新加坡作者发表论文，反对新加坡政府允许人类基因增强的举动

武夷山

Science and Public Policy（科学与公共政策）杂志网站2025年8月12日发表了新加坡生育和试管婴儿咨询公司的Alexis Heng Boon Chin（他也是北大生物医学科学副教授）和新加坡Regardless 网站（一个舆论平台，权且翻译为“无所畏惧”吧）的创立者Timothy Weerasekera合著的文章，

Normative, empirical, and pragmatic ethical objections to Singapore permitting human genetic enhancement via germline genome editing（反对新加坡允许通过生殖系基因编辑实现人类基因增强的规范性理由、经验性理由和伦理学理由） 。

    请DS翻译此文的摘要，我修改；

摘要

儒家价值观与崇尚学历的高度竞争的社会规范构成了新加坡的社会文化背景，为“消费优生学”（自由优生主义）的兴起提供了滋生土壤。本文对旨在人类增强的生殖系基因编辑之伦理问题进行了批判性审视。鉴于新加坡的经济高度依赖人力资源质量，生殖系基因编辑用于人类增强的伦理问题在此背景下尤为突出。新兴技术（如可遗传的多基因编辑）的发展可能使人类基因增强在未来成为现实，尽管它存在风险。本文质疑支持消费优生学的科学理由，并批判性地剖析了允许人类基因增强可能引发的各种伦理争议与对社会的负面冲击，包括加剧社会经济不平等、边缘化少数族群、扭曲就业市场、加速新加坡人口下降、对基因增强个体之后代的不良影响，以及破坏家庭关系等。本研究旨在为关于基因编辑及其社会影响的全球讨论做出贡献。

这篇文章主要观点如下（录自https://communities.springernature.com/videos/liberal-eugenics-new-eugenics-heritable-polygenic-genome-editing-in-singapore）：

The Rise of Consumer Eugenics and Why This Requires Heritable Polygenic Genome Editing

Consumer eugenics, also known as "new eugenics" or "liberal eugenics," refers to the use of market-based, personal-choice-driven genetic modification and selection technologies by individuals or families to influence the traits of their offspring. As such, it operates under the auspices of a liberal free market capitalistic system. This modern approach to genetic selection and alteration has gained traction, particularly among highly educated technopreneurs and white-collar professionals in Western societies. Proponents of consumer eugenics argue that they have a fundamental right, based on the notion of individual reproductive autonomy, to screen, select, or genetically alter socially desirable traits in their children that are not associated with disease. Such traits are often determined by the complex interactions of multiple genes and include high IQ, athletic prowess, and various physical attributes linked to contemporary beauty standards such as height, skin complexion, and eye and hair color. Current gene editing technologies are not yet advanced and sophisticated enough to enable the precise genetic engineering of such complex polygenic traits within human offspring, and will have to await the future development of heritable polygenic genome editing technologies.

The Key Aspects of Consumer Eugenics (Also Known as New Eugenics or Liberal Eugenics)

• Driven by individual choice (not the state): Unlike historical state-led eugenics (e.g., Nazi Germany or early 20th-century sterilization programs), consumer eugenics is based on personal or parental preferences, enabled by private companies offering genetic services.

• Core Premise and Rights: Proponents of consumer eugenics argue for a fundamental right, based on the notion of individual reproductive autonomy, to screen, select, or genetically alter socially desirable traits in their children. This perspective views eugenics as a consumer right within a liberal, free-market, capitalistic system.

• Targeted Traits: The traits typically sought for selection or alteration are often determined by the complex interactions of multiple genes and are not necessarily associated with disease. These can include high IQ or cognitive ability, athletic prowess, and various physical attributes linked to contemporary beauty standards, such as height, skin complexion, and eye and hair color.

• "Humane" Alternative: The basic premise of consumer eugenics is that it offers a much more humane and gentler alternative to "old-fashioned" or "coercive" eugenics. Instead of cruelly restricting and eliminating people, as was common in past eugenic practices or Darwinian natural selection, consumer eugenics utilizes new genetic technologies to select "good genes" and eliminate "bad genes".

• Rectifying "Defective Genetic Traits": With consumer eugenics, individuals with "defective genetic traits" would not need to be culled or have their reproductive rights curtailed, as was often practiced in livestock breeding. Instead, their "defective genetic traits" could be rectified with cutting-edge technologies so that these "undesirable traits" would no longer be inherited by their offspring.

• Aim of Human Improvement: The ultimate goal of consumer eugenics, much like old-fashioned eugenics, is to gradually improve the human race through the creation of "genetically superior individuals." Proponents believe this could lead to longer, healthier, and more fulfilling lives for the enhanced offspring, who might then make significant contributions to human civilization through their enhanced intellectual capabilities. It is also argued that these new genetic technologies can replicate the benefits of natural selection in eliminating "harmful genes" within civilized human society, shielded from the cruelty of nature.

• Technological Enablers: The emergence of advanced gene editing technologies, particularly the Nobel Prize-winning CRISPR-Cas9 technology, presents significant opportunities for the advancement of consumer eugenics aimed at enhancing human genetics. While current gene editing technologies are not yet advanced enough for precise genetic engineering of complex polygenic traits, future developments in heritable polygenic editing are anticipated to make this a practical reality.

• Connection to "Procreative Beneficence": This perspective is often based on the principle of "procreative beneficence," which suggests that parents have a moral obligation to choose the child most likely to achieve optimal well-being, essentially the child with the greatest advantages and best prospects for a fulfilling life.

Relevance of Consumer Eugenics to Singapore

Consumer eugenics is particularly relevant to Singapore due to a confluence of its sociocultural context, economic reliance, and public attitudes towards genetic enhancement technologies.

• Sociocultural Fabric and Hypercompetitiveness: Singapore has a predominantly Chinese and Confucian sociocultural fabric, which is characterized by intensely competitive social norms and Confucian values emphasizing hard work, frugality, and education. This environment fosters a widespread trend of "tiger parenting," where parents make significant investments, often even before their children's birth, to secure places in prestigious schools. Singaporean society is marked by a notable "fear of losing" mentality, known as 'kiasu', which drives parents to push their children into an educational "rat race" from a young age, allocating considerable income to after-school tuition. This hypercompetitive environment extends beyond academics to include recreational and enrichment pursuits, fostering a mindset of excelling in all aspects of life. Such a hypercompetitive and achievement-focused nature of East Asian Confucian societies like Singapore creates "fertile ground for the rise of ‘consumer eugenics’".

• Economic Reliance on Human Resources: Singapore is a tiny island city-state with no natural resources, and its economy relies heavily on the quality of its human resources to drive its economic engine and maintain national security through military conscription. The development of new technologies like heritable polygenic editing could make human genetic enhancement a practical reality in the future.

• More Prevalent Eugenics Mindset in Confucian Societies: Large-scale surveys indicate a higher acceptance of genetic enhancement for cognitive ability in Singapore compared to Western countries. For instance, a study revealed that 48% of Singaporean respondents approved of cognitive enhancement via gene editing, significantly higher than the 34% in the USA. This suggests that a eugenic mindset is more prevalent in East Asian Confucian societies like Singapore. The severe stigmatization of individuals with physical or intellectual disabilities in these societies, often perceiving them as burdens or sources of shame, further supports this observation, as evidenced by the frequent abandonment of handicapped children in East Asian orphanages. Indigenous eugenics movements, such as China's 'uterine morality' movement, also demonstrate this mindset, encouraging women to select partners with desirable genetic traits for healthier, more aesthetically pleasing, and intellectually capable offspring.

• Public and Governmental Interest: Singapore has invested significantly in biomedical research. The scandalous case of unauthorized germline genome editing by He Jiankui in China in 2018 attracted much attention in Singapore. Consequently, Singapore’s Bioethics Advisory Committee (BAC) conducted a public consultation in 2024 to critically examine ethical, legal, and social issues arising from human nuclear genome editing, including the potential use of germline genome editing for human enhancement. While general public attitudes in Singapore, similar to other countries, are predominantly favorable towards gene editing for therapeutic reasons, they are less so for genetic enhancement. However, support for enhancing a baby's intelligence (29%) was notably higher in Singapore than the median support (14%) observed in other surveyed populations globally.

• "Procreative Beneficence" and Its Reception: The concept of "procreative beneficence," which posits that parents have a moral obligation to choose the child most likely to achieve optimal well-being with the greatest advantages, aligns with some aspects of consumer eugenics. While controversial, this principle could find resonance in a society like Singapore that values achievement and excellence.

In essence, Singapore's deep-seated cultural values, intense social competition, economic reliance on high-quality human capital, and a relatively higher public receptiveness to cognitive enhancement through gene editing create a unique context where "consumer eugenics" could become particularly entrenched.

Fallacies of Consumer Eugenics

The theoretical underpinnings and scientific foundations of consumer eugenics are deeply flawed, logically inconsistent, and based on irrational fallacies:

• Misconception of Evolution as Unidirectional Improvement: A common idealistic misconception is that scientific evolutionary theory underpins a unidirectional process for improving and perfecting the human species, leading to healthier, "better-looking," and smarter individuals over generations. In this view, desirable "good genes" should be propagated and "bad genes" eliminated.

• Misunderstanding "Survival of the Fittest": In reality, the theory of evolution via natural selection is an arbitrary and "messy" process with no specific aim or objective for human improvement or civilizational advancement. "Fit" in "survival of the fittest" refers to reproductive capacity under specific environmental conditions, not necessarily traits like intelligence, strength, or beauty. For example, disadvantaged communities with higher fertility rates might be considered to have higher "evolutionary fitness" than affluent middle-class individuals with lower fertility rates.

• The Flawed Concept of "Good Genes" versus "Bad Genes": Scientifically, there are no inherent "good genes" or "bad genes". So-called "bad genes" persist in the human gene pool because they evolved in the past to confer survival and reproductive advantages under specific environmental conditions. Examples include genes for sickle cell anemia or beta-thalassemia, which provide malaria resistance when heterozygous, or genetic predispositions to obesity and type II diabetes, which might have conferred survival advantages in nutritionally poor environments. Eliminating such genes from the human population could be a "sheer folly" as they might serve as an "insurance policy" for future survival in unpredictable environments, such as famines caused by climate change.

• Arbitrary Choices Based on Social Bias: The idea that prospective parents in a liberal free-market system can arbitrarily choose "good genes" (e.g., tallness, fair complexion, intelligence) is problematic. Such choices are likely to be strongly biased by social opinion and peer pressure, and these socially desirable traits may actually be detrimental to health and survival in a rapidly changing global environment (e.g., fair complexion increasing skin cancer risk with ozone depletion).

• Contradiction with "The Selfish Gene" Theory: Consumer eugenics' goal of improving the human race and advancing civilization contradicts the "selfish gene" theory, which posits that DNA's "true purpose" is simply to replicate itself, regardless of benefit or harm to human individuals or society. This theory suggests that human enhancement is an "artificial man-made concept that has no basis in nature and biological reality".

Pitfalls and Potential Detrimental Impacts of Consumer Eugenics

If Singapore were to permit human genetic enhancement through germline genome editing widely, there would be numerous potential adverse effects and negative social repercussions:

• Risk to Global Standing and Reputation: Authorizing human germline genome editing for enhancement could put Singapore at odds with international consensus and widely recognized ethical standards, potentially harming its reputation as a global biomedical research and industry hub.

• Exacerbation of Socioeconomic Inequality: Gene editing technologies are currently very expensive, making them accessible primarily to the wealthy. This could lead to the disproportionate enhancement of socially advantageous traits (e.g., high IQ, athletic prowess, physical attractiveness) among the affluent, thereby intensifying existing socioeconomic disparities.

• Intensification of Racial Discrimination and Social Biases: Permitting genetic engineering for traits like fair complexion or specific eye/hair colors, which are often viewed as desirable, could reinforce social biases and discrimination against ethnic minorities, hindering efforts to promote a more inclusive and cohesive society.

• Contradiction of Fairness: Similar to the ban on doping in sports to ensure a level playing field, permitting human genetic enhancement would contradict the notion of fairness in society, as it would grant unfair advantages to genetically enhanced individuals.

• Discord and Disharmony within Families: Parents might develop unrealistic aspirations for their genetically altered children, especially after significant financial investment. If not all siblings undergo enhancement, it could foster jealousy and resentment. Furthermore, there is a gross violation of the unborn child’s rights and autonomy, as they cannot consent to genetic modifications and face potential medical risks.

• Negative Psychological Impacts on Enhanced Individuals: Genetically enhanced individuals might develop arrogance, a sense of entitlement, and antisocial behavior if they perceive themselves as superior. They could also face significant mental health challenges due to pressure to meet high social expectations.

• Driven by Vanity and Social Competition: Unlike therapeutic gene editing that relieves suffering, enhancement is often driven by vanity and "obnoxious social competition". This makes the medical risks, no matter how minimal, less justifiable, and could lead to legal actions against companies, regulators, and parents if unintended harmful effects manifest later in life.

• Skewing of the Job Market: Widespread cognitive enhancement could exacerbate an oversupply of highly qualified university graduates, overwhelming the white-collar job market and leading to rampant youth unemployment. Concurrently, it could cause a shortage of much-needed blue-collar workers with vocational and technical skills, undermining government efforts to create "multiple pathways and broader definitions of success in life".

• Unnecessary Use of Costly and Risky Assisted Reproduction: Social and peer pressure could lead healthy, fertile couples to undertake expensive, invasive, and risky assisted reproductive techniques, such as IVF, solely for genetic modification to enhance socially desirable traits. This would be considered "bad medicine" and clinical malpractice.

• Acceleration of Demographic Decline: The high costs associated with germline genome editing for enhancement, combined with additional medical fees for assisted reproductive technologies, could place an unnecessary financial burden on parents. This might lead families to opt for fewer children, potentially accelerating Singapore's already ultra-low fertility rates.

• Doubtful Benefits for Autonomy and Well-being: While proponents argue that enhancement improves offspring autonomy and well-being, in a hypercompetitive, shame-based Confucian culture like Singapore, genetically enhanced offspring's autonomy would likely be curtailed by parental expectations. This could lead to reduced happiness and well-being if they fail to meet these unrealistic demands.

• Promotion of Biological/Genetic Determinism: Human enhancement promotes biological or genetic determinism, suggesting that one's destiny and success are determined by genetics. This is "anathema" to Singapore's vital values of diligence, resourcefulness, innovation, and entrepreneurship, which are core to its economic survival and prosperity. It also contradicts Confucian values of "diligence" and "self-cultivation".

• Inhibiting Societal Diversity and Holistic Development: Permitting enhancement would reinforce genetic determinism in academic success and hinder efforts to encourage diversity and appreciate varying capabilities among citizens. It risks creating a society focused on a narrow, much vaunted mold of academic excellence rather than nurturing individuals to their full potential in diverse fields.

In summary, the sources contend that consumer eugenics is built on fundamental scientific misunderstandings and, if adopted, could lead to significant negative societal consequences that contradict Singapore's core values and long-term well-being.

How Future Geopolitical Dynamics Could Influence Human Enhancement with Gene Editing

Future geopolitical dynamics could significantly influence the uptake of human enhancement with gene editing, particularly in highly competitive societies. A key factor is the rivalry between great powers like China and the USA, which may inadvertently push other nations towards embracing technologies like germline genome editing to gain a competitive advantage.

Several specific influences and scenarios are outlined as follows:

• Maintaining Global Standing and Competitiveness: Nations might perceive gene editing as a crucial tool to produce cognitively or physically superior individuals to sustain their global standing and economic vitality. For instance, South Korea's technological ambitions and Japan's declining population could create incentives to consider gene editing as a means to maintain economic and demographic strength in the face of an aging population.

• National Imperatives in Confucian Societies: In hypercompetitive East Asian Confucian societies like Singapore, human enhancement via gene editing might be viewed as a way to fulfill the national imperative of enriching the country and strengthening the military (富国强兵, fùguó qiángbı̄ng). These societies already demonstrate a more prevalent eugenic mindset due to their focus on material achievement, social prestige, and academic credentialism.

• Overriding Ethical Concerns: The intense drive to maintain supremacy in the global order could potentially override existing ethical caution and societal reforms that these countries have championed. This creates a critical challenge for countries like Singapore, which must balance ethical principles with pragmatic concerns in this global race.

• The "Fear of Losing" (kiasu) Factor: Specifically for Singapore, its well-known "kiasu" (怕输- fear of losing) imperative could ultimately persuade government lawmakers to permit human enhancement with gene editing. This would likely occur if they perceive that the nation is losing its competitive edge due to the widespread uptake of this technology by most other countries. This contrasts with the current ethical stance which anticipates that human enhancement with gene editing will likely not be permitted in the foreseeable future, given the numerous potential negative repercussions discussed.

Conclusion

Despite the theoretical benefits of human enhancement via gene editing, its widespread adoption in Singapore is unlikely to be permitted in the near foreseeable future. This stance is primarily due to the numerous unresolved safety risks, potential negative repercussions, and ethical concerns associated with germline genome editing for enhancement, which have hitherto been discussed. Nevertheless, the intense pressures of global competitiveness and the nation's "fear of losing" could be a decisive factor that shifts this stance in the future, should other nations widely adopt the technology.

Alexis Heng Boon Chin

Associate Professor, Singapore Fertility & IVF Consultancy Pty Ltd.