Paradoxes of modern life

What strange times we live in. After a decade of being assailed from all sides by philosophers, cultural critics and the like telling us that we now live in a postmodern world, we elect a government which continually talks of taking us forward – or should that be back? – to a ‘modernised’ Britain. And it seems to mean it: modern schools, modern health services and modern government are all firmly in Blair’s sights. In the NHS, the development of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, proposals for national service frameworks and the forced collectivisation of the GP kulaks all demonstrate the seriousness of the modernisers’ intent.

But there is a further paradox to all this which bears heavily on the focus of this issue of healthmatters. One of the key tenets at the heart of the ‘modernisation’ of Britain, and especially of government, is the rejection of the ‘hereditary principle’. Labour’s determination to abolish the hereditary peerage, and the popular support which this commands, underlines just how far we have come in agreeing that good breeding does not necessarily bring with it an innate fitness to govern. We no longer believe that the right to lead – or indeed the right to rule – can or should be handed down from generation to generation. In our brave new meritocracy, people will govern or grow rich not on the basis of who their parents are, but according to their own individual abilities.

Yet while we reject the hereditary principle in government we seem to have become ever more willing to believe that human characteristics are, after all, determined by our genes. Where once we were taught that madness, homosexuality, or a tendency to violence were moral (or immoral) virtues, we now emphasise their genetic origins, and by implication their inevitability in those unfortunate enough to inherit them. And as writers in this issue of healthmatters point out, we are on the verge of seeing a whole range of other attributes as genetically determined: numeracy, literacy, assertiveness, even ‘leadership skills’. Of course, given a choice in the matter, which geneticists may soon be offering, what prospective parent would not want to demand such characteristics for their children? It seems we are at one and the same time rejecting the hereditary principle in public life and reinstating it in our private lives.

This paradox may be more apparent than real. Indeed, it may be that it is precisely the rejection of the determining influences of parentage, class or social status in society at large which will lead to a greater emphasis on genetic constitution in the domestic sphere. As the individual abilities of their children become more important than their social position, anxious middle and upper class parents will want to seek any competitive advantage they can for their offspring. Paying for the best education they can find has long been an expression of this urge to invest early in children to secure a strong market position later in life. More recently, debates over feeding children up with high doses of vitamins to enhance their intelligence have been an expression of the same thing. But now the possibilities of human genetic engineering beckon, wouldn’t any caring parent want to give their child the right genes for the best start in life?