One Overly Pessimistic BoBo
With usual flair and wit, Brooks' recent op-ed column artfully describes the troubling implications stemming from today's reproductive and genetic technologies. Increasingly, fertility clinics are encouraging people to use selection technologies for no other reason than to design children that look and behave like "society's best" - a market-driven corollary to the eugenics movement, one of the darkest moments in human history. And Brooks eloquently captures this concern:
Those of us in the low-center-of-gravity community will be left on evolution's cutting-room floor. People under 5-foot-9 can't even donate sperm to these banks, so my co-equals are doomed, let alone future Napoleons. . . . In a world in which Brad Pitt is average, say farewell to loneliness, sublimation and nerds' witty bids for attention. In a world in which everyone is smart, good-looking and pleasant, everyone will be fit to perform in hit movies, but no one will be fit to review them.
As poignant as this might be, what's simply mindblowing is that after laying out how a new market-driven eugenics may very well be right around the corner, Brooks throws his hands up in the air and writes, "I'm not under the illusion that any of this can be stopped." Sure it can, David. Many countries around the world - including Canada and the United Kingdom - have enacted regulations to curb these technologies' troublesome applications and promote their sound medical use while protecting individual rights. Though the United States is currently human biotech's Wild Wild West, it need not be.