Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. Recently, the New York Times reported that scientists at Columbia University are using a new technology called base editing to alter the DNA of early human embryos with unprecedented accuracy. Here's what the Times said: quote, On the one hand, the technology might one day enable parents to safely repair disease-causing mutations in embryos, but it might also be used to select desired traits, a practice that some ethicists have argued is nothing short of eugenics. End quote.
Well, these recent approaches differ from earlier gene editing methods like CRISPR, which removed effective genes, not necessarily improved them.
So what the Times is reporting is not just a difference in degree, but in kind, though with the same moral questions that still remain unanswered. As Andrew Walker put it over at World, quote, we should recognize that this technology occupies a morally gray zone. Therapeutic intervention differs from genetic enhancement. Base editing enables both. End quote.
Well, neither base editing nor CRISPR will be the last foray into this kind of eugenics. In fact, some of us predicted that the imprisonment by the CCP of a Chinese scientist who used CRISPR a few years ago to modify human embryos was basically a distraction, not really a punishment. And if that was the case, it definitely worked because the public has moved on. The outrage at the doctor has now died down. His work actually continues, even as Columbia researchers have added a degree of academic respectability to these efforts to edit human beings.
And it always goes like this. As one of the geneticists from Columbia put it, we need to have a public discussion about gene editing. Really? Do we? Before or after we do it.
No, these scientists are behaving as if the moral questions are settled, or at least somehow a matter of personal interest and preference, and all that's left now is to discuss how best to use the technology. Both history and the Bible warn what happens when our technologies outrun our ethics. Many have now forgotten the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Buck v. Bell, 1927, when caught up in the euphoria of the progressive era's zeal for scientific improvement, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke for an 8-1 majority and upheld a compulsory sterilization law of the mentally disabled.
The aim of the law was, the court said, and I quote, to prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. According to Holmes, in the case of Kerry Buck being sterilized, and I quote again, three generations of imbeciles are enough. Lawyers representing the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials after World War II cited that opinion from Buck v. Bell to justify their own eugenics efforts in the Nazi regime. And these new developments in gene editing are just as much plagued by the essential questions regarding human nature.
First, is human nature permanently flawed? Or are we constantly progressing toward perfection, now in control of it through our technologies? And second, what will stop us from using these technologies not just to repair, but to pursue perfection? Or dare I say, perhaps, a master race? Look, these aren't far-fetched questions.
As one scientist quoted by The Times put it, quote, in regular IVF, embryos are screened for genetic abnormalities. But baseline editing is providing the baby improvers with a how-to manual for forays beyond the ethical pale, end quote. He sounds like C.S. Lewis in the abolition of man, who foresaw these dangers. And I quote him.
Man's conquest of nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions and billions of men. But the man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the power of an omnicompetent state, an irresistible scientific technique. We shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please. And do these Columbia scientists really think that what will govern these conditioners will be a quote-unquote public discussion? No.
Without moral standards, we're left to the impulses of those who are in charge. Recently, Christian ethicist Scott Ray argued that those things resulting from the fall are within the domain of medical treatment, like disease, while those things not resulting from the fall are givens of life and creation and thus should not be left in the realm of enhancement. That includes things like biological sex, eye color, etc. That distinction is helpful, despite the real challenge of drawing such an ethical line in a fallen world, especially at big universities with unlimited budget supported by rogue governments. It's going to be real difficult to stop this stuff, much less expect anyone else to comply.
Look, scripture is plain. Every person is made in the image of God and is endowed with eternal dignity, worth, and beauty. Any potential value to be found in this new base editing technology will be an added value, but there's no way to add value to the priceless. And that all will be outweighed by the consequences of not recognizing what's true of the human condition, both our value and also our potential for evil. In this case as well, the potential consequences far outweigh any potential benefits.
For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today I thank Kira of Gig Harbor, Washington for being a Cornerstone Monthly partner of the Colson Center. Thanks for making this episode of Breakpoint possible. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored with Andrew Carico. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast.
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