Genetically modifying babies would create a new caste system

The argument

Throughout history, inequality has plagued our societies, limiting countless individuals' freedom and quality of life. Efforts to address the problem are present, but they work against a persistent current, and on this view the last thing our societies need is a procedure that could worsen the divisions they are already struggling to close. If the genetic modification of babies becomes popular, that is exactly the danger. The first mechanism is cost. The procedure is expensive and has limited availability, which means access to it would follow existing wealth rather than need, and would divide the line between the wealthy and the poor more sharply than it is already drawn. The children of wealthy parents could benefit from genetic modifications that give them unfair academic, social and physical advantages, while others remain inflicted with human flaws that genetic modification can prevent. Crucially, the resulting advantage would not be a matter of effort or circumstance that a later generation might overcome; it would be written into the body before birth. The second mechanism is social conformity. The prospect of having a designer baby could prompt couples to "build" a child that fits societal standards of beauty, and those standards are not neutral. A technology used at scale to select for approved traits could therefore worsen issues like sexism and racism, leaving those with "undesirable" traits in small numbers and, by that scarcity, deepening the discrimination they already face. Put together, the two mechanisms describe a society stratified by biology rather than only by circumstance. Modified people, advantaged from birth and concentrated among the wealthy, could eventually delegate others to the bottom of the social ladder, which is not a passing inequality but a fixed hierarchy of the kind a caste system describes. For this reason, proponents of this position argue, we should avoid genetically modifying babies.

Premises

Counter-arguments

This argument is based on speculation rather than fact. We have no proof that genetically modifying babies will prompt individuals to take advantage of the procedure, using it to increase their own social standing. By avoiding the procedure based on this possibility, we deprive couples who could benefit from it of children out of fear. At second we right now have mental disorders like ADHD, BPD, Schizophrenia, Autism etc that destroyed ability of the kids to get good education and job. What is essentially the lack of equal access to resources provided by society.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The argument assumes that genetic modification would worsen injustice rather than help alleviate inequality.