The New Eugenics: The Case Against Genetically Modified Humans
By Marcy Darnovsky,
Different Takes (Spring 2000)
| 11. 30. 1999
Published by the Hampshire College Population and Development Program
At the cusp of dot-com frenzy and the biotech century, a group of influential scientists and pundits has begun zealously promoting a new bio-engineered utopia. In the world of their visionary fervor, parents will strive to afford the latest genetic "improvements" for their children. According to the advocates of this human future (or, as some term it, "post-human" future), the exercise of consumer preferences for offspring options will be the prelude to a grand achievement: the technological control of human evolution.
My first close encounter with this techno-eugenic enthusiasm was in a 1997 book written for an unconverted lay audience by Princeton geneticist Lee M. Silver. In Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World (New York: Avon Books 1998), Silver spins out scenarios of a future in which affluent parents are as likely to arrange genetic enhancements for their children as to send them to private school.
Silver confidently predicts that upscale baby-making will soon take place in fertility clinics, where prospective parents will undergo an IVF procedure...
Related Articles
By Darren Incorvaia, Fierce Biotech | 05.28.2025
An international group of gene editing leaders has put out a call for a 10-year ban on heritable human genome editing (HHGE), extending a moratorium that was first proposed in the fallout of a Chinese researcher’s widely decried use of...
Last week, May 21–23, a broad range of experts gathered in Boston to discuss the future of powerful biotechnologies with the potential to change what it means to be human. The fourth in a series of international Summits on human genome editing, this event was organized by the Global Observatory for Genome Editing, which “seeks to expand the range of questions arising at the frontiers of emerging biotechnologies … and fosters international, interdisciplinary, and cross-sectoral dialogue.” Like previous Summits...
By Caiwei Chen and Antonio Regalado , MIT Technology Review | 05.23.2025
Since the Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui was released from prison in 2022, he has sought to make a scientific comeback and to repair his reputation after a three-year incarceration for illegally creating the world’s first gene-edited children.
While he has...
By Kevin Davies, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News | 05.21.2025
This week a diverse group of researchers, bioethicists, publishers and theologians, are gathering in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to extend and expand the rolling debate about the merits of human heritable genome editing (HHGE). The international summit is being hosted by the...
