This blog post delves deeply into whether parents have the right to design their child’s genes amid advances in genetic engineering technology, focusing on its ethical boundaries and the issue of infringing on self-determination.
The development of genetic engineering technology is expected to mark a new turning point in medical technology. Until now, existing treatments could only alleviate symptoms of genetic diseases; they could not cure them. Genetic engineering technology, however, allows us to know before a baby is even born whether they carry a genetic disease, or at least the risk of having one. It offers the possibility of complete freedom from the suffering of genetic diseases through gene therapy, which directly alters the problematic genes. Moreover, the method of replacing disease-causing genes with normal ones can be applied to modify other genes as desired. While this technology seems poised to free humanity from suffering, it can also be used in entirely different ways. Utilizing this method, parents could manipulate their child’s genes to confer superior physical abilities or, if related to genes, create talents like musical or learning aptitude. Since every parent wants their child to succeed and live a happy life, and knows talent greatly influences success in any field, if genetic design for babies becomes a commercial product, it would undoubtedly sell like hotcakes. However, parents arbitrarily manipulating a baby’s genes is a morally problematic act.
Michael Sandel first distinguished between cure and enhancement in this debate. Cure refers literally to treating illness—compensating for health deficits to a certain degree. Enhancement, he defined, is going beyond that, using genetic manipulation to give a child desired abilities. Sandel raised moral objections only to genetic manipulation aimed at enhancement, not cure.
Sandel argued that the frequent critique of genetic engineering based on autonomy and rights is not a complete critique, so he turned his attention elsewhere. He contends that enhancement stems from the human desire for perfection, and this is the fundamental problem. He argued that this denies the contingency inherent in life and prevents us from accepting life as a gift. Sandel cited William May’s concepts of transforming love and accepting love, arguing that if parents cannot accept their child as they are and instead seek to make them a better being through genetic modification, this diminishes the accepting love parents should have for their child.
Sandel also contends that the act of manipulating genetic traits to create a better human being is underpinned by eugenic thinking. He warned that gene design, while distinct from the earlier eugenic concept of eliminating inferior genes or preventing their inheritance, represents a capitalist manifestation of eugenic ideology.
While I agree with Sandel that only genetic manipulation aimed at enhancement poses moral problems, I will focus on the issue that gene design infringes on the baby’s right to self-determination—a point Sandel argued could not be a definitive counterargument.
Parents bear the duty to guide and assist their children to grow properly and are the individuals who exert the greatest influence on them. Many factors, such as a child’s personality or habits, are significantly shaped by parental behavior and attitude toward the child. Through this, parents raise their children in the desired direction or toward socially accepted norms. We generally do not hold parents morally accountable for their actions unless they deliberately lead their children astray or neglect their duties, viewing such differences as a matter of personal values. However, this process does not directly alter the child’s physical makeup; it involves changing the child through external stimuli. This is fundamentally different from enhancement through genetic modification.
For a healthy person capable of normal life, actions taken to develop their abilities require their own will; others hold no decision-making power over such self-development. However, determining a child’s abilities through gene replacement before birth involves no process of obtaining the child’s consent whatsoever. Therefore, gene design constitutes an act that disregards the dignity inherent to the baby as a human being and shakes the very meaning of the child’s existence based on the parents’ will, posing significant moral issues.
Regarding this argument, it could be countered that the right to decide is only effective when choice exists. Since a fetus incapable of rational judgment cannot make choices, it cannot be said to possess self-determination. Furthermore, it might be argued that parents granting a child greater abilities through genetic design actually provides more opportunities for choice later in life, thus not infringing on self-determination. However, the crux of the issue in genetic design is not whether the child can choose or not. The right to self-determination is the right to make choices, and the issue lies in whether this right is respected or infringed upon. While it may be argued that genetic design could grant the child more choices later in life, genetic design fundamentally alters the child’s entire future before it even arrives. It completely eliminates the future the child would have faced without the design. One might think it offers more diverse choices, but simultaneously, it deprives the child of a future they could have chosen. Therefore, it can be seen as infringing not only on the child’s physical autonomy but also on their right to self-determination regarding their future.
However, some may take a negative stance on the question, ‘Does the child in the womb actually possess rights?’ This is because having rights is thought to include possessing the capacity to exercise them. However, the author would respond to this criticism by stating that even if the fetus lacks the capacity to make choices, it formally possesses the right to self-determination; it simply cannot exercise it practically. Furthermore, since respecting formal rights forms the foundation for possessing substantive rights, if we acknowledge the fetus as a separate being from its parents, the fetus’s right to self-determination must also be respected. To explain the relationship between formal and substantive rights, consider another example: in modern capitalist society, everyone possesses the formal right to become wealthy. This is a formal right, but since not everyone becomes wealthy, it can be argued that not everyone possesses the substantive right. However, possessing the formal right creates the possibility of attaining the substantive right. In a society with a caste system, some people lack the formal right to become wealthy, and for them, the possibility of becoming rich is utterly nonexistent. Just as formal rights must be respected for substantive rights to follow, the self-determination of a fetus, which lacks the capacity to choose, must never be ignored.
All parents wish for their children to live well and be happy. This is why they fuss over their children, taking care of them and nagging them, even when the children find it bothersome, and why they are often strict with them. Particularly in Korea today, parents’ desire to care for their children often becomes excessive, pushing them to study excessively from a young age, and continuing to micromanage them even into university. Given this context, one can imagine how intense the craze would be if designing a baby’s genes became possible. However, manipulating a baby’s genes to design them according to parental desires threatens the child’s inherent dignity and rights as a human being. Truly child-centered parents are those who step back from the obsession with forcing success through excessive interference, instead offering guidance from a distance to foster their child’s happiness and accepting their children just as they are.
