Today's NYT has an article summarizing findings about the myriad features of our personalities that are influenced by our genetic endowments. The article raises many of the issues related to personal responsibility that show up in neuroethics debates. The juiciest part of the article comes at the end:
Others fear that when certain behaviors once ascribed to personal choice are seen as genetic, the next step will be not tolerance for difference, but support for intervention. On a "fat-acceptance" e-mail list, several members suggested recent research will lead only to new ways for them to lose weight through genetic alteration, rather than be accepted as they are. And when scientists caused fruit flies to pursue flies of the same sex by altering a gene last year, some gay-rights advocates worried it would lend credence to the notion that homosexuality could be "cured."
People could also find their genes being held against them. Already, some scientists suspect a specific gene plays a role in violent behavior, for instance, and a discussion has already begun over how people bearing such genes should be treated.
"If we find a murder mutation, are we going to be more accepting of murderers, or are we going to lock them up even more tightly?" asked Jeffrey M. Friedman, director of the Starr Center for Human Genetics at Rockefeller University. "The more we find genes that play a role in determining all sorts of attributes, the more we're going to face these kinds of ethical issues."
Of course, for traits that are socially desirable, people may not be as eager to accept genetic explanations that seem to trivialize their skills or accomplishments. When scientists this year found two gene variations that appear at higher rates in professional dancers than in the general population, many dancers bristled at the news. In online message boards for the ballet magazine Pointe, several writers said success in dance was the result of hard work, passion and good mentors. "Being a dancer requires so much more than what's there in your body, an emotional strength," said Virginia Johnson, editor of Pointe and a former principal dancer with the Dance Theater of Harlem.
She paused.
"That genes can't really — well, I guess that's genetic, too, isn't it?"
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