[Introduction; Round 1; Round 2: Libertes, Precautiones; Round 3: Libertes, Precautiones; Round 4; Single page]

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by David Severa

Libertes’ Opening Statement

Genetic engineering is worthy of the most careful thought and this discussion goes right to the biggest questions. Should we change human nature at a biological level? If so, who should be in charge? My starting assumption is that activities shouldn’t be banned without clear and pressing reasons for doing so. The history of science and technology shows that freedom is foundational to progress. (Which isn’t to say that some regulation may not be wise, that goes beyond what I’ve set out to prove.) Genetic engineering should generally be freely available to individuals, and that freedom should extend to prospective parents choosing their child’s genotype, even (should it prove possible) selecting for such traits as intelligence and personality. Any prohibition would be harmful to individual liberty, to future children, and to society as a whole.

Given that freedom of choice is our starting premise, it falls upon opponents to prove the necessity of a ban for some greater purpose. I will go through some of the obvious arguments and show them to be inadequate.

Firstly, the idea that children have some sort of right to an unedited genome can quickly be dispensed with. It is transparently a post hoc rationalization for pretending that something is fundamentally bad just because one is uncomfortable with it. Rights – both positive and negative – are in essence about keeping the possibilities for individual choice as wide as possible. Freedom of speech and religion and conscience are obvious. Positive rights – “freedom from want” – are also about helping to free people from coercive circumstances. (Not to take a stand on positive rights, just pointing out the underlying logic.) Is a child’s freedom of action in some way limited because of an altered genome? No more or less so than anyone else whose choices are limited by their luck in the genetic lottery. (And in general one would assume that parents will try to expand their child’s options, not contract them.) No one finds it morally objectionable that children of musicians are often drawn to music, after all. Could parents try to push a child in a preferred direction? Certainly, but they do that already. It is unavoidable that our parents’ choices will influence us in ways we cannot control, and the power of genetic engineering is at most a difference in degree rather than in kind. (Plus, in practice, we will never have the sort of control that will let us create predestined automatons.) An unedited genome does not make you freer, and so a “right” to one is simply nonsensical.

Next, let’s turn to a much more serious issue: raising a child is not a simple matter that can be decided on the basis of individual liberty. A ward is not a mere extension of their guardian and their interests are not obviously concordant. Any time someone is acting on another’s behalf – especially on behalf of a child who can’t just walk away – there is a grave risk of abuse of power that it is wholly appropriate to regulate, even in a more libertarian society. We have no compunctions about taking children away from abusive parents. However, we still defer to parents by default. We don’t take children and raise them communally. Why? Because even if parents aren’t perfect, it isn’t obvious that anyone else will do better. Parents have more of an interest in their children than anyone else and are likelier to do do what’s best for them than anyone else. The foster system does not have a good reputation.

It seems straightforward to extend this (not total!) deference to parents from child-raising to before birth (we don’t usually legally regulate the behavior of pregnant women [certainly we shouldn’t], though social sanctions for risky behaviors may be appropriate) and even to before conception. To say that we don’t trust parents enough to use technology like genetic engineering responsibly implies that we’re far too trusting of parents after birth as well. One could make that argument of course, but I doubt that many would be comfortable following the logic of a ban on genetic engineering to its end. Parents want their children to be happy and to do well and if they use genetic engineering it will be mainly to that end. It won’t be perfect and smart regulations will be needed, but we already trust parents enough for a permissive approach to be commonsensical.

Let’s get more specific. Which traits will parents prefer? Most obviously greater intelligence, a lower predisposition to disorders such as depression, and a lower predisposition to violent behavior. (Along with curing diseases and perhaps selecting for appearance, but those are outside our discussion.) No doubt there will be experimentation and variability, but those changes would likely be the most common by far. And they are quite unambiguously positive! What a miracle it would be to cure severe depression! (It should go without saying that genes are hardly the only factor in determining phenotype, but as long as genes have influence, then genetic engineering can nudge traits in one direction or another to some degree.) Don’t get me wrong, people can lead wonderful, valuable lives without high IQs (and IQs are only an imperfect measure of intelligence), but all else equal greater intelligence does open up more opportunities in life – and not just economic ones. Intelligence offers problem solving abilities and a greater ease in navigating life’s difficulties. To repeat myself, not every change will be to the better, but the typical change will be, and that’s what matters.

So we can trust parents (along with reasonable regulations) to only use genetic engineering when it is likely to improve their children’s well-being. But what’s good for the individual is not always good for society. Are there negative externalities large enough to justify a ban? No. In fact, quite the opposite; there are likely to be great positive externalities. Common sense would suggest that a smarter, less aggressive, and emotionally healthier society would be a better place to live in and that’s what the evidence would suggest.

Hopefully the benefits of reducing crime – especially violent crime – are obvious. Fewer people killed, injured, scammed, taken advantage of, and so on. But beyond that there are social costs to crime. Locked doors, neighborhoods falling into ruin, children unable to play outside. These costs are hard to measure, but they are likely great.

Higher intelligence also creates positive externalities. Hive Mind, the recent book by Garrett Jones, proposes several avenues through which improving a nation’s average intelligence might improve its economic prospects (not the only issue, but a very important one). First, the more intelligent save more, which allows for a greater investment in capital over time. Second, the more intelligent are better able to cooperate with one another in complicated situations. This is borne out in experiments where IQ is positively correlated with cooperation in games. Third, they are more likely to have a good grasp of public policy and thus be better able to push for good governance. Fourth, that if people imitate their peers, a large number of smart, patient, and cooperative people could encourage others to behave better. I’d encourage everyone to read the book for further explication. While engineering intelligence isn’t certain to have these positive spillovers, they all seem eminently plausible.

Another concern might be that parents will waste effort in fighting for their child’s relative position rather than their absolute abilities. For instance, everyone trying to make their child taller than average. This is a risk, and perhaps one that deserves regulation. However, many traits are more like intelligence, where being better than average is ideal, but absolute ability is still beneficial. Thus, not all such selective spirals will be harmful.

Not only are there no major negative externalities associated with genetic engineering, there are likely to be large positive ones. So parents will choose what is best for their children and that will benefit everyone else. The case for any sort of prohibition is tremendously weak. We don’t know how a world-altering technology will reshape us. There will always be surprises, but that’s true of every far-reaching change. All we can do is assess things rationally step by step. And all reasonable arguments point in one direction: letting parents alter the genes of their children-to-be will benefit both their children and the world. Unsurprisingly, letting people choose for themselves is best.

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Precautiones’ Opening Statement

The introductory statement only mentions eugenics in passing, so it falls to me to remind everyone of what eugenics meant in practice. I’m sure our readers are familiar with the basic story, but the human cost bears repeating at the start of every one of these discussions. A century ago politicians, the public, and virtually the entire scientific establishment had decided that they finally understood human nature (scientifically!), and that they had the means and the will to improve it (scientifically!). That they knew best. What happened when ideology gave sanction to power unconstrained by humanity? The predictable. “Between 1907 and 1963… over 64,000 individuals were forcibly sterilized under eugenics legislation in the United States.” Classes of people were prevented from marrying. In Nazi Germany hundreds of thousands of the “unfit” were sterilized and tens of thousands were poisoned and murdered by the state. Please keep these numbers in the back of your mind. Imagine faces to go with them.

Now the issue before us is rather different at first blush from historical examples of eugenics. No one is proposing sterilization or death. Instead, we are told, the future shall be one of humane improvement, having learned from the mistakes of our predecessors. Those currently living won’t be touched. Instead we shall act upon the unborn, upon embryos. We will still have children, just different ones. Better ones. The heavy hand of government will be stayed. It will be a family decision. Would that it were so simple.

I’m not sure if I’d support this soft eugenics even if the rosy picture painted by supporters were plausible. Perhaps for some of the more serious genetic diseases. But it’s a moot point. Reality won’t match up to libertarian fantasias.

In no developed country does the government stay out of health care. Hell, in many countries the government is essentially the only health care provider. Even America’s private insurance markets are mandated to provide certain forms of coverage. Even if we assume that governments will avoid flexing their eugenic muscles as obviously as in the past, that’s still an incredible amount of power. Let’s say that in a few decades CRISPR or whatever becomes a viable way to alter the human germline. How expensive is it? Who pays for it? Who decides what alterations are acceptable and which are not? Who decides what alterations are acceptable if you can pay for it yourself, but not otherwise? Can you get providers outside of the government-run health care system? Will insurers be free to not cover pregnancy costs if your baby isn’t engineered? Will the government fund research only into areas of genetics that will benefit the state? How bad will the tragic, unanticipated fuck-ups be? I’m not going to provide answers to these questions, as the answers will vary by time and place. My point is that the government cannot help but have a massive say in any sort of new eugenics. The law doesn’t have to be de jure coercive to be coercive in fact.

How will the government decide which gene edits they or private insurers will pay for? Will it be what parents want? Much more likely it will be whatever the bureaucracy deems to be in the national benefit. Presumably there will be some compliance with public opinion, but how much is hard to say, since decisions will be made several levels removed from democratic input. “Which allele will increase economic output 20 years from now?” you can almost hear them ask. Over time there will undoubtedly be drift towards inculcating greater docility and obedience, perhaps under the guise of reducing violence. And over generations will control become ever easier? (I’m not implying any conscious conspiracy theory. Complex systems can have direction.) I understand the impulse to let parents choose, and I value reproductive freedom. But is that freedom of choice realistically going to be an option in our radically imperfect world? I think not. The government will wield its power while never forcing anyone to do anything.

So far I’ve assumed that genetic engineering will become cheap enough to be provided broadly, but let’s think about inequality if that’s not the case. Certainly medical costs aren’t guaranteed to go down. The rich might pay out of pocket, but that’s hardly reassuring. Making a few better off won’t be some simple Pareto improvement. How much mobility can we expect in a world where the upper class has remade itself into an upper caste? Even if the differences aren’t large, will the engineered wall themselves off from the rest of us? If the promise of democracy is thwarted all too often now, will the future even bother with democracy as a fig leaf when most people are deemed unfit? This scenario seems like science fiction cliché, but we could easily be blundering towards it.

And let’s not just think of access within nations, let’s think of the gap between rich and poor countries. The developed world is the first to afford new technology. Might the first world give itself yet another head start that lets it exploit the third, using even greater economic clout as a political cudgel? If genetic engineering is seen as a sensitive technology that can’t be exported, will nations unable to start their own programs be locked out permanently? Again, I’m not prognosticating, I just want to keep emphasizing that there are countless ways this could go wrong and be harmful on net.

Hopefully I’ve established to my reader’s satisfaction that parents will never have any simple freedom to choose, simply by nature of the problem. But if I haven’t convinced you, let’s think about what parents would choose if they were unconstrained. It isn’t at all obvious that they would do what’s best for their child. Why wouldn’t they do what’s best for themselves? Why not create a smart, hardworking child without an ounce of real independence? Someone easy to deal with. There’s no gene for filial piety, but I promise that people will look. As with bureaucrats, there needn’t be a malicious or selfish thought in anyone’s head. Yet somehow people explicitly trying to do the right thing so often find that the right thing aligns with their self-interest. That’s the part of human nature that will thwart any attempt at improving itself.

What about the disabled or those who are simply different in some way? Between 70 and 85 percent of fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted. There aren’t yet tests for traits like autism, but probably the numbers would be similar if there were. And eugenics will be much less difficult, less of an emotional ordeal. Granted that some disorders bring little to anyone but pain and tragedy, but do we trust parents to distinguish between those disorders and ones that will simply make life more difficult for them or make them look bad? I don’t, and the numbers for Down syndrome back me up. Classes of people with different experiences, different ways of viewing the world that greatly enrich us all will simply cease. Who truly wants such a monoculture? How do you measure that loss? Who has the right to winnow humanity?

One final point. If these traits we’re selecting for work in opposition to one another – for instance, what if the easiest way to increase intelligence also decreases altruism – then how will we balance those trade-offs? I suspect that efficiency and productivity will be the dominant considerations in practice. Would we be able to resist the pressure if that’s what others chose?

In summary, individual choice is not possible to any real degree. The state will have great power which it could use for its own ends, even if it avoids the crude cruelties of earlier eugenics and even without ill-intent. The poor could wind up locked out permanently. Who knows what such a society would look like. And even if parents are left to make some decisions themselves they won’t reliably do so with their child’s interests at heart. It would be too easy to move towards this future step-by-step and so an outright ban of all human genetic engineering is called for.

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Moderator’s comments for Round 1

These are prompts for further discussion and will be updated after each round.

• Can parents be trusted to make the right choices for their children?
  • Round 1: What further evidence might be brought to bear? For instance, do parents accurately guess how happy the life of someone with a given disability is likely to be?
• Is there a right to an unaltered genome?
• Will positive or negative externalities predominate?
  • Round 1: Libertes has argued that there are positive externalities to genetic engineering, while Precautiones has pointed to negative ramifications such as loss of human diversity, permanent inequality, and de facto government control of reproduction. Are negative or positive trends likely to predominate?
• How much freedom from government intervention is possible or desirable?
  • Round 1: Are the practical limits to the libertarian approach listed by Precautiones – state takeover, the poor lacking access in practice – real? If so, are they avoidable?

(Source for header image, Source for second image)

[Introduction; Round 1; Round 2: Libertes, Precautiones; Round 3: Libertes, Precautiones; Round 4; Single page]

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by David Severa

First, I think it’s important for me to clarify that I’m not a libertarian and I’m not calling for a libertarian solution to anything. What I am is pro-market, and what I am calling for are market-based solutions. I completely share my interlocutor’s concerns with excessive government control of something as important as the human genome. However I don’t believe that the way to keep government out of our reproductive choices is for the government to enact a massive ban on certain reproductive choices! Quite the opposite. If we’re going to make emotional appeals, imagine prospective parents in their 40s looking to have their first child and seeking illegal genetic treatments out of concerns about disorders that are more common with older parents. Are you going to arrest the mother for that? The father?The doctor? Are you going to force people into buying subpar or even unsafe medical services? Bans don’t simply end demand, they push it underground into black markets. Bans don’t eliminate, they reduce.

Let me answer two of Precautiones’ questions, “How expensive is it? Who pays for it?” I’m not sure that the market for genetic engineering will particularly resemble the broader health care system. The reason people have health insurance is mainly to cover large, unavoidable, and often unexpected costs. Because this is (often) seen as a right or basic human necessity, governments intervene heavily or even monopolize the health care sector. Hence the breakdown of normal market controls on cost. The American mess is well known – opaque pricing, lack of expertise among patients and lack of time in emergencies making it hard to shop around, many layers of impenetrable bureaucracy – but many other countries have difficulties with costs (though none as bad).

Genetic engineering would be different. It would be a choice. Parents would have time to think things through, to shop around for what they want in terms of quality and price, to save in advance if need be. The market would be far more functional. In fact the market would resemble that for elective cosmetic surgeries. Quite unlike health care as a whole, plastic surgery costs have dropped in real terms in the US:

 (Source)

It’s not a completely unregulated market, and nor would genetic engineering be. But it’s obvious that the standard virtuous cycle of competition leading to innovation and lower costs could work. For another point of comparison look at the recent drop in genome sequencing costs:

 (Source)

Now, even if costs are dramatically lowered from their starting point, that’s no guarantee of broad affordability. (There’s a free market in mega yachts, after all.) And in vitro fertilization, presumably a necessary component of genetic engineering, isn’t cheap. Cost per round of IVF can be well over $10,000 in the US, and below or around $5,000 in other developed countries. That’s prohibitively expensive for many people. But while the cost of IVF hasn’t decreased in the last few decades there are some reasons to think that it might in the future: more widespread use, standardization, automation, larger clinics, and more effective techniques. It’s clearly impossible though, to predict where costs will settle. I strongly suspect that genetic engineering will eventually become affordable to most people, but that’s just a suspicion.  (To be honest, I had expected to be able to paint a rosier picture when I started this section.) Still, the government control Precautiones warns of isn’t guaranteed at all, and might not even be likely. If most parents can pay their own way, that puts them in control.

I’m torn about whether subsidies would be a good idea or not if costs don’t come down enough or if they haven’t come down enough yet. A simple grant covering some fraction of the cost for poor families would alleviate distributional concerns, but we come back to the problem of what the subsidies will cover. State governments in the US are happy to high-handedly regulate what food people on food stamps can buy, and subsidies would be an excellent way to exercise the soft coercion Precautiones is worried about. Perhaps it will depend on the specifics.

As to the (interesting and unexpected!) argument about the third world being cut off from the gains of genetic engineering, that seems unlikely to me. Even if the third world remains much poorer than average in the future there would still be a tremendous amount of money to be made overall. Plus knowledge travels rather freely these days. If military secrets aren’t that secure, how will scientific knowledge and trade secrets be kept safe? Indeed, different laws worldwide along with the possibilities of medical tourism make it more likely that nations will be unable to keep genetic engineering out rather than keep it in.

But even if the benefits from genetic engineering are unevenly distributed, will those shut out from the treatment actually be worse off? Returning to Hive Mind, Jones argues that there are great benefits to being in a nation full of smart and productive people, even if you’re below average. Barbers, a relatively low-skilled occupation, make much more in the US than in India. That should be obvious to everyone. Plus smarter people will come up with more inventions to improve the lives of everyone. Concerns that the enhanced, who will likely overlap in traits with the unenhanced, will take over and rule for their own benefit as a caste seem overblown, though I guess not strictly impossible. Maybe there will be worries about inequality, sure. But we have those now, and frankly inequality seems to me something that people dislike all out of proportion to the (non-zero) harms it causes, though fleshing that argument out would take us too far afield. In any case, the free market will likely enable people to join the ranks of the enhanced, not keep them out, and a transitional period of inequality would be better than the alternative of stagnation.

The concern about a loss of human diversity – an end to autism, perhaps – is valid. Something may be lost forever. Whether humanity will create new sorts of diversity to make up the difference remains to be seen. But given the high human cost of many disorders like severe depression, I suspect the changes will be worth it regardless.

One last point: Precautiones asked whether there might be unavoidable trade-offs between, say, increasing intelligence and increasing altruism. If there are, then the technology will simply be less effective than expected and thus less of a reason for concern. This dialogue will soon read like an argument over the potential impact of cold fusion.

[Introduction; Round 1; Round 2: Libertes, Precautiones; Round 3: Libertes, Precautiones; Round 4; Single page]

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by David Severa

The moderator asked for evidence that parents do or do not act with their children’s interests at heart. While I could point to innumerable examples of selfish or cruel or violent parenting, I suppose that wouldn’t be enough. There’s no doubt that many parents would abuse eugenics, but the question is how many? Would the bad outweigh the good? Unfortunately there isn’t a great deal of direct evidence because this is a problem we’ve mostly not faced. But there are analogies. Remember how I mentioned that a large majority of fetuses with Down syndrome were aborted? The corollary is that “When nonpregnant people are asked if they would have a termination if their fetus tested positive, [only] 23–33% said yes”. We can’t trust what people say they would do until they actually have to take action. Ignore polls where respondents say they’d never ever CRISPR their kids. Frankly cynicism is warranted. In the privacy of a clinic, people will be more hard-headed. I won’t say that most parents would consciously choose anything harmful, only that it’s easy to justify what’s in your self-interest.

Parents will also have to consider what other typical parents are likely considering. It isn’t the only think people care about, but having children who can compete socially and economically is valued and those are traits where a mastery of zero-sum competition is crucial. (Yes, positive-sum cooperation is also important.) There are ineradicable benefits to being on top of a hierarchy. It may be true now that intelligence is correlated with cooperation and law-abidingness, but intelligence matched with ruthlessness could be selected for. Or ability to cooperate in small groups at the expense of everyone else. Not that our level of control will be so precise, but one could imagine trends in those directions as people copy what seems to work. What if parents feel that they have no choice but to cut out the niceness genes (so to speak) just so their kids have a chance at competing? If everyone knows that everyone else is doing this…

Libertes wondered “whether there might be unavoidable trade-offs between, say, increasing intelligence and increasing altruism. If there are, then the technology will simply be less effective than expected and thus less of a reason for concern.” This is wrong. If there are major trade-offs then eugenics will be less effective than hoped, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. What if improvements in intelligence necessarily come at a cost to altruism and parents choose intelligence en masse? Such trade-offs may wreck the alignment of parental and societal interests that Libertes needs for his arguments to work. What if we can’t have everything? Why wouldn’t parents choose the selfish option? It would be impossible to coordinate against. And then we have a generation of bright kids with weak consciences. Of course that’s just an example. So little is understood about the brain that we can’t say what will be possible. Still, such negative externalities would clearly undercut the purported benefits of genetic engineering.

Again, eugenics can lead to harmful competition that degrades the happiness of the enhanced and everyone else. That alone doesn’t justify prohibition, as prohibition might be ineffective. However, a ban may be more effective than you think, as the government could ban not just clinics, but all research into genetic engineering on humans. Without a detailed understanding of the genetic architecture of the mind, and without practicing on human embryos in particular, there would be no doctors with the ability to do anything. Such a ban wouldn’t be simple, but withdrawal of government funding would be an effective stick. You can’t have a back-alley billion-dollar research program. No need to arrest worried mothers-to-be.

Now, Libertes has devoted a lot of words to say that a robust private market in eugenic treatments is possible. Barring unanticipated problems, his sketch seems feasible enough on its own. But the question is not just whether you could make a functioning market based on individual choices in theory, but how much control the government will take in practice. A proof of concept is insufficient. For instance, in vitro fertilization is elective. However, in the US fifteen states mandate that insurers cover IVF for infertile couples. In the UK the NHS not only covers IVF, it covers pre-implantation genetic screening, where couples at risk of passing on certain heritable diseases screen embryos and discard those with the disease. No one has to have IVF, but non-coercive subsidies will still alter behavior. If one set of genetic treatments is covered, but you have to pay full price for anything else, what will people choose? What if it’s all you can afford? What if the government bans some lines of research but not others? That would be more distorting than a total ban. Libertes’ analysis is fatally flawed; he shows that there could be a market without intervention, when he needed to show that a market could resist intervention. To show that he will have to make entirely different arguments. And in fact his arguments about positive externalities to society would give cover to government interference under a paternalist guise.

One last point. Libertes argues that there is no right to an unedited genome, as having genes selected by one’s parents is no more coercive than having genes chosen by chance. I’m not sure if that’s right – we don’t know just how precise our control might be – but I won’t contest it here. Rights talk is too often circular and agreement is rarely reached. Much better to stick to more concrete harms.

To recap: freely chosen eugenics – to the limited extent it’s possible – would harm both children and society, but the state will have its hand in everything and it will pursue its own interests, which won’t align with the rest of humanity. (The government could clamp down on vicious cycles of competition, but I think we both agree that the cost would be too high.) An outright ban of all of this is feasible. So why not?

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Moderator’s comments for Round 2

• Can parents be trusted to make the right choices for their children?
  • Round 1: What further evidence might be brought to bear? For instance, do parents accurately guess how happy the life of someone with a given disability is likely to be?
• Is there a right to an unaltered genome?
  • Round 2: Both sides agree that framing this discussion in terms of rights is unhelpful.
• Will positive or negative externalities predominate?
  • Round 1: Libertes has argued that there are positive externalities to genetic engineering, while Precautiones has pointed to negative ramifications such as loss of human diversity, permanent inequality, and de facto government control of reproduction. Are negative or positive trends likely to predominate?
  • Round 2: Both of you have identified possible positive and negative externalities that might be produced, but is it even possible to weigh these against each other with so little evidence right now?
• How much freedom from government intervention is possible or desirable?
  • Round 1: Are the practical limits to the libertarian approach listed by Precautiones – state takeover, the poor lacking access in practice – real? If so, are they avoidable?
  • Round 2: Both of you assume that government regulation of genetic engineering would necessarily be harmful, but perhaps you could flesh out what those harms would be. Is democracy really so inadequate a check as you both seem to think?
• Is a total ban on even mere research possible?
  • Round 2: Does this include research on genetic diseases?
• Trade-offs
  • Round 2: Are the trade-offs between traits Precautiones discussed likely to be real? Is the vicious cycle of competition? Can we know that right now?

 

[Introduction; Round 1; Round 2: Libertes, Precautiones; Round 3: Libertes, Precautiones; Round 4; Single page]

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by David Severa

So far we’ve been talking about a “ban” on genetic engineering as if it were some unitary thing. “Will the ban work?” “Is the ban feasible?” But for this prohibition to work it has to happen not just in one country, even one as powerful as America, but more or less everywhere, permanently. When one thinks about the scope of that challenge, and the near-impossibility of coming anywhere close to that level of cooperation, then even people with grave fears of eugenics should come to see that amelioration is a better, workable approach.

Let’s start with the current international situation. There are currently some 200 countries, many of which are large enough that they could feasibly fund their own research into genetic engineering without relying on outside assistance. And as CRISPR and other techniques become better understood in coming years, and as the number of sampled genomes keeps rising, entry will only become easier. Researchers in China are pushing faster than in the West; the first human embryos to be edited with CRISPR were in China. If some nations don’t view genetic engineering with abhorrence, why should they agree to a ban? If some nations see an advantage in pursuing genetic engineering (for the reasons I’ve discussed) while others abstain, why should they agree to a ban? Why should any nation agree to a ban that other countries aren’t adhering to, if it risks putting them at a great disadvantage? The only situation in which I could imagine a ban working was if there was a strong reason to believe that genetic engineering was not in fact very useful, but then the agreement would be secondary anyway. As it stands, one medium-sized nation would be enough to derail any agreement, as its neighbors would break away to stay competitive and so on. There may be treaties or UN declarations, but expect them to have as much weight as interwar arms control agreements did. You could hold things back some, but no more.

Hypothetically though, imagine the world actually came to an agreement and hashed out a workable ban. What then? It seems impossible to imagine that norms won’t ever shift in the following decades or centuries. Will no pocket of humanity anywhere pursue genetic engineering to fruition? Because as soon as anyone does, then containment or reversion to the status quo ante become ever harder. The engineered will be more successful (since that’s what it means for the engineering to work, more or less) and thus genetic engineering will be no easier to stop once it gets started than any other successful technology. (If even better ways to improve human nature non-heritably were developed, that would do it, actually.)

Opponents might argue that even a non-permanent agreement is better than nothing, so as to give us time to prepare if nothing else, but I’m not so sure. We’ve already had decades to prepare for genetic engineering, and it isn’t clear that more time would help. The battle lines have been sketched, if not yet drawn. It also seems reckless to me to just assume that the future will be a better place better able to come up with better solutions to these hard problems. There is, at most, a rough tendency towards progress in history, one that can often be reversed. And while our current global order is hugely flawed, the past shows many ways in which things could be worse. What if the future push towards genetic engineering comes at a terrible time for humanity? It’s not implausible, since they’d be overturning important, long-standing cultural norms. The world could get locked in by a single generation’s harmful ideas. We should not be at all certain that our descendants will make better choices than us. If genetic engineering is to become a reality, I’m inclined to say that the certain problems of today are a safer bet than the uncertainties of tomorrow.

Next, I think that Precautiones made an excellent point: to say that a market can function without intervention is not the same thing as saying that a market will avoid political interference. I don’t think that any market is totally immune to that. Democracy and a free press will ameliorate some of the more harmful tendencies. (Dictatorships won’t be as bound, but they were never likely to bow to an internationally-imposed ban anyway.) However, I confess that I’m now starting to realize that I haven’t thought nearly enough about balancing freedom of action with reasonable regulations. It’s a difficult problem even for much less fraught topics. In practice there may be no alternative but muddling through and trusting in the people to push back and fight for their own rights, but was there ever an alternative to that? A great deal of discussion is required.

Pivoting from the civilizational to the personal, I’d like to look more at whether genetic engineering will involve trade-offs between intelligene and other desirable traits. Here is psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman:

Consistent with prior research, IQ was most strongly related to openness to experience. Out of 9 dimensions of openness to experience, 8 out of 9 were positively related to IQ: intellectual engagement, intellectual creativity, mental quickness, intellectual competence, introspection, ingenuity, intellectual depth, and imagination. Interestingly, IQ was much more strongly related to intellectual engagement and mental quickness than imagination, ingenuity, or intellectual depth, and IQ was not related to sensitivity to beauty.

Out of 45 dimensions of personality, 23 dimensions were not related to IQ. This included gregariousness, friendliness, assertiveness, poise, talkativeness, social understanding, warmth, pleasantness, empathy, cooperation, sympathy, conscientiousness, efficiency, dutifulness, purposefulness, cautiousness, rationality, perfectionism, calmness, impulse control, imperturbability, cool-headedness, and tranquility. These qualities were not directly relevant to IQ.

8 dimensions of personality outside the openness to experience domain were positively related to IQ, including organization, toughness, provocativeness, leadership, self-disclosure, emotional stability, moderation, and happiness– although the correlations were much smaller than with intellectual engagement and mental quickness. IQ was negatively related to orderliness, morality, nurturance, tenderness, and sociability, but again, the negative correlations were much smaller than the relationships among IQ, intellectual engagement, and mental quickness.

Now, not all of these relationships will hold up, but it gives a sense of things. (And don’t forget correlations between different personality traits. No getting around the complexity of the human mind.) While most desirable traits are uncorrelated or positively correlated with IQ, there are in fact a few unfortunate, but small, negative correlations. On the whole this seems encouraging, and remember that perhaps we will be able to counter any small problems created with fixes elsewhere. After all, there are plenty of smart and sociable people, so it’s obviously possible.

[Introduction; Round 1; Round 2: Libertes, Precautiones; Round 3: Libertes, Precautiones; Round 4; Single page]

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by David Severa

Something may be desirable without being probable, and pursuing the improbable does not necessarily come at the expense of crafting second-best fallback solutions. I’m not under any illusions about the difficulties involved, but I still think that the fight is worth it. And while I’ll push for what I believe in, I’m certainly glad that there are others out there thinking about what to do if we fail.

Some arms control agreements work, and even if they’re imperfect they can still restrain behavior and prevent arms races. For instance, most but not all nations have signed the Chemical Weapons Convention. While nations like North Korea and Egypt haven’t joined, and nations like Syria have been found in flagrant violation and only weakly held to task, the Convention hasn’t collapsed. In fact, “65,720 metric tonnes, or 90%, of the world’s declared stockpile of 72,525 metric tonnes of chemical agent have been verifiably destroyed.” In other words, countries are compliant even knowing that others sometimes aren’t. Similarly, agreements like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty haven’t stopped proliferation wholly, but the spread has been slower than might be expected, and the international community has been able to successfully (hopefully) pressure Iran on its nuclear program. As to eugenics, I see no reason why the occasional violation (likely to be small-scale for the most part) should trigger collapse of the whole edifice.

Now, those agreements were signed because states saw them as being in their interests, or at least not especially opposed to their interests. Chemical weapons aren’t actually particularly effective. Nations protected by America’s nuclear umbrella have good reasons to support non-proliferation that might not hold in the future. And so on. Will countries see it in their interests to ban eugenics? Much harder to say. Given Europe’s abhorrence of even just genetically altered food, they seem likeliest to support a ban. Of large nations, perhaps China seems least likely. We can at least guess at how social forces will typically be arrayed. In a given nation the business community and military, both seeking efficiency and relative advantages to competitors, seem naturally friendly to eugenics. Many religions seem naturally opposed. NGOs and the like would perhaps be split, with public opinion determining which side is stronger. And how will public opinion fall? Who knows, but a concerted effort to inculcate moral revulsion could have an effect. Without public opinion on our side the fight would be doomed, given that the elite will likely be favorably disposed. More than anything else, that’s what success will come down to.

But will public opinion have much sway in authoritarian countries like China? No ruler can avoid considering popular opinion altogether, but some governments have a freer hand to do what they want and to control the media so as to control the public. A nation like China would need to either shed its authoritarianism or have its leaders be convinced that a eugenics program was not in their interests, for instance as a destabilizer to their rule. I’m not sure which possibility is less likely and this is the biggest sticking point for any worldwide ban on genetic engineering. In most nations, at more or less the same time, there will need to be a confluence of support, and that relies on factors that are outside the control of activists. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be waiting to pounce if the moment is right, and it doesn’t say anything about the desirability of a ban, which is the question under discussion. As I said, a ban would be best, but other paths should be considered simultaneously.

The question of how long we can expect such an agreement to last, or how long it should last, is an interesting one. If no actions are ever taken to edit the human genome, then over tens or hundreds of thousands of years natural selection will change us itself. (Though maybe humans will prove as durable a form as sharks.) But that’s well beyond the scope of our discussion. I won’t say forever, because I don’t know what social technologies the future will develop. Maybe the anarchists will work something out and we’ll live in an individual-choice utopia where coercion is but a distant dream. I doubt it, but who knows? The ban should be indefinite, at least.

Libertes raises an objection to this, which I’ll take the liberty of rephrasing: We should consider starting eugenics programs now, while there are people raising ethical concerns who will spur us to act more responsibly.  If, however, we create a strong norm against eugenics as being beyond the pale, then those in the future most likely to violate such a taboo are more likely to be evil in other ways. By passing up the chance to take control now, we leave a void which will not be filled by those we would choose. It’s a clever argument, but I wouldn’t put too much weight on it. In those more utopian futures people may also choose to end limits on genetic engineering, so you have to decide which sort of future seems more plausible. It’s not one-sided. I’d say the dystopian too, but not with enough certainty to influence my actions in the present.

My real objection is that we are the ones living in that dystopian future where norms against eugenics are breaking down in a way that the unscrupulous and evil will take advantage of. I’ve already made my case to that effect.

And my case still stands. If it were truly impossible, then there would be no case for prohibiting eugenics. But it’s just very difficult, and pushing for a ban doesn’t rule out second-best regulations. In fact, by moving the Overton window, we may be strengthening whatever future regulations will look like if nothing else.

One final point. At the very beginning of our discussion Libertes states that “My starting assumption is that activities shouldn’t be banned without clear and pressing reasons for doing so.” Now that I’ve sketched out a variety of possible irreversible harms that can result from eugenics I’ll argue that this is wrong. In many domains this might be the right attitude, but not here.

I haven’t yet elaborated on the ultimate damage that may be done. My biggest worry is that, in time, some will to strive may be lost. That is, many of the problems I’ve mentioned could conceivably be reversed. But what if the will to undo mistakes is lost, or the ability to recognize the mistakes we’ve made? What if we make a reduced humanity that can’t even understand its own condition and thus never seeks to restore what’s been lost. Excessive conformity, or excessive obedience, or excessive passivity, I don’t know what the cause might be, but it’s why I worry so much. It’s not just about harms, but irreversible harms. Here’s my own version of the precautionary principle:

Changes to the current order that may pose existential threats to human survival or flourishing must be rigorously proven to be safe before being permitted.

This seems quite strong and reasonable. Of course “may” is a slippery term, but without getting into the exact boundaries, surely wide-scale eugenics fits as well as anything else in history.

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Moderator’s comments for Round 3

• Can parents be trusted to make the right choices for their children?
  • Round 1: What further evidence might be brought to bear? For instance, do parents accurately guess how happy the life of someone with a given disability is likely to be?
• Is there a right to an unaltered genome?
  • Round 2: Both sides agree that framing this discussion in terms of rights is unhelpful.
• Will positive or negative externalities predominate?
  • Round 1: Libertes has argued that there are positive externalities to genetic engineering, while Precautiones has pointed to negative ramifications such as loss of human diversity, permanent inequality, and de facto government control of reproduction. Are negative or positive trends likely to predominate?
  • Round 2: Both of you have identified possible positive and negative externalities that might be produced, but is it even possible to weigh these against each other with so little evidence right now?
• How much freedom from government intervention is possible or desirable?
  • Round 1: Are the practical limits to the libertarian approach listed by Precautiones – state takeover, the poor lacking access in practice – real? If so, are they avoidable?
  • Round 2: Both of you assume that government regulation of genetic engineering would necessarily be harmful, but perhaps you could flesh out what those harms would be. Is democracy really so inadequate a check as you both seem to think?
• Is a total ban on even mere research possible?
  • Round 2: Does this include research on genetic diseases?
  • Round 3: Despite different approaches, both sides seem to agree that the odds of a total ban are small. The question thus becomes whether or not Precautiones is right that a ban is nevertheless worth pursuing, and that depends firstly on if genetic engineering will be good or bad (as we’ve already discussed) and secondly on if the opportunity cost of pushing for a ban is too high.
• Trade-offs
  • Round 2: Are the trade-offs between traits Precautiones discussed likely to be real? Is the vicious cycle of competition? Can we know that right now?
  • Round 3: If intelligence is mostly correlated with other, positive traits, that’s at least circumstantial evidence that such trade-offs won’t be too significant. Is there a rejoinder to this?
• No time like the present?
  • Round 3: Are there reasons to think that the present is a better or worse time to begin a genetic engineering program than the future? Surely this is simply unknowable to any useful degree?
• Where does the burden of proof lie?
  • Round 3: Should genetic engineering be legal or banned by default? And how much evidence is needed to allow/disallow it?

[Introduction; Round 1; Round 2: Libertes, Precautiones; Round 3: Libertes, Precautiones; Round 4; Single page]

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by David Severa

Libertes’ Conclusion

It’s a fair point that pushing for a total ban is unlikely to do much harm, and might even lead to better regulations. That doesn’t make a ban a good idea.

Does genetic engineering “pose existential threats to human survival or flourishing”? Not the sort that Precautiones has dreamed up. Her idea of some irreversible change is patently absurd. This will not be a sudden process. It will play out over decades and generations, as we slowly learn more about our genes and our minds. There will be research and public feedback and ceaseless debates.  We will not stumble blindly into anything. We might make mistakes (and I guess one could imagine a far-fetched conspiracy by world leaders to enforce permanent obedience at a biological level), but this is a process we’re approaching with human values, and if our efforts fail our values, we will change our course. Not easily, but that’s life. That’s progress. It’s messy. There are existential risks involved in genetic engineering, but it’s not an all-or-nothing decision. We can – and by necessity will – start small.

I think that this is a good example of Precautiones’ flawed approach. She falls back on dark insinuations about human nature, without much evidence to back up her worldview. It’s not even that she’s necessarily wrong, it’s that public policy decisions of such vast importance can’t be made on the basis of so little real support. On whether parents can be trusted to do what is right for their children, the only evidence Precautiones brought to bear was abortion rates for fetuses with Down syndrome. On whether governments will allow a relatively free market, the only evidence is that some governments provide/mandate provision of embryo selection for a number of obviously deleterious genetic diseases. On whether there are unavoidable trade-offs between desirable traits, no evidence is provided. The arguments for negative externalities are similarly airy. There is little but a massive superstructure of apparently-plausible stories and dark hints.

Admittedly, hypotheticals and speculation are unavoidable when talking about a future that is at least decades away. And while I’ve tried to provide numbers or reference studies where possible, lots of gaps had to be spackled with guesses. Hopefully I’ve sketched a plausible, positive vision of a future with genetic engineering – at least shown that dystopia is far from guaranteed – but of course things could go wrong in ways anticipated or unanticipated. The evidence and arguments are more on my side, but unknowns will swamp our predictions.

The question then becomes what actions should we take when confronted with a new technology that looks to be on-net positive, but with significant – yes, even existential – risks? “Where does the burden of proof lie?” With those wishing to prohibit, as always. If it were an all-or-nothing decision, then a ban until we are more certain about the effects could make sense. But as I said, that’s not the problem we face. I can think of no reason why the default position is not one of free choice.

I won’t leave you with some grand statement, just a simple recapitulation of my case. There are good reasons to think that genetic engineering, if chosen by parents from a sensibly regulated free market, will prove to be an amazing boon to humanity. Children will lead better lives, and society will benefit even beyond that. Such a market is possible, but not guaranteed. We will have to push for it collectively. There are risks, but manageable ones. A ban on genetic engineering makes absolutely no sense.

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Precautiones’ Conclusion

Libertes reverts to discussing free choice as if it is unencumbered by the choices of others, like we live in a world without tragedies of the commons or prisoner’s dilemmas. He says that “There will be research and public feedback and ceaseless debates. We will not stumble blindly into anything.” But what if there are the metaphorical arms races we’ve discussed? The nuclear arms race involved research and public feedback and ceaseless debates, yet it was mostly through dumb luck that the world avoided catastrophe. And these dynamics could play out at the individual and/or national level. The pressure to have a child that competes already does strange things to parents. The pressure to compete militarily or economically can lead to the exact sort of irreversible changes that Libertes blithely dismisses. So it may well be an all-or-nothing decision, in which case even he agrees that “a ban until we are more certain about the effects could make sense.” My precautionary principle more than holds.

Libertes talks about evidence, but there are more types of evidence than he’s acknowledged. Historical truths, and how they inform our understanding of the present, are notably absent from his analysis. In the first paragraph of my first post I reminded our readers of the horrors of eugenics. And not isolated incidents. Broad, cross-national inhumanity. Real horrors, that prove how evil people can be even in the name of an apparent good cause like the betterment of humanity. That’s why I came up with all of those ways that things could go wrong. I wasn’t pontificating about nothing. Hypotheticals stemming from an understanding of humanity are the best tools for understanding we have. And history, better than anything else, gives us insight into human nature as it is – the human nature that will be eugenically remaking itself.

In many circumstances, most people are essentially decent, but if you push them out of their comfort zones, into the unfamiliar or frightening, they can do terrible things. The decisions the new eugenics imposes aren’t like the pressures of war, but they’re abnormal, sliding into a bloodless cruelty of utilitarianism unchecked by our better passions. To understand that requires not just evidence, but reflection and insight. What may seem “airy” is hopefully a product of that insight. You can’t predict the future with it, but you can suss out its rhythms and recurrences. Greed, selfishness, and lust for power at all levels will fatally compromise any attempt to improve human nature, at least until we pass some as yet unknown horizon.

But right now the path to eugenics must go through either the enormity of government control of reproduction, or into the downward-sucking whirlpool of individual competition and individual ignorance and cruelty. Or both. If we reach the other side alive and unscathed it will be due to no skill of our own, but some unearned fortune. A far better option is to turn away. There is so much else in the universe to understand and master before we turn to ourselves, so many topics presenting so much less danger. A complete prohibition on genetic engineering (or however close we can get) is absolutely called for. And with the first human embryos already edited we already have one foot over the point of no return. Action must be swift and it must be strong. I’m not optimistic. The siren call of “progress” will always be alluring. I’m aware of the immense difficulties entailed by my position, but if it’s a losing cause then I can hardly think of a nobler one.

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That’s it for this dialogue, thanks for reading! Who won? What points did both sides totally fail to consider? What changes to the format would you have us make in the future? Let us know in the comments, over email, or on Tumblr. We’d love to hear from you.

Veracities will return very soon with a very in-depth look at the demographics of supporters of Donald Trump. Stay tuned!