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What is normal what is abnormal?
What is normal and what is abnormal? More specifically, what is a genetic difference and what is a genetic defect — and how do you distinguish between the two? Does it matter? In a word, yes. In language and in the real-life attitudes that language reflects, differences are good, defects are bad; differences are to be nurtured, defects eliminated. To eliminate a defect that causes real suffering is obviously an unalloyed good. But if one person's defect is another person's difference, then the moral calculation changes considerably. And if the defect/difference can't be eliminated without also eliminating the person, well, that's another order of magnitude altogether.
Some of these judgments are easy to make. Consider eye color. Brown is dominant and blue is recessive, meaning there are more people with brown eyes than blue. I'm oversimplifying, and I'm not even mentioning those whose eyes are green or gray or utterly unique, but indulge me. If brown eyes are the default mode for the human race, are people with blue eyes somehow defective? Of course not. Blue eyes work exactly the same as brown ones. Mine happen to be green. Eye color? Who cares?
Or take race. Through some combination of genetic attributes, people of European, African, and Asian ancestry all look quite different — from the pigmentation of their skin to the shapes of their noses and eyes to the color and texture of their hair. But despite the efforts of some to pretend otherwise, we know that racial differences are morally and intellectually neutral, meaningless — and of little importance when compared to other aspects of our genetic make-up. Scientists say that the genetic differences between Europeans and Africans, for instance, are less pronounced than the differences among various African ethnic groups. Obviously the differences that are the most visible are not necessarily those that are the most profound, or that help determine who an...