Sandel, Pinker Debate Genetics

Bass Professor of Government Michael Sandel and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker went head to head last night in a John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum discussion, debating the ethics of designer genes, free-market eugenics and hyper-parenting.

The discussion titled “The New Eugenics?” was sponsored by the Institute of Politics (IOP) and led off with Sandel’s remarks on his recent article in The Atlantic, “The Case Against Perfection.”

Sandel’s warning about genetic engineering was followed by responses from Pinker, who is also the Director of Harvard’s Joint Program on Religion and Public Life.

In response to Sandel’s critique of the human desire to exert mastery and control over the human body—an argument Sandel dubbed “the hubris objection”—Pinker noted that this type of hubris is commonplace in our society today.

“Anybody who has been turned down for a date has been a victim of the human drive to control the genetic composition of one’s children,” Pinker said.

Sandel’s moral objections to genetic manipulation focused on three points: it is unfair, discriminatory, and arrogant.

“To appreciate children as gifts is at least to a certain point to accept them as they come, not to cast them as objects of our design, products of our will, or instruments of our ambition,” Sandel said.

While Sandel expressed moral qualms with genetic enhancement, Pinker focused on the scientific improbability of the problem.

“When it comes to designer babies, I am skeptical that we will see it in our lifetime,” Pinker said. “There is an enormous role of chance in human development.”

Pinker also said that most genes have multiple effects, which makes it very difficult for humans to predict exact effects of tampering with a baby’s genes.

“Any decision you make about its options is bound to be the wrong one because you have so little information now about how it is going to turn out,” Pinker said.

Coffin, however, sided more with Sandel, expressing concern with the dehumanizing results of genetic engineering.

“The deeper problem is this aspiration to hyperagency that may, in some way, be a distortion of our present humanity and our relation to the non-human natural world,” Coffin said.

Following remarks by each of the three panelists, members of the packed crowd peppered the panelists with questions, touching on hot topics such as abortion, “gay genes” and sperm donation.

In response to a question about where to draw the line between improvements in human health and designer genes, Sandel brought up the example of a man that tried to create a super-race by soliciting sperm from winners of the Nobel prize before the creation of Viagra.

“He wanted to elevate the human race by doing this, but he couldn’t find many Nobel laureates who were willing to contribute or who were able to contribute,” Sandel said.

But Pinker said the real problem was that it is prohibitively difficult to engineer smart children.

“A human being is a staggeringly improbable arrangement of matter,” Pinker said. “As the bumper sticker says: ‘stuff happens.’”

Pinker left audience members with the sobering thought that their immediate futures are extremely variable.

“Think about the number of things that could happen to you in the next hour. It’s an extremely depressing list,” Pinker said.

Despite the disagreements, the panelists and audience seemed to agree about the weight of the moral questions involved and the prominence that genetic engineering will claim in society.

“The biggest issue between the U.S. and the rest of the world right now has to do with genetic engineering,” said IOP Director Daniel R. Glickman said. “These are not hypothetical issues. These are issues that are important to legislators.”