Distance

If you can repair your future child's myopia with preemptive genetic tinkering, you might also want to increase her I.Q. by a few dozen points. Will it lead to a world as utopian as Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average? Of course not. It will just add genetic manipulation of embryos and child cloning to the means by which affluent, fussy people try to distance themselves from bad luck, disappointment, menial work, death, and poor people.

-- David Quammen (1948-), award-winning science, nature and travel writer, "Clone Your Troubles Away: Dreaming at the Frontiers of Animal Husbandry", Harper's Magazine (February 2005)