Almost a year ago, Art Caplan waded into the prenatal genetic testing arena with this variation on an old trope: “Would you allow Bill Gates to be born?” I’m a bit slow on these things, so I’m just getting around to answering him. (And my answer is: given how screwed up my Windows computer system is, I’d abort Gates right now if I had the chance.)

Caplan muses:

If you could go back in time and stop the birth of the world’s most famous nerd, would you?

You probably answered my question with a “no.” Whatever Gates’ sins may be, he is the father of a computer revolution that has brought much good to many people throughout the world. Add to that achievement his current generous philanthropic activities supporting some very worthy causes, such as vaccine research and a center for autism research in Seattle, and the case for having Bill with us becomes pretty persuasive. . . .

But what if I told you it’s possible that Gates has a medical condition that accounts, in part, for both his tremendous achievements and for his “nerdiness?” Gates is widely reported to display many personality traits characteristic of a condition known as Asperger’s syndrome. Asperger’s is a mild version of autism, a more serious condition that renders many children unable to talk, be touched, communicate or socialize. While I certainly do not know if Gates has Asperger’s, his difficulties in social settings are nearly as legendary as his genius, so it’s possible. . . .

The drive for more genetic tests continues unabated. Undoubtedly the genes for autism and Asperger’s will soon be found. When they are, my question — would you have stopped Bill Gates from existing? — will take on a very real meaning.

Fewer geniuses?
There are many in the autism and Asperger’s community, like the newly formed Aspies for Freedom, who worry that the minute a genetic test appears, it will spell the end for a lot of future geniuses, like Gates. Maybe there will be fewer Thomas Jeffersons or Lewis Carrolls — remarkable thinkers who also fit the profile for Asperger’s.

(First, let me say that I am both wary of and uncomfortable with this business of “diagnosing” psychological or medical conditions in famous figures on the basis of a few imagined personality traits. I don’t think there is any reliable evidence to base a claim that Gates has Asperger Syndrome - observations about his “difficult personality” are no more than long-distance stereotyping. I also think it’s an abuse of professional insight to broadcast such claims, whether or not reliable. I have no great sympathy for Gates, but it’s still rude and insensitive to make remarks like this, and in some circumstances - public figures, for instance - it can be quite dangerous.)

I find it odd to see Caplan endorsing this line of reasoning. It’s an old one, most commonly found in anti-abortion arguments, and notoriously weak; Caplan should know better. To put it simply, if the argument against preventing certain births (by abortion, IVF embryo culling, genetic engineering, or what have you) is the utilitarian one that some people with the target condition could turn out to be great geniuses, the counterargument is that they could just as well turn out to be great villains. Medical testing does not give us diagnostic precognition (and if it did, we would undoubtedly choose to abort only the villians - making the case for doing so even stronger). Since there is no way to know that certain births will turn out to be greatly utilitarian for the world, there is no weight to an argument that we should not prevent them for that reason. (Another implication of this argument is that we should not practice birth control, and in fact should attempt to have as many children as biologically possible - since any child not conceived could be a lost genius just as much as any embryo not gestated. Unless we think we are really obligated to become desperate breeding machines seeking the inventor/entrepreneur jackpot that is the apparent raison d’etre of human reproduction, we are entitled to not to have any child we choose.)

Another problem is that this argument ties the anti-[whatever] stance to the utility of the births in question (something that even most Utilitarians - autonomy-loving libertines that they are - would not do). Thus it seems to imply that it is OK to systematically prevent births that are socially disadvantageous - perhaps not in cases of Down Syndrome, or Aspberger Syndrome, or what have you, but in other more severe cases. This is almost invariably not what the “anti-’s” have in mind, and apparently not what Caplan has in mind in raising fears of genetic euthanasia.

The “anti-” argument has got to be made on other grounds. The strongest argument is the pro-autonomy one: that the lives of people with [whatever condition] are just as rich and valuable to them as the lives of people without it; there is no reason to deprive them of life for their own good (that justification virtually never works, since virtually nobody would prefer the alternative for their own good), and you may not deprive someone of life purely for someone else’s good, so they may as well live. (To put that more simply: the lives of people with “disabilities” - however we may conceive that term - are almost always a net positive benefit to them - they do still want to live; thus, the only reason not to let them live would be to benefit someone else, which we normally say we cannot do.) This argument falters when you consider that the lives that are going to be ended are not those of persons with the condition in question, but of embryonic non-persons who have no interests to take into account. Ending the life of an adult person with [whatever condition] who still wants to live would be a grave injustice, but ending the life of an embryo that is not a person, and wants nothing at all because it has no consciousness, is no harm at all, and so is permissible. The response to this argument is that systematically eliminating all births with the chosen condition is tantamount to genocide - to casting the existing generation with that condition adrift by not letting any new members of their “community” arrive - essentially declaring war on people with that condition not by attacking them directly but by genetically cutting them off as a barren community. And, finally, the response to that argument is that there is no obligation on the part of prospective parents to have any particular type of child simply so that others like that child will have a thriving community. (There we will have to let the argument stand for now. It’s a vital topic, but not for this post.)

Whether or not there is a good “anti-” argument against systematic elimination of embryos with a given “disability”, the point is that doing so directly harms no living person. Harms to imaginary future persons, in the sense that they do not come into existence, are of no moment. (An embryo that is aborted “suffers” just as much as one that was never conceived, or one - say, the hypothetical offspring of Benjamin Franklin and Britney Spears - that never could have been conceived. We are not morally obligated to any of these non-persons.) And so I am puzzled to imagine what Caplan - or the many who share his fears - are upset about. The “future genius” argument that Caplan foregrounds is absurd, and the “discrimination” argument makes no sense - not least because, at the early-embryo stage, there is no one there to be discriminated against.

We may well worry about the world we create in seizing domination over our own genetics, but the problems to be feared come not from the fact that certain imaginary people will not come into being. The real problems are the familiar dysutopian scenarios - clone armies, Delta-minus worker slaves, complacent feudal drudges, raving military savages, universal genetic conformism, loss of hybrid vigor - that threaten from attempting to manage a planned genetic economy. These are possibilities to be considered, and avoided by proper planning. (How do you avoid the danger of a clone army? Don’t make one!) But that is something we can do - something that does not depend on diagnostic precognition to prevent us aborting hypothetical geniuses, or equates not having a child with a given condition to killing another person with the same condition.

Mediagirl has an outstanding survey of this issue from many angles.

Once again, I couldn’t say it better, so I didn’t. Go look.