Soapbox Post

Are lizards deficient because they are cold-blooded?  Are humans deficient because they don’t have wings?

Interestingly enough, a recent article in The New York Times, “With Genetic Gift, 2 Monkeys are Viewing a More Colorful World,” suggested that an entire species of monkeys was deficient because it couldn’t see the color red (Sept. 21, 2009).  This strikes me as dangerous thinking, and it was built on a deeply misleading framing of the underlying scientific research.  Whether the article framing was originally the reporter’s or the scientists’ is not entirely clear, but it is worth exploring its framing in more depth to understand why I find it particularly concerning.

First, let’s look at some of the framing choices used in the article:

• Two squirrel monkeys were reported to have received a genetic gift, “the ability to see the world with full color vision.”
• The monkeys were reported to have undergone “gene therapy,” a technique for altering the monkeys’ DNA.
• The scientists who had conducted the experiment were reported to have named one of the monkeys Dalton, for John Dalton, who was reported to have first described color-blindness.
• Squirrel monkeys were described as “chromatically challenged because their ancestors split off from Old World primates before full color vision evolved.”
• The article was accompanied by two photographs, one in full color, the other with red hues removed, to simulate color-blindness.

Why is this framing problematic?  Put simply, everything in the story was set up to suggest that the scientists had cured the monkeys of the disease of color-blindness:

• The monkeys were said to now be able to see the world in “full color vision,” as if their original sight was somehow deficient.
• This sense was reinforced by the use of the phrase “gene therapy” as opposed, for example, to genetic modification or genetic engineering.  Dictionary.com defines the word therapy as “the treatment of disease or disorders, as by some remedial, rehabilitating, or curative process.”
• One monkey’s name was explicitly linked in the article to the disease of color-blindness.
• Squirrel monkeys as a species were described as “challenged”: a word often used as a politically correct form of the word disability.  The blind are referred to, for example, as visually challenged.
• The article explicitly noted that other monkey species see in full color vision, but that squirrel monkeys split off genetically too early.

But the basic fact of the case is that these two squirrel monkeys didn’t suffer from a disease.  Their sight was perfectly normal for their species.  Moreover, as a species, squirrel monkeys are neither genetically nor visually deficient.  To be sure, their sight capabilities are distinct from their evolutionary cousins, a path-dependent accident of history, but that hardly creates reasonable grounds for suggesting that they are somehow in need of therapy.  An astute colleague of mine, Cathy Arnold, wonders about the adaptive nature of the monkey’s eyesight, and the law of unintended consequences – will altering the monkey’s eyesight actually create evolutionary disadvantages?

Are squirrel monkeys really deficient because they can’t see as many colors as other monkeys?  And even if we were to accept that seeing more colors is necessarily better, does the whole species therefore need to be cured?  That is a dangerous proposition.

The problem with a great deal of genetics research is that it is inappropriately sold as merely an effort to cure disease: no genetic engineering here!  Scientists fear that the public would not support their work if they knew it wasn’t just about restoring us to full health.  But what if it becomes possible to redefine whole species as sick and in need of a cure?  And what if it is our own species that comes to understood as diseased – or perhaps worse, only some part of it that is genetically predisposed to be less intelligent or less beautiful or less able?  Human enhancement may become not a choice but a presumption, all in the guise of curing what ails us as a species, or perhaps a race.