Wondergenes: Genetic Enhancement and the Future of Society

9 Inequality and Unfairness

108 Wondergenes Inequality and Unfairness 9 Since genetic enhancements will not be available to everyone, those who can afford to purchase them with private funds will gain abilities that others can attain only with a great deal of time and hard work, or, more likely, not at all. What happens when the enhanced, with their superior talents, interact with the unenhanced?This could occur in all sorts of situations : personal relationships; professional relationships like those between attorneys and clients or between patients and physicians; arm’s length business relationships between employers and employees , landlords and tenants, lenders and debtors, sellers and purchasers. What happens when the enhanced and the unenhanced compete for the same scarce amenities or commodities—for employment , social status, political influence, affection, sexual favors, market power, money? Business mogul Ted Turner is afflicted with the condition formerly known as manic-depression and now called bipolar disorder . He has controlled his condition with the drug lithium, which calms the frenetic highs during which his mind races at fantastic 109 Inequality and Unfairness speed. But before the mammoth negotiations leading to the merger of Turner Broadcasting andTime Warner, it is said that he stopped taking the drug.1 Now imagine Ted Turner without the disabling effects of his condition. Before he goes into a business meeting, he swallows an enhancement pill or activates his internal drug synthesizer. The person on the other side of table, however, has no access to these products. This is what would happen if genetic enhancements were available only to the well-to-do. The setting may not be on opposite sides of a conference table; anyone with access toTedTurner would probably be wealthy enough to be enhanced themselves. But in stores and classrooms, in real estate offices and on used car lots, the enhanced would enjoy distinct and perhaps decisive advantages . Many of these interactions will be zero-sum, in which one person wins and the other loses. In such competitions, the enhanced will be able to use their superior abilities and invariably they will be the ones who win. They will be positioned to take advantage of the less talented, to strip value from the unenhanced, to gain at their expense, to sell them shoddy goods, to cleverly betray their professional confidences. Even in interactions in which both parties come out ahead, the share of the enhanced person will always be greater. In short, at an interpersonal level, genetic enhancement that is not available to all produces unfairness. The enhanced even might be called cheaters. Wealth-based access to genetic enhancement doesn’t only taint personal interactions, however. It threatens the very fabric of society . Since enhanced individuals will be able to replace determination and effort with a pill or with a genetic manipulation, they will be able to devote their time and energies to other pursuits, enabling them to pull away inexorably from everyone else. If, as is likely, enhancement confers abilities beyond what can be achieved with hard work alone, the enhanced will have opportunities beyond the grasp of even their most hard-working fellow citizens. Society will consist of the genetic haves and have-nots, and the haves will accrue greater social status, wealth, and power. 110 Wondergenes The social and political consequences could be grave. We could become a society of vast inequality. If genetic enhancement reaches anything like its full potential, the enhanced will be the most attractive , strongest, most graceful, most intelligent, most charismatic , and most inventive, and they will run the most successful businesses. All of these advantages will be rolled into the same persons. They will enjoy decisive advantages over everyone else in all realms of life—sports and beauty contests, game and talent shows, entertainment and the arts, admission to the best educational institutions, entry into the professions, political office and government appointment, getting rich or richer, and grabbing the most desirable mates. They will attain a monopoly over the best things in life, and their position at the pinnacle of society will be unassailable. But is this dark image of the future realistic? Why would genetic enhancement be such a threat to society? People are not naturally equal now. Many are impoverished, lack a decent education, cannot obtain access to good health care, and do not participate in the political process. At the same time, some people are smarter than others, even much smarter. Some are...