This is an opinion piece by a Hilltop columnist.
Not so long ago, genetically modifying humans belonged largely to science fiction. In Aldous Huxley’s fictional novel, “Brave New World,” people were genetically manufactured according to a rigid caste system: alphas engineered for social supremacy while epsilons were relegated to the bottom.
What was once dystopian fiction now has a technological counterpart. Scientists can already screen human embryos for genetic conditions, while gene-editing tech using Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR-Cas9) have demonstrated the possibility of altering human DNA within embryos.
While these technologies offer legitimate ways to prevent serious genetic disorders, their expansion raises a troubling question: when we gain the ability to choose which traits our children inherit, who gets to decide which traits are worth having?
A “designer baby” is a child whose genes are intentionally selected or changed before birth. Parents can test embryos for genes linked to serious diseases and choose the healthiest embryo. In this sense, the process gives parents an unprecedented degree of control over reproduction, as parents hijack the natural process of random fertilization to pick whichever embryo they see as most fit.
Designer babies present a profound ethical dilemma. Who decides which traits should be prevented, preserved or desired? Parents might someday be able to select or alter traits such as appearance, height, intelligence or athletic potential. That future may already be here as the New York startup, Nucleus Genomics, offers a “genetic optimization” service that claims to let parents select physical traits and even IQ.
In November 2018, Chinese researcher He Jiankui announced the birth of twin girls whose embryos had been edited using CRISPR-Cas9 to alter the CCR5 gene, which encodes a protein involved in moving immune cells to sites of infection. While the edits were intended to make the girls more resistant to HIV, the announcement sparked international condemnation.
Not only was the safety of this experiment put into question as scientists do not yet fully understand how different genes interact with one another, but the broader ethical concern of gene editing human children was deservedly denounced. Jiankui was sentenced to three years in prison shortly after his announcement.
For Dr. Ginger Hunter, a lecturer and geneticist, the distinction between preventing serious genetic disease and selecting traits for enhancement is precisely where the ethical problem begins.
Hunter asked how is using genetic technology to remove traits we consider undesirable any different from saying, “I want my children to be tall and have blue eyes?”
Who, based on our societal values, do we deem worth editing?
“Individuals who have Down Syndrome have very full lives… and are happy, full participating citizens in society. Should we be able to never have an individual with Down Syndrome ever again?” Hunter added.
The question becomes complicated further when healthcare access and systemic disparity enter the equation. A 2025 Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology study found that Black women were 35% less likely than white women to use PGT-A, a laboratory procedure used during in vitro fertilization (IVF) to screen embryos for chromosomal abnormalities. The National Center for Health Statistics also found that fertility-services increases with family income.
It is clear that if genetic selection remains a luxury, wealth will determine whose children can be genetically altered. The wealth gap is already stark. In 2022, a study titled Greater Wealth, Greater Uncertainty: Changes in Racial Inequality in the Survey of Consumer Finances by the Federal Reserve found that the median white family held roughly $285,000 in wealth, compared with $44,900 for the median Black family.
We already live in a society where wealth and race determine healthcare access. Why would genetic technology be any different? The wealthy will become the primary individuals with the ability to alter their children’s genes, exacerbating existing social hierarchies on an inheritable level.
Given the option to choose, parents will choose traits they believe will give their children a societal advantage. Our ideas of what makes someone successful, attractive or desirable are not at all neutral.
Beauty is a clear example. American beauty standards have long favored Eurocentric features. These standards reinforce racial hierarchies by associating whiteness with beauty, and alignment with these standards can even carry economic consequences. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, physically attractive people can earn 10 to15% more money than their less-attractive counterparts. These standards exist within a longer history of racial pseudoscience.
White Americans used pseudoscientific theories to portray Black people as intellectually inferior to justify racial hierarchy. Later, eugenicists attempted to give these ideas scientific legitimacy by arguing that certain races were naturally inferior as qualifying features of their ethnicities, bolstering white supremacist ideals that proliferate our social structure today.
“[Scientists] like to think we’re detached from [bias], but…we have things that we think are desirable versus others, and it’s all part of that societal framework, because that’s where we exist,” Hunter said.
At the end of “Brave New World,” its protagonist rejects a manufactured society built around genetic hierarchy in favor of the freedom to define his own life, despite what society has told him about his “inferior” genetics. Huxley cautions us to critically consider what happens when society gains the power to determine whose lives are valuable and whose genetics make them fit for eradication.
“The line between eugenics and genetics, as we like to think of it as a serious discipline, is very fuzzy and slippery,” Hunter said.
We are gaining the power to reshape human life faster than we are developing the wisdom to decide whether we should.
Copy edited by Jori Johnson
