How must the idea of liberalism adapt to address this?What does the "liberal agenda" look like for the 21st century vis-à-vis “hacking Darwin”?Mr Metzl: If and when it becomes possible for some parents to give their children enhanced IQs, lifespans and resistance to disease, we will have to ask what this means for everyone else.Some will see these parents as first-adopters paving the way for everyone else, like the first privileged people buying smartphones.Others will call them usurpers laying the foundation for dangerously divided societies.Whatever the case, differences within and between societies, fuelled by competition, will drive adoption of these technologies and present societies with stark choices.Too few regulations could lead to a dangerous genetic engineering free-for-all and arms race.But trying to ban genetic manipulations would increasingly require the trappings of the most oppressive police states.Some liberal societies may choose to provide a basic level of access to assisted reproduction and genetic-engineering services to everyone, not least to save the expense of lifetime care for people who would otherwise be born with preventable genetic diseases.