Today’s Eugenics Is Much More Dangerous
Scientific progress, demographics, geopolitics and the decline of Christianity are weakening our moral defenses against the misuse of genetics.
Should humanity put just its best foot forward?
Photographer: Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Last weekend my colleague, John Authers, argued that George Orwell’s 1984 (1949) is the most prophetic novel about our era. I would suggest that an earlier book written by another Old Etonian deserves to share the palm: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932). Brave New World envisions a future in which genetic engineering has become so advanced that human beings are designed as cogs in the great industrial machine that is modernity: rulers (Alphas), middle managers (Betas) semi-skilled workers (Gammas), low-skilled workers (Deltas) and menial workers (Epsilons).
Everywhere I look these days I am reminded of Huxley’s world. The latest Silicon Valley fashion is for tech investors to fund fertility start-ups such as Orchid Health, which proclaims, “Sex is for fun, and embryo screening is for babies.” The latest billionaire status symbol is a quiver full of children: Elon Musk has more than a dozen and Peter Thiel, a late starter, reportedly has four. The plot of a new science-fiction series, Alien: Earth, features trillionaires, ensconced in rival territories, who compete to produce the best super-humans.