Fences Across the Road

In an article about the LA Fertility Institute’s recent offer to help parents choose the genetic traits of their children, including eye and hair color and gender, the company’s founder, Dr. Jeff Steinberg, said “I would not say this is a dangerous road. It’s an uncharted road.”

In a way, Dr. Steinberg reminds me of the man described by Chesterton who, seeing a fence built across the road, decides to tear it down without reflection:

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

So is Dr. Steinberg’s Fertility Institute really an “uncharted road”? Only if one considers the technologies involved. But this road has indeed been charted , philosophically and intellectually, for some time now. Fences, in other words, have been erected. And Dr. Steinberg and people like him are all to eager to tear them down.