Is it in our genes to be so partisan that we can’t consider a policy issue in the light of day?

I have been in the fight to ban human genetic engineering for more than five years. I wrote a paper on the subject in 1999 .

Human genetic engineering refers to any modification of the germline (sperm & egg) cells in a human that will be passed on the the rest of the human population.

A bill has passed the House several times, banning human genetic engineering. (Japan and most of Europe already ban human genetic engineering.) The same bill only has 55 votes in the Senate and it needs 60 to pass because the Democrats are solid in threatening the use of a fillibuster to stop it. The 45 Senators who want to permit human genetic engineering are all Democrats. How can that be? What is partisan about this issue?

The answer is, contemporary American politics makes nearly every issue partisan.

What happened is that the subject is too complicated for more than a dozen Senators to understand. So the lobbyists in favor of human genetic engineering cast it as a “Right to Choose” versus “Pro Life” issue and made it partisan. Both parties lined up and saluted.

Of course it isn’t a “Right to Choose” issue. That is the whole point. No single person, no small group has the right to change the germline of the human species.