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Scientists at Columbia University have developed a new technology called “base editing.” It’s purpose is to alter the DNA of early human embryos with what researchers are describing as unprecedented accuracy. The New York Times recently reported on the development, saying that while the technology might one day allow parents to repair disease-causing genetic mutations, it could just as easily be used to select desired traits. Even the Times acknowledges that many ethicists plainly call this eugenics.
This technological leap is no small distinction. Earlier gene-editing techniques like CRISPR removed defective genes. Base editing goes further — it improves and rewrites them. As theologian Andrew Walker put it, base editing enables both therapeutic intervention and genetic enhancement. That is not a therapy change of a different degree, but one a totally different kind. There are grave moral questions that remain completely unanswered while the science races ahead.
This pattern is familiar and troubling. Many scientists act as though the moral questions around gene editing are already settled. They pretend all that remains is to figure out how best to deploy this technology. History should teach us otherwise.
Many Americans have forgotten the Supreme Court's 1927 decision in Buck v. Bell, in which an eight-to-one majority upheld a law allowing the compulsory sterilization of the mentally disabled. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declared that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” He represents the Progressive Erea’s faith in scientific improvement. Lawyers defending Nazi officials at the Nuremberg trials later cited Holmes' opinion to justify their own eugenics program.
C.S. Lewis warned of this coming in The Abolition of Man. He said that the conquest of nature through science is not truly about increase in human power. Rather, it would ultimately lead to the rule of a few men armed with the power of an omnicompetent state and irresistible scientific technique. They could carve up all posterity in whatever shape they please. Without fixed moral standards, we are left to the impulses of whoever is in charge.
The Christian faith is clear: Every human being is made in the image of God, endowed with eternal dignity and worth. Treating disease is medicine, bu t editing the basics of human life is something else entirely. This truth must govern our scientific pursuit, or science will eventually govern us.
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