2.6. Children as Product

Hake: November 2018, Hong Kong

On the final day of the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong, an event occurred that organizers would later describe as "the shock that changed everything." Chinese physicist He Jiankui, who was not included in the official program, took the stage uninvited and announced the birth of the world's first genetically modified humans (BBC News, 26 November 2018).
Twin girls, Lulu and Nana, had been brought into the world following genome editing using CRISPR/Cas9 technology. The experiment aimed to disable the CCR5 gene, which encodes a co-receptor enabling the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to enter cells. Theoretically, this modification was intended to render the girls resistant to HIV infection.
The international scientific community's reaction was unequivocally negative. The Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, where He was employed, distanced itself from the experiment. The developers of the CRISPR technology, Nobel laureates Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, called for a global moratorium on the editing of the human germline (N+1, 2019).
Subsequent investigations revealed serious protocol violations. The editing proved incomplete: off-target mutations were detected in the girls, the long-term consequences of which remain unpredictable. He himself admitted that the editing had failed entirely in one of the embryos. The experiment was conducted without clinical trials, bypassing all existing regulatory procedures (N+1, 2019).
In December 2019, a Chinese court sentenced He Jiankui to three years in prison and imposed a fine. However, the girls had already been born and continue to live (Reuters, 2019).
In the same year, Russian researcher Denis Rebrikov, head of a laboratory at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, announced his intention to replicate the experiment — this time for a deaf couple seeking to have a hearing child. He later retracted these plans, acknowledging insufficient evidence for the technology's safety (N+1, 2019).
As of 2025, the debate remains acute. Proponents of therapeutic applications appeal to the prospect of eradicating hereditary diseases; opponents warn of the danger of sliding towards "designer babies," the resurgence of eugenic practices, and the erosion of the very concept of human nature (ISSCR, 2021; Sharov, 2025).
Lulu and Nana are now seven years old. We have no information about their living conditions, the extent of their awareness of their own origins, or whether they will ever ask the question: "Why did you make me this way?"

Plato and the Paradox of Liberal Eugenics

In the Republic, Plato, for the first time in the European tradition, thematizes the selection of human material as a political problem. In Book V of the dialogue, he proposes a system whereby the best men would mate with the best women, and the offspring of the inferior would be eliminated. Children are to be raised communally so that no one knows their own parents, and all regard each other as family (Plato, 1994: 457c–461e).
The conceptual foundation of Plato's program is the primacy of the polis over the individual. The state is understood as an organism whose health requires control over reproduction. The individual possesses no sovereignty in matters of procreation; reproductive practices are subject to regulation based on the interests of the whole. As K. Popper emphasizes, Platonic eugenics is inextricably linked to a totalitarian project in which collective good subsumes individual freedom, and personal autonomy is sacrificed for abstract perfection (Popper, 1992: 127–130).
The He Jiankui case reveals a fundamentally different configuration. State coercion is absent; instead, autonomous agents — the parents — make the decision regarding the genetic modification of their future child. The motivation is individualized: protection against HIV, enabling the ability to hear. This is not the dictate of the polis, but the exercise of parental prerogative.
However, despite the change in the decision-making subject — from the state to the parents — the structure remains: a human being becomes the object of selective intervention, their genetic code subject to optimization according to external criteria of desirability. The difference in legitimating mechanisms (coercion versus free choice) does not negate the similarity in the ontological outcome: the child ceases to be the unforeseen result of a natural process and becomes the product of conscious design.
J. Habermas, in The Future of Human Nature, introduces the concept of "liberal eugenics" to describe this situation. He demonstrates that market logic and the logic of individual choice can engender anthropological transformations no less profound than direct state coercion. Habermas writes: "Liberal eugenics follows the logic of consumer choice, but its consequences for the species's self-understanding may prove just as radical as those of totalitarian eugenics. The difference is merely that here there is no political authority that can be held accountable" (Habermas, 2002: 62).
M. Sandel, in The Case Against Perfection, develops a similar intuition, placing it within a critique of the instrumental attitude towards the world. For Sandel, the problem with genetic enhancement lies not in violating the rights of the future child (an argument that, as he shows, faces insurmountable difficulties, as the future child does not exist as a rights-bearing subject at the moment of decision). The problem lies elsewhere: "The problem with genetic enhancement is not that it undermines freedom or autonomy, but that it embodies a certain stance toward the world — a stance of mastery and control that misses the gifted character of human powers and achievements" (Sandel, 2007: 27).
Sandel insists: the ethical problematic of genetic design is not captured by the language of rights. It requires the language of attitudes, virtues, and modes of relating to givenness. When parents cease to perceive a child as a gift (with all its unpredictability, otherness, and potential for resistance) and begin to perceive it as a project to be optimized according to their notions of the good, the very fabric of intergenerational relations is altered.
The shift revealed by this case: Platonic eugenics returns, but in a liberal guise. The instrumentalization of a human being is now achieved not through coercion, but through choice. Parental autonomy, conceived as an incontestable value, turns into heteronomy for the future child. The freedom of some becomes the destiny of others.

Kant and the Problem of Intergenerational Justice

Immanuel Kant, in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, formulates a principle that became fundamental for the European ethical tradition: a human being must never be used merely as a means, but always also as an end. Every rational being exists as an end in itself, possesses dignity rather than a price, and cannot be replaced by anything else (Kant, 1995: 269–270).
This principle prohibits the instrumentalization of the person. One cannot treat another as a thing, as a resource, as a means to realize others' ends — even if those ends are good. Kant emphasizes: the dignity of the person consists precisely in the fact that they cannot be reduced to exchange value; they are above any price.
Applying this principle to the case of embryonic genetic modification reveals significant conceptual difficulties. A child whose genome is edited by parents did not choose this alteration. They received it as a given, as an ineradicable characteristic of their body. The question arises: do they thereby become a means for realizing parental ends (health, absence of deafness, desired aesthetic parameters)?
Habermas, in the aforementioned work, develops this argument by introducing the distinction between "grown" and "made." The grown possesses its own history, unpredictability, and autonomy. The made is the result of another's decision. The genetically modified child, according to Habermas, finds themselves in a situation where their very selfhood has been designed by someone else, undermining their capacity to think of themselves as the author of their own life. Habermas writes: "The programmed person, even if he is not dissatisfied with his genetic equipment, may encounter difficulties when he tries to think of himself as the one who leads his own life and is its author" (Habermas, 2002: 73).
Critics of Habermas's position (Zuk et al., 2019; Harris, 2016) point to several conceptual vulnerabilities. First, the Kantian principle does not forbid treating a person as a means per se — it forbids treating them merely as a means. If editing is done for the child's own sake (to prevent them from suffering a hereditary disease, to enable them to hear), this is not instrumentalization, but care. Second, parents constantly make decisions that determine their children's futures: choice of residence, educational strategy, religious upbringing. Genetic editing, from this perspective, is merely an extension of parental prerogatives.
However, these objections fail to capture the specificity of genetic intervention. Decisions about upbringing leave the child room for subsequent revision: one can change religion, move, alter one's lifestyle. Genetic modification is irreversible and ineradicable. It leaves the child no choice — it constitutes their very embodiment. As Habermas notes, "eugenic intervention aimed at improving genetic endowment ties down the freedom of the person subjected to it in a different way than socialization does. It creates a dependency on alien preferences that cannot be overcome in the course of one's life" (Habermas, 2002: 74).
Furthermore, the boundary between therapy and enhancement remains conceptually unstable. What is considered treatment for a pathology today may tomorrow be redefined as the standard norm, and the day after as the baseline for further enhancements. P. Zuk et al., in debate with R. Sparrow, acknowledge that "the distinction between treatment and enhancement is neither ontologically rigid nor ethically neutral" (Zuk et al., 2019: 23).
The shift revealed by this case: the Kantian model of autonomy presupposes a symmetry between generations that is violated in the case of genetic editing. The parents' choice becomes the ontological destiny of the children. And the question of whether this state of affairs can be considered compatible with respect for human dignity finds no unequivocal answer within the classical Kantian paradigm.

Arendt and the Crisis of Natality

Hannah Arendt, in The Human Condition, introduces a category of key significance for understanding the situation at hand — the category of natality. By natality, Arendt understands a fundamental characteristic of human existence connected to the fact that each person is born into a world they did not choose, and precisely thereby gains the capacity to begin something new (Arendt, 2000: 247–248).
Arendt emphasizes: each new human being is a promise of change. Their appearance in the world is not completely determined by the past; they carry within them the potential for the unforeseen, the ability to initiate events not derivable from existing circumstances. Birth is the metaphor for freedom itself. "The capacity for beginning is rooted in birth, and it is nothing other than freedom itself," Arendt writes (2000: 248).
Genetic design puts this construct into question. If a child is not the result of natural chance (however inscribed in a deterministic worldview) but the product of conscious design realizing specific ideas of desirability, their appearance in the world loses its character as an event and acquires the character of fulfilling an order.
Patricia Bunch, in a study devoted to the bioethical implications of Arendt's thought, formulates this as follows: "When we design children, we close off that very openness to the future that makes freedom possible. We replace the attitude of encounter with the Other with an attitude of production, in which the Other turns out to be merely an extension of our own desires" (Bunch, 2015: 112).
B. G. Yudin, a leading Russian specialist in bioethics, expresses a similar thought in his work Man: Going Beyond Limits: "Editing the human genome is a going beyond the limits of the human mode of existence. It is an attempt to take on a function that always belonged to nature or God. Man becomes an object of technological manipulation before birth, and this changes the very concept of man. We cease to be 'born' and become 'produced.' And what is produced can be remade, improved, replaced" (Yudin, 2016: 185).
It is crucial to emphasize: Arendt's argument (and its development by Bunch and Yudin) is not an empirical prediction that genetically modified children will necessarily be unhappy or lack freedom. It is a conceptual analysis of the conditions for the possibility of freedom. Freedom, for Arendt, is possible only where there is unpredictability, where the future is not closed off by past decisions. Genetic design closes off the future in a way different from social programming: it embeds the decision into the very fabric of existence.
The shift revealed by this case: birth ceases to be a beginning and becomes a result. A person enters the world not as a promise of novelty, but as the realization of a plan. And this puts into question the very structure of freedom as Arendt conceived it.

Foucault and Molecular Biopolitics

Michel Foucault, in lectures from the mid-1970s, introduced the concept of biopower as a specific mechanism of governance oriented not towards territory and subjects, but towards the life of the population. Biopolitics makes the processes of birth rates, mortality, morbidity, and life expectancy — everything pertaining to humans as living beings — the object of regulation (Foucault, 2005: 285–287).
Foucault shows how power gradually shifts from the sovereign right to kill, to disciplinary techniques managing bodies, and further to regulatory mechanisms acting upon populations. This process does not stop but deepens, encompassing ever more intimate levels of human existence.
Nikolas Rose, in The Politics of Life Itself, radicalizes Foucauldian analysis concerning contemporary biotechnologies. Rose shows that we are moving from the "biopolitics of populations" to the "politics of life itself" — a form of power that operates at the molecular level, through genetic tests, predictive medicine, and reproductive technologies (Rose, 2007: 4).
A key category in Rose's analysis is "biological citizenship." The contemporary human is constituted as a subject responsible for managing their own biology. We are obliged to know our genome, predict diseases, prevent risks, and improve our offspring. Health ceases to be a gift and becomes a task, an achievement, a project.
Rose terms this new configuration "ethopolitics" — a form of power that acts not through external coercion, but through shaping ideas about what we must be like to live well. Here, power does not forbid or prescribe — it produces a subject who wants to optimize themselves.
From this perspective, genetic editing appears as a logical stage in the development of biopower. Power penetrates the very core of life — the genetic code. It ceases to merely govern the circumstances of birth and begins to govern heredity itself.
However, this configuration has a downside. If health and offspring quality become matters of responsibility, failure in this area turns into guilt. A parent who fails to provide their child with an optimal genetic start finds themselves in the position of a moral failure. As Rose writes, "biological citizenship" demands responsible management of our genetic heritage — and punishes those who fail to exhibit this responsibility (Rose, 2007: 158).
The shift revealed by this case: biopower becomes molecular. It penetrates to the level of the genetic code and produces a subject who wants to optimize themselves and their offspring. Humans become responsible for what was once fate. And within this new regime of responsibility, new forms of inequality and exclusion are born.

Sparrow and the Problem of Ontological Obsolescence

Robert Sparrow, in a 2019 article, raises a question that exposes the temporal dimension of the problem under consideration. If genetic enhancement technologies develop rapidly, then children born in 2030 will be rendered "obsolete" compared to children born in 2035. They will not merely be less well-equipped — they will be ontologically obsolete, rejected by the very march of progress (Sparrow, 2019: 7–8).
Sparrow calls this the "problem of obsolescence." If we start enhancing children, we initiate a race that will always have losers. Those born too early. Those whose parents could not afford editing. Those living in countries that have banned the technology.
In a world where some children are "enhanced" and others are not, a new form of inequality emerges — genetic inequality. It is more frightening than economic inequality because it cannot be overcome by effort or luck. It is inscribed in the body, in the cells, in the very mode of existence. As Sparrow writes, "obsolescence in this context is not merely a matter of losing competitiveness in the labor market. It is a matter of ontological status: being born before a certain date means being condemned to an existence in a mode of deficiency that cannot be remedied" (Sparrow, 2019: 10).
Critics of Sparrow (Zuk et al., 2019; Harris, 2016) object: the obsolescence of a tool does not mean the obsolescence of a person. A person's value is not reducible to the value of their genetic characteristics. We do not cease to love children born yesterday just because "better" children appear today.
However, this objection misses the structural aspect of Sparrow's argument. The issue is not how parents relate to their children, but how society structures opportunities. In a world where genetic enhancement becomes the norm, unenhanced children find themselves in a systematically vulnerable position. Their chances of access to resources, social mobility, and recognition diminish regardless of whether their parents love them.
Furthermore, Sparrow's argument has a temporal dimension not captured by standard criticism. If enhancement becomes possible, then the time of birth itself acquires moral significance. Being born "too early" means being excluded from the space of opportunities available to later generations. And this exclusion cannot be compensated by any individual effort.
The shift revealed by this case: progress creates a new form of inequality — temporal-genetic inequality. Some are born "enhanced," others — "obsolete." And this inequality, being built into the body, is not subject to correction over an individual's life course.

The Human as a Product of Sustenance

For thousands of years, European philosophy conceived of the human as something given. Born, not made. Emerged in the course of a natural process, not designed. Possessing a nature that can be known, developed, realized, but not constructed arbitrarily.
Even Darwin, who demonstrated the random and unplanned character of evolution, did not abolish this givenness. Evolution is a natural, blind process without a subject. The human is its result, not a project.
Genetic editing reveals another possibility: the human can be produced. Not borne in pain, not born in unpredictability, but assembled from genetic sequences according to a customer's specification. Not "become," but "made."
In each case, what classical metaphysics conceived as substance (desire, matter, decision, subject, human) turns out to be a result, a product, a construction. And in each case, this produced entity exists only in a mode of sustenance — as long as the external conditions of its existence are maintained.
Lulu and Nana are sustained in existence by:
the technology that made this editing possible (without CRISPR, they would not exist in this form);
the parents' decision, who ordered precisely these children (without that decision, they would be different or would not exist at all);
biopower, which permitted (or did not prohibit) the experiment (without this permission, they would not have been permitted to be born);
society, which recognizes or does not recognize them as "normal" (their social existence depends on this recognition);
science, which will study them their entire lives (their embodiment becomes an object of permanent observation).
Remove any of these elements — and their being becomes problematic. If the technology proves dangerous, they will be studied as a pathology. If the parents become disillusioned, they will be pitied as victims of an experiment. If society rejects them, they will become outcasts. If science loses interest, they will remain simply girls with an incomprehensible genome, cast aside by the wayside of progress.
The human is no longer "is" in and of itself, in the sense classical ontology attributed to this concept. It is only as long as it is sustained within the configuration that made it possible. Its being is not substance, but tension. Not givenness, but project. Not possession, but effort.
What remains of the human when its nature ceases to be given and becomes made?
If my genes are not a gift from ancestors nor a quirk of nature, but the result of a decision made before my birth, then who am I?
A free being or a realized project?
The author of my life or its character, whose script was written by others?
One who begins with birth, or one who was completed before conception?
This situation has no precedents in the history of philosophy. Classical categories — substance, subject, nature, essence — do not work. But new categories have yet to be developed.
Here we approach the boundary beyond which lies the space for a different conceptualization. A space where the question is not about what the human is, but about how its being is sustained. Not about nature, but about project. Not about givenness, but about tension.