The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2007

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapter 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 5: “Mastery and Gift”

Chapter 5, Introduction and Section 1 Summary: “Humility, Responsibility, and Solidarity”

The main problem with bioengineering is that it represents the “triumph of willfulness over giftedness, of dominion over reverence, of molding over beholding” (85).

The question is, why is that triumph necessarily a bad thing? Perhaps the answer is religious: Bioengineering allows people to see themselves as rivalling the power of God. Sandel believes there is an equally persuasive secular argument. Parenthood requires humility, as parents must accept and love whoever their child turns out to be. People may feel a sense of humility about their own attributes, as they did not choose their own genes. If people did have that choice, they might lose their sense of gratitude for their own existence, whether that gratitude is directed at God or at the randomness of the universe.

People often suggest that genetic enhancements would make people less responsible for their own successes, but the opposite could be true: The option to undergo genetic modification could become the responsibility to do so. This is already the case in some sports where players commonly take performance-enhancing drugs: Those who elect not to are sometimes shamed for letting the team down or for not giving the game everything they have. The same thing happens to parents who have children with Down syndrome or other genetic disorders that can be detected before birth with genetic testing. This increase in people’s perceived responsibility for their own and their children’s genetic circumstances could lead to a reduction in solidarity among all people. If everyone could theoretically choose genetic enhancements, people might find less reason to stand in solidarity with those whose genetic fates are less fortunate than their own. This returns to eugenics: people whose genetic makeup was not deemed ideal would be “worthy of eugenic repair” (92).

Chapter 5, Section 2 Summary: “Objections”

Sandel preempts two major objections to his argument. The first is that he has taken too much of a religious stance: If life is a gift with unpredictable, unbidden elements, does that imply that it has a divine giver? If so, people who do not believe in God should have no reason to find Sandel’s argument persuasive. He counters that his argument can have a secular interpretation. A person’s gifts may be given by God, nature, or fortune; in any case, they are outside of a person’s control. Similarly, people who describe the natural world as “sacred” might mean that it comes from God, that it is “inscribed with inherent meaning,” or simply that nature “is not a mere object at our disposal, open to any use we may desire” (93). Sandel believes that the same logic applies to human beings and to DNA.

There is another potential objection from a consequentialist standpoint. While some people might value solidarity and humility, others might genuinely consider individuals’ abilities to compete at the highest possible level to be a greater good. This same objection states that while trying to gain extreme control over oneself or one’s children may be harmful, it is still possible that such genetic control could lead to positive results. For instance, genetically modifying a child to have an aptitude for science may be morally wrong, but that wrong could be overridden if the child went on to cure cancer.

Sandel regards this consequentialist argument as inadequate to justify genetic engineering. He acknowledges that genetic modifications could indeed lead to positive results. The broader issue is that bioengineering reflects a “habit of mind and way of being” that remains morally wrong regardless of any positive outcome (96). It pushes parents away from the openness to the unbidden that is so fundamental to a positive parent-child relationship. It stops people from celebrating their own and each other’s natural gifts, and it erodes humility and solidarity. Rather than trying to shape humans to better fit the world, it would be a better, more just, and more compassionate use of everyone’s time to work to “create social and political arrangements more hospitable to the gifts and limitations of imperfect human beings” (97).

Chapter 5, Section 3 Summary: “The Project of Mastery”

A microbiologist named Robert L. Sinsheimer penned a defense of liberal eugenics in the 1960s, arguing that it would be far easier to implement individual choice over genetics than state-mandated sterilization policies. He advocated for “the conversion of all the unfit to the highest genetic level” (97). He was especially concerned with using genetic modifications to improve the IQs of the lowest-scoring members of the population. It was his hope that eugenics and bioengineering would put human beings back in the exalted cosmic position that many people felt they had been demoted from once Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection took hold. While Sandel admits that Sinsheimer’s vision can be intoxicating, he believes that 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” (100).

Chapter 5 Analysis

Sandel positions himself against the broad set of ethical theories known as Consequentialism. Consequentialists decide whether an action is good or bad purely based on its consequences. If the positive consequences outweigh the negative ones, the action is good, even if it might not seem that way at first. In this case, parents bioengineering their children might be bad for the parent-child relationship, for the child’s self-understanding, and for interpersonal solidarity and humility. However, if a bioengineered child could use their genetic gifts to enact widespread good (such as by curing cancer), all those negative consequences would be justified. According to the consequentialist argument, Openness to the Unbidden may in itself be genuinely good, and Mastery and Control may be genuinely bad, but specific actions must be judged in light of their material consequences.

Sandel’s argument is humanist as opposed to consequentialist: He argues that mastery and control represent an erosion of humanity, while openness to the unbidden enhances humanity. This contrasts with microbiologist Robert Sinsheimer’s comments about humanity’s place in the cosmos. Before Darwin, most people (at least in Europe and the US) believed that God had created human beings in their current state, in his image, apart from and above all animals. Darwin’s argument that humans and animals actually share the same genetic lineage posed a significant challenge to this belief. Sandel believes that far from putting humans back on a pedestal, genetic engineering would further erode people’s ability to value themselves and each other, religious sentiment or not.

Sinsheimer’s argument for “liberal eugenics” relies on IQ as a measure of intelligence. Once thought to be a relatively objective way to measure intelligence, IQ is now understood to be predicated on racism and on an extremely limited and insufficient understanding of what constitutes intelligence. This discrediting of IQ is in itself evidence of the problem underlying all forms of eugenics, from the old to the new: Standards of “fitness” are always defined according to the arbitrary social hierarchies of a given historical moment, and thus they are always inherently discriminatory and always subject to revision. Rather than seeking to engineer children who perfectly match current standards, Sandel argues, parents should practice Openness to the Unbidden—loving the children they have and seeking to build a more open and equitable society in which those children can thrive regardless of who they are.