Play God Day

What the day is

Play God Day is observed on January 9. No origin, meaning or purpose for it is documented, and the usual suggestion attached to it is simply to do something generous. The phrase itself is worth more attention than the day.

Origin and background

Playing God is almost always used as an accusation, and it has been aimed at a long list of things now considered ordinary. Pain relief in childbirth, inoculation, blood transfusion, organ transplantation and fertility treatment each drew it in their time. The first child conceived by IVF was born in 1978 amid exactly this objection, and several million people have since been born the same way.

Philosophers who examine the phrase generally find it carries three different complaints bundled together. One is about hubris: that we are acting past the limits of what we actually understand, and will cause harm we did not foresee. Another is that some natural order is being violated. The third is specifically theological, that a decision belongs to God and not to us.

Those are not equally portable. The theological version rests on premises not everyone shares, and is a reason for a believer rather than an argument that settles public policy. The natural-order version struggles because medicine is interference with nature by definition; a splint is unnatural.

The hubris version is the one with real force, and it survives translation into secular terms. It asks whether a decision is reversible, whether it affects people who cannot consent, including those not yet born, and whether the people making it will bear the consequences. Those questions are why heritable gene editing draws such serious objection, and why the researcher who edited embryos in 2018 was condemned internationally and imprisoned.

How to take part

• Do the generous thing the day nominally asks for.
• When you next hear the phrase used, ask which of the three objections is meant.
• Read about the reaction to IVF in the 1970s, which is startling now.
• Apply the useful test to your own decisions: reversible, consented, and who carries the cost.
• Register as an organ donor, which was itself once the thing being objected to.