Future with Genetically Enhanced Humans

The new Nobel laureate, like his former mentor Watson, has spoken enthusiastically of using the genetic science he's helped advance to engineer biologically enhanced children. The prospect of a renewed, high-tech eugenics is extraordinarily controversial, but it is not just a fantasy. It is coming ever closer to technical plausibility, and for a disturbing number of influential scientists and eccentric futurists, it is an agenda.... The conferees were quite explicit. Watson -- hardly known for his shyness or tact -- proclaimed to the audience of nearly a thousand, "If we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we do it?" (As for the "better human beings" he has in mind, he told a British film maker in 2003 that he considers ten percent of children "stupid," and would like to see them genetically modified. "If you really are stupid, I would call that a disease," Watson said. He went on to argue for using genetic techniques to prevent the births of "ugly girls." "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty," he explained. "I think it would be great.") Another conference attendee, Princeton mouse biologist turned futurist Lee Silver, has elaborated on this frankly eugenic vision. In Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World (William Morrow: 1997), Silver eagerly imagines a future in which the appearance, personality, cognitive abilities, and sensory capacities of children become products of genetic modification. Silver acknowledges that the costs of such procedures would limit their widespread adoption, and predicts that over time society would segregate into castes that he dubs the "GenRich" and the "Naturals."