150 Lewis D. Solomon

polarization of society into a genetically privileged ruling elite and a genetically disadvantaged underclass. One technology proponent, Lee Silver, a molecular biologist, paints a chilling scenario of competing human beings in which a class he calls the“Gen Rich,” improve their children’s cognitive abilities to the point that they break off from the remainder of the human race,“the Gen Poor,” and form a separate species.** In short, parental choices could have serious, unintended, long-term societal consequences.

On the basis of an egalitarian ethic, these arguments will in all likelihood resonate with the mainstream of the Jewish tradition. In the biblical account of human creation, we read that God created one person(Adam) from whom we are all descended.*® We all are of infinite value, which, however, often, mistakenly in the view of Rabbi Freundel,*’ gets extended to a notion of human equality or equivalence.

Furthermore, we must again face reality. Children of well-off parents enjoy the advantages that wealth can confer. Parents now improve their children’s capacities and life prospects through the best possible health care, private schooling, music and computer lessons, and summer camp. Individual self-improvement is generally viewed as laudable. Parents generally want to raise their children in an optimal environment as favorable to“success” as is possible.

Engineering genes represents another way parents can strive to make their children“better” than the average in some way and give them the best possible future. It permits them to pass on genetic gifts together with monetary and environmental benefits.

In the future, people with money will be able to give their kids not only a better environment, such as private schools, but also better genes. The wealthy will opt for children with the best cumulative set of genes— emotional stability, long-term optimism and happiness, inborn talents, increased creativity, healthy bodies; whereas families of the underclass face obesity, heart disease, hypertension, alcoholism, mental illness, and a predisposition to cancer. Beyond the individual