expression has been contested: just what is it? (Buchanan, 1996). Some theorists contend that persons with certain kinds of disability could be respected without necessarily promoting or endorsing the disability (Savulescu, 2001; Glover, 2006). Other theorists problematise the well-established conception of disability by pinpointing the deep contrast between availability of equal opportunity and the existence of some forms of impairment—impairments are not a disability, they argue, for it is the way society treats those with impairments that disables them (Amundson, 2005; Asch & Wasserman, 2005; Harris, 2000).

Each of these authors has a point, I think, from their different perspectives. But—stepping aside a little from the ivory tower of theorisations —do people with disabilities really feel that novel genetic technologies devalue them? Empirical research demonstrates that genetic technologies, in fact, do make disabled people feel unwanted in society (Barter et al., 2017; Boardman, 2014). If this is the case, then one can infer that genome editing interventions could be harmful given its potential to exacerbate discriminatory attitudes toward persons of diverse identities—those, that is, that are impaired or disabled. One of the fundamental principles of the liberal society is that no one should be treated differently just because they possess some specific characteristics: the principle of nondiscrimination. Accepting the insinuations of liberal eugenics—of genetic control over future offspring without state intervention—could be self-defeating as it would, I think, violate liberal principles of respect and non-discrimination, particularly for persons with disabilities; such unwholesome discrimination indeed impacts on the disabled’s total welfare. The prospect of selecting and deselecting desirable—or undesirable—features through genome editing interventions can as well exacerbate racism, sexism, and homophobia by expressing to women, people of colour, and homosexuals that they are a nuisance; it could also undermine diversity as the proclivity of choosing specific traits may ostensibly skew toward population homogeneity. Although I am presenting a cantilever argument herein by drawing heavily from the expressivist stance on genome editing technologies, this coheres with my prior contention that individual parents’ choices are sometimes biased and ill-informed due in part to prevailing cultural biases. Any person of goodwill would wish race, gender, and sexual orientation to be morally neutral categories; however—in spite of advances in anti-discrimination legislation—they are anything but. Blacks still face institutional discrimination in employment and in the face of law enforcement personnel; gays and lesbians are oftentimes marginalised. This is why Russell (2010) argues that people—individual parents in the case of liberal eugenics—who harbour irrational racist biases would feel empowered by the free commercialisation of genome editing technologies and make genetic choices along racist lines that would impact humanity negatively. Equally, sex selection—with high preference for males—has already been observed in some countries where women are less preferred to men, and this poses a problem for the survival of the human race (Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 2018, p. 79). Even if the selection of particular traits—light-skin, male, heterosexual—is well-intentioned to attend to unjust social prejudices, it is also problematic not least because it would reinforce extant cultural prejudice, thereby fostering homogeneity. The liberal community that thrives on diversity may lose its essence by adopting the liberal eugenic ideal.

A mildly uncontroversial principle of the liberal society is equality, both in its substantive and procedural dimensions: most liberals do not envision a society where few benefit at the expense of others. One of the quandaries against liberal eugenics is its potential to produce a ‘genetic underclass’ in that there would be an increasing polarisation between the ‘gene poor’ and the ‘gene rich’—between the Naturals and the GenRich (Silver, 1997)—with the latter having the resources to fully access genome editing technologies relative to the former (Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 2018, p. 93). In the idealised Nozickian ‘genetic supermarket’ wherein the state does not regulate these technologies, wealthy families that can afford editing the genomes of their offspring—to make them more intelligent (with the highest IQ), stronger, taller, faster, athletic, say—would have the benefit of becoming more competitive compared to the ‘genetic underclass.’ This hypothetical scenario which is plausible would thence necessarily produce two classes of humans—the human and the post-human—that can redefine our relations to one another. But Buchanan (2011) discards this idea in consequence of the fact that if the state makes the genetic technologies available to all in much the same way healthcare and education are accessible to all in welfare states, then this argument would degenerate into oblivion. I grant that this criticism is valid, except that this is a further argument against liberal eugenics, for the basic idea of the ideal is that the state should not really intervene in the genetic supermarket, just as myriad capitalist systems are regulated by competition. By making genetic technologies accessible to all, the state would, I think, be implicitly intervening to mitigate the potential negative effects emanating from giving free rein to utilisation of genetic technologies: it would be attempting, that is, to resolve a potential conundrum because it is, in point of fact, a problem. Buchanan does not seem to realise that his own stance is self-refuting because he merely seeks to find the cure for the liberal eugenic ideal should it be permitted in the liberal state.

I have fairly glossed over some of the possible harmfulness of liberal eugenics, and I have done this implicitly through employing ‘slippery slope’ argument—it takes the form: if we accept A (liberal eugenics), we will accept B (violation of children’s rights-in-trust), and if we accept B then we will accept C (exacerbation of social divisions), and therefore if we accept A then we must accept C, and the only feasible way not to accept C is by rejecting A. This is, as one might realise, a mere extension of the transitive law. Further, I have as well discussed the flaws of the liberal eugenic ideal by appealing to human irrationality as well as the potential impacts on multifarious identities and identity groups. What I want to do in the last part of this section is to examine liberal eugenics’ potential impact on the foundations of the liberal society. There is arguably no one whose reflections on the conundrum is more relevant than Jürgen Habermas.

For Habermas (2003), the genetic engineering of offspring in very specific ways beyond the treatment of disease would undermine our ‘ethical self-understanding’ as members of a liberal community. What does this complex proposition mean? And how does Habermas elaborate his attack on the liberal eugenic ideal? A close reading of Habermas suggests that he employs three different arguments in his fierce critique of liberal eugenics: (1) the consent argument, (2) the responsibility argument, and (3) the instrumentalisation argument (Árnason, 2014). Regardless of the strands of argumentation, Habermas’ contention is that a liberal society is founded on morality—morality here construed as that which we owe one another (respect for autonomy, for instance) as members of a liberal community—and ethics—ethics here being construed as questions about the good life, ourselves and our place in the world which are usually personal—as both conduce to Rawlsian pluralism; individuals should therefore be left to choose their own life projects and whatever conduces to their happiness or ethical flourishing (Habermas, 2003). Based on this distinction between ethics and morality, Habermas posits that it is not genetic engineering that is problematic simpliciter—he indeed distinguishes between therapeutic and enhancement interventions, with the former unobjectionable within limits and the latter always unethical—but the implicit attitude of undermining future offspring’s freedom without their consent (2003, pp. 12–14). This argument from consent assumes the form: would the child have approved the selected traits? The child may justifiably approve therapeutic interventions which alleviates her from diseases ^[1] but unlikely to consent to mutations that merely reflect parental preferences. Moreover, individual parents’ selection of certain desirable dispositions cannot be dissociated or divorced from expectations that the future offspring would pursue a specific life project. Such ‘genetic determination’—in Habermas’ own peroration—would preclude the projected offspring from being addressed as a second person and from taking a revisionist stance in response to her parents. The responsibility contention is intimately connected to that of consent: Habermas argues that the designer—the individual parent—acts immorally by making herself the author of another’s life, and this might lead to the designed—the future offspring—feeling less responsible for her own life (pp. 81-82). His demarcation between the ‘grown and the made’ (p.52) is meant to suggest, I think, that genetic enhancement constitutes the objectification and ‘de-dignification’ of another by its failure to recognise the offspring’s subjectivity; this psychologically perturbs the offspring’s self-perception in respect of her moral responsibility as an autoconscious self-understanding being. Lastly, Habermas contends, in a Kantian deontological framework, that liberal eugenics instrumentalises the future person, making her the means to another’s—individual parents’—ends. Deliberately selecting deafness for a future offspring—as the American lesbian couple Sharon Duchesneau and Candy McCullough did (Spriggs, 2002), for example—to ensure that the child participates in one’s deaf culture would constitute an instrumentalisation of another from the Habermasian perspective, since it is geared toward imposing specific life projects onto the future offspring without their consent—indeed it is an affront to an offspring’s autonomy.

Habermas’ distinction between treatment and enhancement is appealing, for he supposes that treating genetic diseases is acceptable but enhancement is not. This perspective is not novel though as many scholars have criticised enhancement but endorsed treatment and prevention of genetic diseases. The philosopher Michael Sandel (2004) argues that the problem with enhancement is that it is a desire for perfection and mastery which precludes us from seeing life as a gift to be shared with others, for it ‘threatens to banish our appreciation of life as a gift, and to leave us with nothing to affirm or behold outside our own will’ (p. 62). Such perfection makes, in Sandel’s view, humility impossible as parents would feel that kids are just the product of their choice rather than a gift of chance. There are also concerns with the fact of irreversible mistakes which could stem from genetic enhancement. In other words, what happens to the person if genetic enhancement is confronted with mistakes? But this question should not, I think, be limited to enhancements. Therapeutic interventions and treatments for genetic illness could be equally undermined by mistakes, leaving us to wonder whether the possibility of errors in either treatment or enhancement is sufficient reason to reject both practices, tout court. For her part, Kamm (2010) rejects genetic enhancement on the grounds of the lack of imagination in human beings not least because ‘most people’s conception of the varieties of good is very limited, and if they designed people their improvements would conform to limited, predictable types’ (p. 128). I have addressed the latter conundrum in my critique of liberal eugenics by appealing to the irrationalities and cognitive incapacities of our species. There are just so many goods in the world that genetic enhancements based on parents’ limited—sometimes even perverse—conception of the good life would impose on future offspring. This is also, I suspect, the position of Habermas —that imposing specific life projects on future offspring is against the respect for human autonomy upon which the liberal society is built.

But Habermas—as an ardent supporter of treatment—fails to address the question of what potential mistakes in genetic treatments would mean for the human person engendered through genetic engineering. If this would limit the person’s autonomy, is not that the same as genetic enhancement which he fears would imply making future offspring conform to parents’ specific projects? What justifies treatment but not enhancement? This is unaxiomatic from his arguments. Habermas’ conclusions have also been challenged, especially as to whether a genetically designed offspring cannot be revisionist in relation to her own parents (Green, 2007; Buchanan, 2011), for with the capacity to reason, the genetically engineered offspring could take a revisionist stance against his or her parents; and if that is the case, then the argument from responsibility is based less on facts than on irrational anxieties. In my view, this criticism misses the central bailiwick of all Habermas’ premises: the notion of human dignity. This is the nucleus of the liberal society and devoid of respect for human dignity—of respect, that is, of future offspring’s autonomy as a member of a community of equality—genomic interventions would simply destroy the liberal society itself and what it stands for. This is an advice we must heed from a decent mind like Habermas who himself has lived through the horrors of the old eugenics in Europe, for he is concerned, I am inclined to think, not only with persons as they are but also as they might be without any modicum of regulation or control.

Conclusion

This essay commenced with the problematic as to whether liberal eugenics is compatible with liberal values and with the future of humanity. As the arguments herein show, the answer is in the negative: No. And it could be morally harmful because it is substantively illiberal. I might have presented a rather dystopian—even apocalyptic—exegesis of liberal eugenic ideal, but this by no means implies that genomic interventions ought to be abandoned altogether: such a stance would make no sense from the viewpoint of reason given the fact that we cannot really do away with genetic technologies; they are here to stay. What is of utmost criticality, then, is the decipherment of ways to employ them without endangering the welfare—and disrespecting the dignity—of the offspring, exacerbating social divisions, or marginalising diverse identity groups as the old eugenics had demonstrated and as the new eugenics could potentially do. We need to learn our lessons: namely, that too much control and too much freedom constitutes tyranny in the sphere of reproductive genetics. Balance must be struck between the state’s demands and individual parents’ reproductive choices to ensure that the genetic technologies do not go awry. One of the ways, I think, of ensuring that these genetic technologies do not jeopardise the well-being of the future person is by conducting research on the safety and welfare implications of the genomic interventions for future persons who would be engendered through such means. There should, moreover, be inclusive social debate bringing together, and attending to, different groups to deliberate on the impact of these technologies on their self-perception and dignity. Moreover, apposite legal, regulatory, and professional governance measures should be formulated and implemented by the necessary national and international bodies to regulate genome editing technologies. Finally, we must realise that although the environment plays a huge role in our self-identification and ethical flourishing, our genomes also do matter; we should thence be very cautious with how we edit our genomes, for ‘What we read and write into our genome is our fallibilities, desires, and ambitions. It is human nature’ (Mukherjee, 2016, p. 479). We owe our future generations respect—and, this is mostly possible when we begin to see genomic interventions (especially genetic enhancements) not so much as positive progress but as a potential regressive feature of our technological age that could wreak havoc on our mutual coexistence by puncturing any evolution toward equality requisite for cosmopolitan conversations.