OVERVIEW
The two theorists we chose for our research are Robert K. Merton and Peter Blau. Two famous American sociologists of XX century. Their theories will be applied to the article named Should we worry about gene editing which apparently exposes the author`s opinion upon the new biological researches and the ability of biologists to influence our body artificially.
The credibility of an article is proved by the fact that the author of the article is Robert Klitzman, a renown professor of psychology at Columbia University.
There are several ways of approaching the problem, but first of all, we believe that the named theorists would not consider it as a problem at all. Actually, they would consider fighting or even caring about gene editing a problem.
In most cases such technologies have nothing to do with the social problems, but when “we face an opportunity to completely reshape the human race we can not omit any ethical and moral value which brings us to the social aspect of the problem and make it more social and political rather than scientific” (Darnovsky 2015).
ROBERT`S K. MERTON APPROACH
Provided that Robert K. Merton was partially a functionalist, we can assume that he would support the the problem by pursuing the allowing of gene editing. Gene editing would allow people to fight some serious diseases and probably get rid of some genes that are responsible for cancer, aids or chronical inclinations for drinking, smoking, drug use or even obesity.
So if this wonderful technology can make the world a better place – he would definitely support it. According to the approach of functionalists, the society should possess some important features in order not to be extinct. But on the other hand, we may not be sure as such a technology would definitely break the status quo. Since the cost of such a procedure is very big, only rich people would be able to afford modifications of such type. And we can not even imagine what chaos would that be if only one race, culture or country possess such technology. It would definitely cause a lot of different issues that have been already fought by our society. It would raise inequality on a new level. And, in a nutshell those who have no money definitely won’t survive.
Another important theory, we can apply to our article is the theory of deviance. The desire to modify your body, character and personality or the same things about your future children may be qualified as a “deviant behaviour since it is not an ordinary thing and has never been” (Merton 1938:28).
So the theory is concentrated on the dependence of the behaviour on the culture of people and their anomie. Anomie is a “phenomenon of lack of normality in actions of people and their discrepancy from moral values that are appropriated in a modern society” (Merton 1938:39). In other words it means a big gap between the objective and practical, normal and lawful ways of achieving it. Taking this into consideration a lot of other problems would arose because moral principle of people differs. We cannot define ‘normal’ without provoking a controversy.
According to Merton`s deviance theory (1938) the “paradigm of the the deviant behaviour consists of 5 models”:
Conformity model means that people have goals quite acceptable by the moral values and they try to achieve them with the help of acceptable means (Merton 1938).
Innovation mode determines the moral-abiding goals that are wanted to be achieved with the help of means rejected in the modern society(Merton 1938).
Ritualism mode determines the rejected by the modern society goals that are wanted to be achieved with the simple moral-abiding means (Merton 1938). Both means and goals pursued by the retreatism model are rejected in the modern society(Merton 1938). Both means and goals pursued by the retreatism model are rejected in the modern society, but the difference between retreatism and rebellion is that rebellion is too chaotic and short term model(Merton 1938).
So, according to the following definions, our social issue of editing genes may be considered as innovation since people agree with the fact that it would be better to have an ability to modify people`s genes before they are even born so we can treat horrible diseases, but people are completely against the way of doing it since it requires the experiments on living embryo and even implanting them into a human body.
PETER`S BLAU APPROACH
Since Blau supposed that population structure can lead the human behaviour and specifically the behaviour of interaction, it would be wise to apply his structural approach to this issue.
The key point of his approach is the social mobility and the conflicts. The development of the issue can probably cause both of the effects.
Social mobility is just a so-called movements inside of the social groups that are made by separate units (Blau 1977:17). This movements may cause both positive and negative effects as the editing of human genes and creating of almost perfect human being may lead to some unexpected complications.
The distribution of the population, especially if this distribution is illogical and not grounded on any logical principles may cause several conflicts. And the editing of genes will definitely create such a distribution. Since most of the conflicts are based on the inequality among various social groups, there will be people who will have the possibility to use these technologies and those who will not (Blau 1977:24).
The way Blau would solve this issue is by making it common for all the social layers, but, unfortunately, it is practically impossible because of the cost of the modern equipment and technologies (Blau 1977:14). And besides, there may be cultural discrepancy as the country that would succeed in this technology first cannot share its success with others.Such thing will give it an enormous advantage before other countries.
As for the macrostructural theory, it determines each person, not as a human being, but according to person`s social status. And applying of the biological component of this approach would totally disrupt it. The society consists of various groups: gender – man or woman, age – old or young, money – rich and poor, but the implementing of this technology would add some new categories to our equation (Blau 1977:17).
SUMMARY OF THE SUBSTANTIVE ISSUE
With the help of new technologies named CRISPR-Cas 9 scientists and doctors now can influence the human organism on the cellular level by changing the genes and even the DNA of human beings, especially the yet unborn children (Klitzman 2016). Such thing may sound amazing for those people who believe in the bright future and admire the modern technologies, but some of the politicians argue that this technology would make the social world much worse.
Being tested on various bacteria, the technology can influence the weak cells that are responsible for some specific disease and dispose of them. Getting rid of such cells would prevent many diseases and even completely terminate them.
But unfortunately, such experiments cannot be conducted without being implemented to the human interaction. In other words, we cannot discover the true and full effect of the technology until it is worked on a human being which is prohibited now.
Advantages of the gene editinig are that many people will be cured of the disease that are killing them, the applying of the same technology may cause a big technological leap in all the fields and it will also lead to saving more lives, the ability to modify the gender, sexual orientation and dispose of the future-to-be bad habits will reduce many social problems such as obesity, drug use, there are some evidence for the genes responsible for the enhancing abilities of a human, so the parents will be able to bear the great painter or a good singer (Klitzman 2016).
It may sound a little bit weird and like something from the fiction book or movie, but according to the research people would be able to reach the genes that are responsible for the intelligence and even the strength of person making some sort of enhanced superhumans (Klitzman 2016).
The disadvantages of the gene editing are that curing one disease, such a deep invasion into human body may cause some other disease as some of the cells are responsible for the immunity, The run for the technology may result in a cold war and even in the real one as any country would like to possess such a technology, by deciding all the characteristics and appearance of their children, parents deprive them of the natural selection and the ability to determine their destiny by themselves, the invention would create a chaos and even a bigger discrepancy between poor and rich people (Klitzman 2016).
In the conclusion, we must say that the theoretical problem area of editing genes under the deviance and social change categories since such activity is not normal and natural for our society and we can hardly predict what effects it would create.
REFERENCES
Merton, Robert. 1938. "Social Structure And Anomie". American Sociological Review 3(5):672-682.
Blau, Peter. 1977. "A Macrosociological Theory Of Social Structure". The American Journal of Sociology 83(1):26-54.
Darnovsky, Marcy. 2015. "Human Gene Editing Is A Social And Political Matter, Not Just A Scientific One". the Guardian. Retrieved April 4, 2016 (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/dec/04/human-gene-editing-is-a-social-and-political-matter-not-just-a-scientific-one).
Klitzman, Robert. 2016. "Gene Editing: Should We Be Worried? (Opinion)". CNN. Retrieved April 1, 2016 (http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/10/opinions/gene-editing-klitzman/).
