We really don't think that Aldous Huxley had a crystal ball and could look into the future and see our modern world of prenatal genetic testing. But reading Brave New World sure makes us wonder.
Basically, Brave New World makes The Island of Dr. Moreau look like the feel good hit of the year. Because now we don't just have one nut-ball doctor/scientist experimenting on humans, we have them all. In the dystopia of the World State, the primary setting of the novel, there's no more natural reproduction (relax, guys and girls: there's still sex, though, and lots of it). Instead, all babies are created in a lab, through a sort of in-vitro fertilization.
And then comes the kicker: these lab-created embryos (i.e., all embryos in the World State) are subjected to genetic testing and the results are used to determine how they will be classified after birth, whether Alpha or Beta—or lower—castes. Not only that, but these embryos are conditioned, through the scientists' manipulation of their cells and of the external environment in which the embryos are grown, to ensure that they fill their "proper" social roles.
For those people designated to fill the lowest castes of society (the Deltas, Gammas, and Epsilons), the manipulation is even more sinister, as the embryos are injected with chemicals to arrest their development, ensuring that they will never think, hope, or act "above" their given status.
Into this skeezy world comes the "Savage," a product of natural reproduction and a native of the "reservation" surrounding the World State.
As we read Brave New World, we have to think about how this might relate to our modern world of prenatal screening and selective abortion. Bérubé warns us that our technology is moving faster than our understanding of it—and it's certainly moving faster than we can find answers to all of the ethical questions this technology raises.
So when we read Huxley, we have to ask ourselves what we would do if we had the technology to intervene before birth to the extent that the scientists in the World State do? Where do we draw the line when it comes to creating these designer babies?
Not only that, but the World State is completely free of those problems that plague our world: there is no violence; there is no crime; there is no poverty. And yet there are also no choices. Everything has been pre-planned and pre-programmed before the child's birth. You are born into your role in life and you have no say in the matter.
So we guess the question becomes, Shmoopers, if we could live in such a "worry-free" world and all we had to give up was our right to choose the course of our own lives, would we?