THE NEW EUGENICS

An impressively thorough survey of the development of biotechnology and the potential dangers it poses.

Quintyn, an associate professor of biological anthropology at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania, observes that the breakneck speed of biotechnological advancement has outpaced not only its regulatory oversight, but also society’s ability to fully digest the scientific and moral challenges such progress presents. Although the promise of new science has been extraordinary, most people lack an adequate understanding of its implications, according to the author: “In this dangerous era of light-speed scientific advancement, especially in biotechnology, can humankind endure the long-term cost in detrimental changes to human and nonhuman life-forms?” For example, molecular scientists, committed to correcting the apparent defects of nature in the creation of genetically modified organisms, routinely overlook “complex bioenvironmental interactions” that could present future problems, Quintyn asserts—just as genetic engineering could “unintentionally cause deleterious alterations to a human embryo’s genome.” Moreover, the author frets about the slippery slope that could lead from legitimate therapeutic uses of genetic modification to elective enhancement and all the moral issues it raises. The author argues that there’s a line that runs from the “old eugenics” that grew from racial and economic oppression to what he sees as its new iteration, which genuinely aspires to the betterment of humankind but tends to produce other ethical dilemmas. Over the course of this book, Quintyn’s discussion is as rigorous as it is wide-ranging, and his mastery of the subject matter and his ability to translate technically forbidding topics into accessible prose are remarkable. The author’s discussion of how scientists are either blind to the issues he raises—too focused on technological progress to pause to consider moral objections—or willing to resort to semantic obfuscation to downplay them is particularly astute.

A technically precise and philosophically thoughtful treatise.