Will Editing Your Baby's Genes Be Mandatory?
An ethical dilemma from the near future
Designing a baby, or editing the genes of an unborn child, strikes many as risky, unseemly, unnatural, unethical, or likely to lead to a dystopian future of one sort or another. Still, I predict that within my lifetime, the United States will arrest, try, and convict some parents for refusing to edit the genes of their child before he or she is born.
Consider what is now punished. In Jonathan Rauch’s defense of liberal free-speech norms, the author noted that the liberal, scientific view of knowledge, which he was championing, asserts a unique claim to legitimacy in the modern West. Lest anyone doubt his characterization, he cited the fate of Christian Scientists:
