Chelsie Norton
With the controversies, dilemmas, pros, and cons that human enhanceprovements made to cognition and memory, children can listen to, process, and store information with accurate recall and replication. “Enriching the environment [through toys, tunnels, houses, and platforms] has no [positive] effect on the [Doogie] mice, suggesting that the [NMDA] mutation has already forced the memory capacity of these animals to its biological limit,” notes Cooke (2003, p. 4). Does the future have no place for playgrounds, toys, or enrichment opportunities for children? Parents may need to provide nothing more than sustenance, shelter, and clothing to their enhanced children. “Is society prepared to sacrifice on the altar of consumerism even those deep values that are embodied in traditional relationships between child and parents?” challenges Bostrom (2009, p. 323). The education system may lose its significance as a contributing factor to society, particularly in high school and college. Primary education is valuable to the development of social skills, but cognitive enhancement will enable individuals to obtain a higher education with ease. McGee responds to the possible devaluation of schools by observing that “goals in education are constrained not with reference to what is genetically possible, but with reference to what we are able at the present time to accomplish” (1997, p. 119). Like education, the governmental and social programs are built to nourish tangible skill sets and if humans decide to advance past tangibility, current constructs will be of no use. Current views on religion may become compromised as well. The antiselection standpoint held by much of the conservative society opposes any human interference with the natural development of an embryo. Like the Principle of Procreative Beneficence (PPB), anti-selection affirms that serious diseases and disabilities should not be selected. This satisfies the definition of anti-selection and fulfills the moral obligation delineated by the Principle of Procreative Beneficence. However, the anti-selection view disagrees with selecting against disability; according to the PPB, this view is immoral (Savulescu, 2009, p. 289). The nature of anti-selection is to leave all outcomes up to a higher power and in this case to sacrifice human morals. By examining the idea that a God does choose disability at times, one may challenge if this God is moral. “Humans literally risk offending God if they overstep their mandate here on Earth,” explains Bostrom (2009, p. 326). Should man become the master of his own evolution? While the answer is embedded in an endless controversy, this spiritual dilemma should be considered when weighing the pros and cons of genetic enhancement. To enhance, by definition, is to improve. Genetic enhancement has the obvious advantage of a more intelligent human race that can further contribute to society. Other effects of improved cognition and memory include
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