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. Nine months later, a designer baby will be born. All aspects of the economy, the media, the entertainment industry, and the knowledge industry are controlled by members of the GenRich class. Of course, medical resources and social priorities could be assigned to narrowing those gaps. But if Silver and his cohort of designer-baby advocates have their way, precious medical talent and funds will be devoted instead to a technically dubious project whose success will be measured by the extent to which it can inscribe inequality onto the human genome.
Silver understands that such scenarios are disconcerting.
He counsels realism. I soon learned differently. They are not ravings from the margins of modern science, but emanations from its prestigious and respected core. Silver vividly and accurately represents a technical and political agenda for the human future that is shared by a disturbing number of Nobel laureate scientists, biotech entrepreneurs, social theorists, bioethicists, and journalists. The promoters of a designer-baby future believe that the new human genetic and reproductive technologies are both inevitable and a boon to humanity.