12 Leaders The EconomistNovember 9th 2019
2 mar, where antipathy towards Muslims is widespread, detrac-
tors of Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s de facto leader, circulated
a photo manipulated to show her wearing a hijab. By contrast in
Iran, an Islamist theocracy, a woman was disqualified from tak-
ing the seat she had won when a photo, which she claims is doc-
tored, leaked showing her without one.
High-tech sexual slander has not replaced the old-fashioned
sort, which remains rife wherever politicians and their propa-
gandists can get away with it. In Russia, female dissidents are
dubbed sexual deviants in pro-Kremlin media. In the Philip-
pines, President Rodrigo Duterte has joked about showing a
pornographic video of a female opponent, which she says is a
fake, to the pope. In China, mainland-based trolls have spread
lewd quotes falsely attributed to Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s first fe-
male president. Beijing’s state media say she is “extreme” and
“emotional” as a result of being unmarried and childless.Stamping out the problem altogether will be impossible. Any-
one can make a deepfake sex video, or hire someone to do it, for a
pittance, and then distribute it anonymously. Politicians will in-
evitably be targets. Laws against libel or invasion of privacy may
deter some abuses, but they are not much use when the perpetra-
tor is unknown. Reputable tech firms will no doubt try to remove
the most egregious content, but there will always be other plat-
forms, some of them hosted by regimes that actively sow disin-
formation in the West.
So the best defence against sexual lies is scepticism. People
should assume that videos showing female politicians naked or
having sex are probably bogus. Journalists should try harder to
expose the peddlers of fake footage, rather than mindlessly link-
ing to it. Some day, one hopes, voters may even decide that it is
none of their business what public figures look like under their
clothes, or which consenting adults they sleep with. 7D
ebate aboutusing science to create “bespoke” human be-
ings of one sort or another usually revolves around the ideas
of genetic engineering and cloning. People worry about these for
two reasons. One is practical. The tinkering involved could end
up harming the resulting individual. The other is a more visceral
dislike of interfering with the process of reproduction, perhaps
best encapsulated in the phrase “playing God”.
There is, however, a third way that the genetic dice which are
thrown at the beginning of human life might be loaded—and it
does not involve any risky tinkering. It is a twist on the well-es-
tablished procedure of in vitrofertilisation (ivf). The twist would
be to decide, on the basis of their dna, which of a group of avail-
able embryos should be implanted and brought to term.
The result would be a child optimised with the best-available
genetic profile for a long and healthy life. And
this is not science fiction. Two American firms
have been working on the idea for some time,
and one of them is now implementing it (see
Science & technology section).
Single-nucleotide polymorphism (snp, or
“snip”) profiling, as the technique is called,
promises healthier offspring—a clear good. It
may also provide a way to upgrade things only
tangentially associated with health, such as height and, more
controversially, intelligence. Moreover, it is a technique that
could be applied generation on generation, to improve grand-
children and great-grandchildren still further.
snps are the smallest possible differences between individ-
uals’ dna—single genetic letters. Individually, most have little
consequence. But there are millions of them in every human ge-
nome and their combined effects can be big. snpprofiling looks
for particular combinations of snps that research has shown are
associated with the risks of developing illnesses such as cancer,
diabetes and heart disease. This is important medical informa-
tion for people now alive, and can be used to recommend screen-
ing programmes, changes of behaviour and prophylactic drugs.
For those willing to undergo ivf, and with the money to payfor it, it may also be possible to snp-profile an embryo and thus
foretell its future. As well as disease risk, height and intelligence,
snp-profiling might eventually be capable of predicting (albeit
imperfectly, for environment also plays a role) things as diverse
as television-viewing habits, likelihood of being bullied at
school and probability of getting divorced.
At the moment, non-medical attributes are not on the menu
offered by would-be embryo snp-profilers. But if the technique
works it is hard to believe that they will not be on someone’s
menu in the future. And that does raise questions.
What all this amounts to is, in essence, a supercharged ver-
sion of an existing process known as assortative mating. It is al-
ready true that intelligent, successful (and therefore probably
rich) people seek each other out as partners. In doing so, they
bring to the table whatever genetic variations
helped make them intelligent, successful and
rich, which they then pass on to their children.
snpprofiling—available, at least to start with,
only to those who can afford it—will enhance
that by letting parents pick tall, good-looking
and above all clever offspring.
For a single generation, that may not matter
too much to the rest of society. It would be but
one extra privilege that the rich enjoy. Piled generation on gener-
ation, however, it really might create a genetic elite. snp-profil-
ing is already used to enhance desired attributes in livestock, so
it seems reasonable to assume it will work on people.The gene genie is out of the bottle
Perhaps that is tomorrow’s problem. For the moment there
seems no reason beyond envy to oppose embryosnp-profiling.
But, from H.G. Wells’s Eloi in “The Time Machine” to Aldous
Huxley’s Alphas in “Brave New World”, science fiction is full of
breeding programmes for elite humans that have gone wrong.
Sci-fi always enjoys portraying dystopias, and mostly they do not
come true. But it might be wise to debate the matter now, just in
case this time people really are unknowingly playing God. 7A design for life
A new type of genetic profiling promises cleverer, better-looking children. What could possibly go wrong?Genetics