Slippery slope

Slippery slope

The word I want to share with you today is “slippery slope.” A slope is like a hill. And when you are walking on snowy or icy road , that road is slippery. You might fall down or slide out of control . When we use “slippery slope” together, it is almost always describing a scenario where you take one small controversial step , but you are unable to stop yourself from continuing in that dangerous direction.

Taking drugs can be a slippery slope. You just try it once and you like it. Then maybe you go back for a little more; totally under control . But then you want it more and more; it costs you money; and before too long you might actually have a problem with drugs or drinking. That doesn’t happen to everyone, of course, but it’s a slippery slope. The danger is you take that one step and you can’t stop yourself from going farther down and down. It’s a slippery slope.

Breaking the rules at work can be a slippery slope. You may have seen the news of the head of Nissan and Renault, the carmakers , who is now in jail in Japan. He under-reported millions and millions of dollars of income to the tax authorities . I don’t know for sure, but I’m going to guess that he started doing this just a little bit at a time. And then after several years he found himself cheating the government out of a lot of money—once you start cheating in this way, it’s a slippery slope and you could find yourself in real trouble.

So now I bet you know how I meant it when I said that gene editing is a slippery slope. It would be a good thing to prevent certain genetic diseases from being passed along to children. But what about genes that make a person more likely , but not certain, to develop a disease? Should that person’s genes be edited? What about genes that parents just find undesirable —like the chance of being overweight? What about if parents just want their kids to have lighter hair ? Should they be able to pick a set of physical and personality traits from a menu on a web site before having a child? What would the human experience be like in that case?

It’s a slippery slope because the technology can’t be un-invented. Whatever you think is the right point to stop, there will always be someone else that wants to push the boundaries farther.

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