The False Fear of Playing God

In recent decades, no other field of science has been as thrilling as genetics, not even cosmology. And none has been nearly as crucial for the lives of our descendants. Among the possibilities currently being explored by geneticists, the one causing the greatest unease is the power doctors might wield in deciding which people should be born. To some extent, humans have long possessed this power, ever since we learned that allowing certain people to mate has consequences for the children they produce. Eugenics, advocated by figures like George Bernard Shaw and Adolf Hitler, followed this simple realization. But now, genetic science offers the prospect of creating very specific people, designed according to a detailed plan, or altering existing individuals—either as fetuses or even later—to produce people with selected genetic traits.

When scientists in Scotland cloned an adult sheep and other researchers and commentators speculated about cloning humans, parliamentary committees and specially appointed commissions immediately dismissed the idea. The European Parliament, for example, declared human cloning "unethical, morally repugnant," and saw it as a violation of respect for the individual and a serious breach of fundamental human rights, which cannot be justified or permitted under any circumstances—whether on an experimental basis, in connection with fertility treatments, in preimplantation diagnosis, for tissue transplantation, or for any other purpose. The possibility of extensive genetic interventions—altering the genetic makeup of a zygote to create a range of desired physical, mental, and emotional traits, as recently depicted in the film Gattaca—has also provoked horror.

How can we explain or justify this extremely strong reaction to cloning and extensive genetic interventions? Three objections are most commonly raised. First, there are potential physical dangers. We do not know whether attempted interventions could lead to an unacceptable number of miscarriages or the birth of an unacceptable number of deformed children. Second, opposition to genetic interventions is often rooted in concerns about social justice. If cloning were possible, it would be incredibly expensive for a long time, and therefore available only to wealthy people. Third, the reaction can be explained on aesthetic grounds. Once possible, interventions could be used to perpetuate currently popular traits such as height, intelligence, hair color, and personality. This would deprive the world of the diversity that is essential to its novelty, originality, and fascination.

In my opinion, these objections, whether taken together or individually, do not justify the extent of the reaction described. Take the question of physical safety, for instance. There is little reason to believe that cloning or genetic interventions will cause germline damage that could threaten future generations with deformities. In any case, these risks are not sufficient on their own to justify banning further research, which could help sharpen our perception of real dangers. Some scientists will undoubtedly behave recklessly, but they could be reined in through regulation without halting research altogether.

When assessing the risk of harm associated with experiments or trials, we must also consider the hope that improving and refining genetic intervention techniques could significantly reduce the number of defects and deformities with which people are born or acquire over time. The outcome of this risk assessment could indeed favor further experimentation.

What about the issue of justice? It is easy to imagine that genetic interventions could become a privilege of the rich. But these methods could be used for more than just satisfying vanity. The parents of a terminally ill child might wish for another child, whom they would love just as much as the first, but whose blood or bone marrow could save the life of the sick child from whom it was cloned. Cloning individual human cells instead of a complete organism could offer even more significant advantages. For example, a redesigned and then repeatedly cloned cell from a cancer patient could become a cure for that cancer when these clones are reintroduced. Redistribution, not the denial of benefits to some without benefiting others, is the remedy for injustice.

And what about the aesthetic objection? We already have clones—genetically identical multiple births are clones, and twins and other genetically identical children prove that identical genes do not necessarily produce identical phenotypes. In the past, we may have underestimated nature, but the social environment remains important, and the reaction to genetic interventions has itself underestimated its significance.

Nevertheless, many people fear that replacing the genetic "lottery" with manipulated reproduction would increasingly replace the welcome diversity of human types with a uniformity dictated by fashion. To some extent, greater uniformity is clearly desirable: there is no aesthetic or other value in the fact that some people are condemned to a life with disabilities or a short life expectancy. And it is not clear to what extent interventions, even if they were unrestricted and affordable, would actually threaten the desired diversity. Most parents would likely wish for their children to have the level of intelligence and other traits that we consider normal today if they had the choice. But we cannot describe this as undesirable: after all, every educational system, from regular to special education, aims to generally increase intelligence and abilities. Are there good reasons to fear that parents, if given the choice between sexual reproduction and cloning, would often choose the latter? That seems unlikely. Are there reasons to fear that parents might choose to manipulate a reproductive zygote to have a male rather than a female child? Undoubtedly, male children are preferred in certain societies, such as in northern India. But this preference appears to be so dominated by economic circumstances and shifting cultural prejudices that nothing suggests we might suddenly be flooded worldwide by a generation dominated by men. Selective gender-specific abortion has been possible for some time—as a result of amniocentesis and liberal abortion laws—yet no such trend has apparently taken hold.

None of the objections mentioned seem to provide what T.S. Eliot called an "objective correlative" for the resistance I described. People feel a deeper, less articulated reason, even if they cannot express it or only in logically inappropriate language—such as the strange reference to "fundamental human rights" in the European Parliament's resolution. This resistance is largely rooted in a reluctance to attempt to "play God."

"Playing God" is considered wrong in itself, regardless of any negative consequences it might have for any identifiable human being. However, it is unclear what it actually means to "play God" and what is wrong with it. It cannot mean that it is always wrong for humans to resist natural disasters or to reshuffle the cards that nature has dealt them. Humans do that constantly and always have. What is the difference between inventing penicillin and using manipulated and cloned genes to cure even more terrible diseases than penicillin can?

The boundary between fate and free will becomes blurred

To attempt to answer these questions, we need to take a step back—to the overall structure of our moral experience. This structure depends on a fundamental distinction: on one side, thinking and acting for which we are individually or collectively responsible; on the other side, what we are unable to change and what forms the immovable background to our actions and decisions. For the Greeks, this was the difference between themselves and their fate, which lay in the lap of the gods. Even today, for conventionally religious people, there is a difference between how God designed the world, including our natural role, and the extent of free will that he also created. Those who argue in scientific terms ultimately come to the same conclusion: they distinguish between what nature, including evolution, has created through particles, energy, and genes, and what we do in the world with those genes. In any case, this distinction draws a boundary between what we are—responsible for either divine will or a blind process—and how we deal with this inheritance on our own responsibility.

Scientific progress shakes value systems

This crucial boundary between chance and free decision forms the backbone of our morality, and any serious shift in this boundary causes a severe shock. History provides many examples of how scientific progress has shaken existing value systems. When scientists split the atom, the public's perception of the responsibility of military leaders to protect their soldiers in war changed. To fulfill this responsibility, far more devastating violence was now permitted. Attitudes toward euthanasia changed when medicine dramatically increased doctors' ability to prolong a dying patient's life beyond the point where it still held meaning for the patient. In each case, a period of moral stability was replaced by moral uncertainty, and it is telling that in both examples, people sought refuge in the expression "playing God."

Genetics has made us aware of the possibility of a similar, though much broader, moral shock. We fear the prospect of people designing other people because this possibility shifts the boundary between chance and decision that underlies our value systems. Our physical being—the brain and body that provide the material foundation for each of us—has long been the absolute paradigm of what is both of paramount importance to us and beyond our individual or collective influence.

If we take seriously the possibility we are currently exploring—that scientists have truly gained the ability to create a human being of any phenotype for which they or future parents opt—we might note the destruction of established moral convictions at almost every point. We base our distinction between chance and free decision not only on the assignment of responsibility for situations or events but also on our assessment of pride and self-esteem, including pride in what nature has bestowed upon us. It is a remarkable phenomenon that people take pride in physical attributes or skills when they have neither chosen nor created them—though not when these appear as the results of the efforts of others in which they had no part. A woman who entrusts herself to a cosmetic surgeon may be pleased with the result, but she cannot take pride in it; she certainly cannot feel the pride she might have if she had been born with that same beauty. What would become of our pride in our physical attributes, or in what we make of them, if they were the inescapable results not of nature but of the decisions of our parents and their paid geneticists?

We accept the conditions into which we are born as the parameters of our responsibility; not, however, as a potential arena for blame (except in those recently discovered cases where another's behavior affected our embryonic development—through smoking, for example, or drug use). Otherwise, we cannot blame anyone else, even if, like Richard III, we may curse fate for what we are.

The same distinction applies to social responsibility. We feel more obligated to compensate victims of industrial accidents and racial prejudice than those born with genetic defects or injured by lightning. In the language of lawyers and insurance companies, this is tellingly called "an act of God." How would that change if we became what we are through the conscious decisions of others?

The horror many of us feel at the thought of genetic manipulation does not stem from the fear of what is wrong. It stems from the fear of losing the certainty of knowing what is wrong. We fear that our firm beliefs will be undermined, that we will enter a kind of moral free fall; that we will have to rethink the immovable background—with uncertain results. Playing God means playing with fire.

Let us assume this hypothesis is correct, and this is the reason for the strong emotional reaction people have to genetic manipulation. Have we then not only discovered an explanation but also a justification for this revulsion? No. We would have discovered a challenge we must face, not a justification for retreat. Our hypothesis merely reveals reasons why our current values may be wrong or ill-considered. Those who bear moral responsibility cannot think of retreating when it turns out—as is the case today—that some fundamental assumptions of these values no longer count.

Playing God indeed means playing with fire. But that is exactly what we mortals have always done—since Prometheus, the patron saint of dangerous discoveries. We play with fire and accept the consequences, for the alternative would be irresponsible cowardice before the unknown.

Prospect 1999. Translation: Meinhard Büning.