Dystopia, Utopia, and the Desire for Perfection: Repro-Genetic Justice and the Anthropocene

New and emerging genetic technologies have the potential to redefine human health and well-being but also raise complex questions about ethics and justice. The use of these technologies for reproductive purposes, such as screening for desirable traits in future offspring, is rapidly expanding. However, this poses fundamental questions about societal values, power structures, and the construction of well-being, normality, ability and perfection in the desired next generation. I reflect on my decades-long ethnographic work in the industry of assisted reproduction in the Global South to theorise around how new reproductive and genetic technologies are shaping what we mean by humans, as well as our shared futures. More specifically, I will argue that capital-intensive biotechnologies—from DNA testing to genetic medicine, genetic testing and selection, —while seducing us with the allure of efficiency, innovation, progress, well being and increased choice, in fact, erode radical structural transformation to such an extent that even our visions of solidarities, change and utopia get delimited.