9/04/2025

Already there

The dystopian future described so articulately by Charles Camosy in this article has already arrived:

At first, it will no doubt be the wealthy who avail themselves of the opportunity, given the high expense. Our society’s already wide class-based inequalities will be compounded by the biological advantages accruing to the children born on the upper social rungs. Class (defined by one’s place in the social production process) will be reinforced by new conditions of biological caste, giving rise to a new biopolitics: having a child with a disability or a less-than-sculpted body will consign people to the lower castes. Later on, as these practices become cheaper and more widely available, a sort of soft compulsion will likely bear down on all parents to optimize their kids (health insurers might decline to cover claims associated with non-optimized children). Having children the old-fashioned way will be the mark of a few “insane” religious fanatics — freaks and outcasts. 

Which is exactly how Christians were viewed by mainstream pagan society in the faith’s early days. Even so, a child-centered, Christian understanding of procreation defeated and replaced the ancient pagan culture’s understanding of reproduction. Could it happen again in our time?

Insurance companies already define their care for people with Marfan Sydrome and similar disorders according to whether or not they've been genetically tested; it's only a matter of time before they flip that switch, yet we are already being conditioned to accept their terms for our coverage. 

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