The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering

“To grapple with the ethics of enhancement, we need to confront questions largely lost from view in the modern world—questions about the moral status of nature, and about the proper stance of human beings toward the given world.”

Humans seek to gain ever more Mastery and Control over the environment, and that desire can reveal worrying things about how people see themselves in relation to nature. Here, Sandel is setting up his later argument about the status of embryos and his argument about Openness to the Unbidden.

“The distinction between curing and improving seems to make a moral difference, but it is not obvious what the difference consists in.”

This quote raises implications about the relationship between Health and Eugenics. Medicine is meant to cure people, but it might also have the power to improve people’s health beyond the usual human standard. Whether there is a line between the two, and where that line is, is not only difficult to determine; its implications are also difficult to predict.

“There is something troubling about the Gattaca scenario, but it is not easy to identify what exactly is wrong with screening embryos to choose the sex of our children.”

As a philosopher, Sandel goes beyond gut responses of discomfort to determine exactly what is wrong with this scenario. In the United States and other countries, screening embryos for sex is heavily discouraged, but screening embryos for genetic diseases or chromosomal abnormalities is becoming more common.

“And what the drive to mastery misses, and may even destroy, is an appreciation of the gifted character of human powers and achievements.”

Sandel disagrees with the idea that genetic enhancement is troubling because it robs people of agency. He worries instead that the desire to make humans “perfect” will erode the human appreciation for natural gifts and talents. In the pursuit of Mastery and Control, humans may stray too far from the things Sandel believes makes us human in the first place.

“The real problem with genetically altered athletes is that they corrupt athletic competition as a human activity that honors the cultivation and display of natural talents.”

Sports are not compelling because they represent the pinnacle of superhuman achievement, but because they are deeply embedded in human abilities, Sandel argues. He does not deny that athletes must put effort into their performances and training, but he does suggest that athletic effort should still fall within the realm of what is natural.

“The descent of sport into spectacle is not unique to the age of genetic engineering. But it illustrates how performance-enhancing technologies, genetic or otherwise, can erode the part of athletic and artistic performance that celebrates natural talents and gifts.”

Sandel makes a distinction between sport and spectacle, suggesting that the former is a display of talent, while the latter is mere entertainment. In his view, genetic modification of athletes threatens to transform sport into spectacle, with negative consequences for audiences as well as for the athletes themselves.

“Although medical treatment intervenes in nature, it does so for the sake of health, and so does not represent a boundless bid for mastery and dominion.”

Sandel stresses that not all medical interventions represent an undue degree of Mastery and Control over nature. As he does throughout the book, he insists on the importance of quantitative rather than qualitative distinctions. Some degree of human control over nature is a good and even necessary thing—however, there exists a degree of control that is too much.

“Some people argue that a parent’s obligation to heal a sick child implies an obligation to enhance a healthy one, to maximize his or her potential for success in life. But this is true only if one accepts the utilitarian idea that health is not a distinctive human good, but simply a means of maximizing happiness or well-being.”

The definition of “health” is a tricky one that can often have eugenicist implications. Those who view health as a means for maximizing happiness are at risk of falling into eugenicist rhetoric because they view health as a moral good that people are obligated to maximize. Health and Eugenics are intrinsically linked in this argument: those who do not have good health are viewed as inherently unworthy or as having failed to work sufficiently hard to achieve good health.

“Good health, like good character, is a constitutive element of human flourishing. Although more health is better than less, at least within a certain range, it is not the kind of good that can be maximized.”

Characteristically, Sandel argues against absolutism. “Human flourishing” involves an infinitely complex network of decisions undertaken throughout a lifetime, each of which requires balancing some values against others. An absolutist focus on maximizing health risks neglecting other, equally important aspects of “flourishing.”

“These days, however, overly ambitious parents are prone to get carried away with transforming love—promoting and demanding all manner of accomplishments from their children, seeking perfection.”

Though parents cannot yet genetically enhance their children (outside of one controversial, experimental case), Sandel illustrates how the desire for perfection and success drives parents to extremes. This speaks to a broader societal obsession with Mastery and Control: People now seek to make children perfect rather than appreciate and love them for who they are.

“The hyperparenting familiar in our time represents an anxious excess of mastery and dominion that misses the sense of life as gift. This draws it disturbingly close to eugenics.”

The desire for perfection is always tied up in eugenics, which suggests that perfection is desirable and imperfection (however it is defined) ought to be eradicated. When applied to humans, eugenics has the potential to justify atrocities like genocide, sterilization, or medical experimentation.

“To remove the coercion, they argue, is to remove the very thing that makes eugenic policies repugnant.”

Sandel argues that the moral repugnance of eugenics goes beyond its coercive elements. It is a school of thought that delineates and defines who is worthy of life and who should never have been born. It is inextricable from racism, ableism, and classism, and it has long been understood to be a pseudoscientific and needlessly cruel approach to human society.

“Not everyone objects to marketing sperm. But anyone who is troubled by the eugenic aspect of the Nobel Prize sperm bank should be equally troubled by Cryobank, consumer-driven though it be. What, after all, is the moral difference between designing children according to an explicit eugenic purpose and designing children according to the dictates of the market?”

Sandel believes that there is no difference between genetic selection with a eugenicist vision and genetic selection that caters to market desires. The “market,” i.e., people’s desires, cannot develop in a vacuum. Like eugenicist ideals, market desires are shaped by society and privilege certain traits over others.

“The problem with the old eugenics was that its burdens fell disproportionately on the weak and the poor, who were unjustly segregated and sterilized.”

“Old eugenics,” meaning eugenics from Nazi Germany and the US in the early 1900s, did not only result in the unjust segregation and sterilization of the weak and poor, but it was also a direct precursor to the Holocaust. “New eugenics” claims to have eliminated the coerciveness that made “old eugenics” so blatantly immoral, but it also places its burdens on the most vulnerable, as it risks exacerbating social inequality by giving further advantages to the already advantaged people who can afford to pay for it. Eugenics is not a field that needs a rebrand; it is an active harm to humanity and to medical and scientific research.

“Liberal eugenics shrinks from collective ambitions. It is not a movement of social reform but rather a way for privileged parents to have the kind of children they want and to arm them for success in a competitive society.”

Liberal eugenics is influenced by the obsession with Mastery and Control. Sandel hints at the sharp class divide between those who could afford enhancements and everyone else. Those who are privileged would be able to shape their children’s genetic qualities and essentially buy them avenues for greater success, further exacerbating class divides.

“So liberal eugenics does not reject state-imposed genetic engineering after all; it simply requires that the engineering respect the autonomy of the child being designed.”

One of the major flaws in the ideology of liberal eugenics is the way it constructs itself as different from “old” eugenics because of its supposed respect for autonomy. In fact, eugenics is inherently antithetical to autonomy, as it makes claims about which kinds of people should or should not live. Additionally, the “choices” that parents might make about what traits to give their child will never be wholly free; these choices will always be made in the context of a society that privileges certain traits over others.

“The problem with eugenics and genetic engineering is that they represent the one-sided triumph of willfulness over giftedness, of dominion over reverence, of molding over beholding.”

Sandel highlights the importance of Openness to the Unbidden. Eugenics, in addition to its other problems, is overtly concerned with closing off the randomness of life. Instead of letting chance and luck shape people, genetic engineering could allow eugenicists to exert biased control over the development of the human species.

“When genetic screening becomes a routine part of pregnancy, parents who eschew it are regarded as ‘flying blind’ and are held responsible for whatever genetic defect befalls their child.”

Sandel is particularly concerned with the pressure parents may feel to use genetic screening and genetic enhancement on their children lest they be blamed for having “imperfect” children. Health and Eugenics are once again linked: in the pursuit of healthy children, parents could be (and already are) pressured into buying into the eugenics project.

“If our genetic endowments are gifts, rather than achievements for which we can claim credit, it is a mistake and a conceit to assume that we are entitled to the full measure of the bounty they reap in a market economy. We therefore have an obligation to share this bounty with those who, through no fault of their own, lack comparable gifts.”

Sandel views genetic enhancements as fundamentally undermining solidarity. He paints a picture of a world where people share the benefits of their genetic endowments with those less fortunate because they are aware that their endowments are gifts, not achievements. This vision of a world built on solidarity echoes the vision of a Marxist utopia and could provide inspiration for solidarity models going forward.

“Rather than employ our new genetic powers to straighten ‘the crooked timber of humanity,’ we should do what we can to create social and political arrangements more hospitable to the gifts and limitations of imperfect human beings.”

Sandel points out that genetic enhancements will not create a more equal society; they will do the opposite. Genetic enhancement can never create an equitable society not only because access to genetic enhancement is class-based, but also because eradicating “undesirable” traits in a population fundamentally undermines the idea of equity. What is needed instead is a society built on making a better world for everybody, instead of trying to make everybody fit better into the world.

“The fact that a moral belief may be rooted in religious conviction neither exempts it from challenge nor renders it incapable of rational defense.”

Often, public discourse shies away from critiquing religious beliefs on the grounds that people have religious freedom to believe whatever they want. This view is antithetical to intellectually rigorous philosophy: all beliefs are subject to critique and challenge, especially if these beliefs have real-life implications. Avoiding a topic on the grounds of religious conviction is not sound philosophical practice and actively discourages meaningful discourse and debate.

“In fact, if we were persuaded that embryonic stem cell research were tantamount to infanticide, we would not only ban it but treat it as a grisly form of murder and subject scientists who performed it to criminal punishment.”

Although it was implausible in the mid-2000s that embryos could be legally classified as people, recent developments in the US have changed the landscape of reproductive rights. In addition to the February 2024 ruling in the Alabama Supreme Court that surplus IVF embryos are people, many states have enacted near total abortion bans. Some politicians have proposed prosecuting women who receive abortions (or even have miscarriages), the doctors who perform abortions, and anyone else who helps the process, for murder.

“We would do better to cultivate a more expansive appreciation of life as a gift that commands our reverence and restricts our use. Genetic engineering to create designer babies is the ultimate expression of the hubris that marks the loss of reverence for life as a gift. But stem cell research to cure debilitating disease, using unimplanted blastocysts, is a noble exercise of our human ingenuity to promote healing and to play our part in repairing the given world.”

In this quote, Sandel encourages Openness to the Unbidden and a deeper appreciation for life. Although he does not entirely discount the advantages of genetic engineering, he warns against using the science to exert uncontrolled Mastery and Control over life and nature. This balancing act is an ongoing debate in bioethics and bioengineering, and it is something philosophers and laypeople have the opportunity to think critically about.