-
8 Access
- Indiana University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Access 8 The more effective genetic enhancement proves to be, the more it will be in demand. If enhancement turns out to significantly enhance physical attributes like beauty, strength, and coordination, it will be sought by all those who value those attributes or depend on them for their livelihood. People who survive by their memory or their wits or who love the life of the mind will seek enhancements that substantially improve mental functioning. People will want enhancement capabilities to help them accomplish their life’s goals.They will feel pressured to enhance themselves to stay ahead, or at least abreast, of the next fellow. They will feel compelled to provide genetic enhancement to their children, so that their children won’t be left behind. And if genetic enhancement reaches its full potential, people will reach out with all their might to grab the greatest brass ring of them all—the chance to triumph over aging and ultimately, perhaps, defeat natural death itself. How easy will it be to satisfy this demand? New technologies sometimes are in short supply because of technical production dif- ficulties. When penicillin was first discovered in the 1930s, it was 102 Wondergenes produced by allowing natural mold to form.1 At the beginning of World War II, the supply was so limited that it had to be rationed by the military. Interestingly, the soldiers who received it were not ones suffering from battlefield wounds, but soldiers with venereal disease; they were able to return to the fighting immediately, while the wounded required time to recover.2 Only when mass production methods were devised was there an adequate supply of the wonder drug to treat all who might benefit. It isn’t always new technologies that face production limits either. Recall human growth hormone (HGH), which, as described in Chapter 3, was scarce because it had to be harvested from the pituitary glands of cadavers. Genetic enhancement may face similar supply restrictions, although for different reasons. Embryo selection for enhancement purposes—in which embryos are created in the test tube, tested for non-disease (as well as presumably disease) characteristics, and only the “best” implanted in the womb—will be limited by the availability of viable eggs and sperm and by the natural frequency of their genetic characteristics. Abortion for enhancement purposes , in which fetuses are aborted if they do not score well enough in prenatal genetic testing for desired traits, is limited by the number of a person’s possible pregnancies. More technologically sophisticated forms of genetic enhancement, involving gene insertion and deletion, may be in short supply because of the dearth of physicians and clinics capable of performing the techniques successfully . But the shortage of competent professionals will be short-lived. The enormous demand for enhancement, fueled by enticing descriptions of the genetically rich and famous, will drive numbers of health care professionals into the lucrative enhancement business . Increasingly frustrated by managed care, with its limitations on fees and interference with clinical judgment, physicians will turn to enhancement as a new source of revenue, the way many of them have embraced so-called alternative and complementary medicine. Hospitals and clinics will view enhancement “patients” as a way to fill their beds and ambulatory surgery suites, leading them to establish new enhancement wings and centers and to recruit additional staff. [54.205.179.155] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 13:28 GMT) 103 Access Moreover, recombinant DNA will create virtually unlimited supplies of somatic enhancement drugs and similar products. Recombinant DNA manufacturing, it will be recalled, enabled supplies of human growth hormone to become so plentiful that parents were able to procure it for children who weren’t hormonede ficient. Difficult tasks lay ahead: identifying the regions of the genome that code for non-disease traits, understanding the interactions between these genes and between the genes and the environment , and developing accurate genetic tests for these traits. But once these tasks are accomplished, which will be only a matter of time, there will be no significant technical impediments to manufacturing large quantities of enhancement drugs. All this isn’t to say that genetic enhancement will be easy to come by. A growing number of health care professionals may be capable of providing enhancement services, and drug companies may discover and produce large amounts of enhancement drugs, but they are likely to be very expensive. Human growth hormone therapy for a twenty-kilogram child costs in the neighborhood of $14,000...