The crux, then, is not genetic emancipation (freedom from the bounds of hereditary illnesses), but genetic enhancement (freedom from the current boundaries of form and fate encoded by the human genome). The distinction between the two is the fragile pivot on which the future of genome editing whirls. If one man’s illness is another man’s normalcy, as this history teaches us, then one person’s understanding of enhancement may be another’s conception of emancipation (“why not make ourselves a little better?” as Watson asks).
