"The use and misuse of Brave New World in the CRISPR debate" https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/crispr.2019.0046
"One of the strangest aspects of Brave New World's use in bioethics is that many authors use the novel as shorthand for ethical issues that never appear in the novel at all, and even some issues that contradict those portrayed in the novel."
"... In contrast, some of the most prominent ethical issues with GGE are rarely discussed. For instance, it is hard to draw a connection between Huxley's scenario and the idea of therapeutic genome editing. The use of “biologically superior” gametes for Alphas is mentioned in Huxley's later essays rather than in the novel itself, and even then, it is left unclear what that entails. Nor does the novel address the possibility of these processes causing unanticipated side effects."
"... thus, there does not seem to be any genetic testing in Brave New World, and most of the methods described involve hormones and chemicals rather than heritable interventions. Although Huxley wrote that “eugenics and dysgenics were practiced systematically,”67 this seems to refer only to selective breeding and not to any kind of direct manipulation on the genetic level. (The Bokanovsky process does represent a form of cloning, but this is not ethically equivalent to GGE, and references to Brave New World may lead some readers to confuse the two technologies.)"
"Second, many authors assume that Brave New World is a parable about genetic enhancement.35,43,47 In their report Beyond Therapy, the President's Council on Bioethics suggested that the novel was about “producing improved … perfect or post-human” people.41 While it's true that the upper castes in Brave New World are smarter than the others, this is more because of the deliberate impairment of the lower castes than because the upper castes are “perfect.” Rather than reducing the number of individuals born with genetic disorders or handicaps, Huxley's dystopia involves dramatically increasing their number. Concerns about large-scale disenhancement appear only occasionally in the gene-editing literature,7,13,28,40 making Brave New World a poor match for these concerns. Furthermore, unfair competition for education or career opportunities is not an issue in Huxley's world because there is no real competition: everyone is created to fill a particular niche in society."
"In some of these cases, it is possible that authors are misremembering the society described in Brave New World, or that they have not read the book in the first place. Others may be using the phrase “brave new world” less in reference to Huxley's novel and more to evoke the general idea of a futuristic dystopia. In many cases, this seems to involve reading contemporary bioethical concerns into Brave New World even when they are not supported by the text itself."
"Huxley was particularly enthusiastic about Nobel laureate H.J. Muller's well-known plan to improve the human gene pool by banking high-quality sperm.75 He envisioned a society organized along those lines in his 1962 utopian novel Island, in which the sperm of men with high IQs are provided from a central bank to grateful married couples, and children play board games such as “Evolutionary Snakes and Ladders” or “Mendelian Happy Families.” In many ways, Island serves as an inverted version of Brave New World, demonstrating how a non-totalitarian society might use eugenics to great benefit. Island even suggests that people who were overly susceptible to persuasion could be trained to avoid hypnotism by would-be dictators.76"
"Huxley's lifelong interest in modifying humans at a biological level makes him a poor (and inaccurate) icon for common-sense controls on GGE. Although many ethicists may be unfamiliar with his other writings, these strongly suggest that Brave New World was never meant to be a warning about technologies such as CRISPR. Authors looking to use science fiction in their work might want to cite authors who provide a better foundation for their ethical arguments."
Brave New World is about tyranny and totalitarianism, not a warning against genetic enhancement technologies. The misuse of this book has set us back by decades.