Medical Enhancement and Posthumanity pp 55-67 | Cite as
How to Defend Genetic Enhancement
Science fiction novelists and Hollywood screenplay writers delight in presenting us with futures in which parents routinely genetically enhance their children. What should we make of these forecasts? Cautious commentators urge that we not over look the technological challenges confronting those who would radically reshape us. They point out that many of the traits that we may wish to enhance are geneti cally multifactorial, meaning that the relationships between changes to genes and increases in intelligence, athletic ability, or resistance to disease may be immensely complex. This chapter takes no stand on the issue of the technological viability of human enhancement, but instead addresses a moral question that must be answered as we await technological developments. What moral principles govern the use of technologies of enhancement? I defend a liberal answer to this question that would grant prospective parents the freedom to enhance some of their children's charac teristics. The first move in this defence is to depart from the standard liberal text and refuse to view enhancement as an expression of procreative liberty. Instead, I position the genetic enhancement of children as an expression of the freedom to influence the direction their lives take. This move has the advantage of offering clear guidelines on how genetic enhancement is to be regulated.
Keywords
Genetic Modification Huntington Disease Human Enhancement Genetic Enhancement Prospective ParentPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
- Agar N (1995) Designing babies: morally permissible ways to modify the human genome. Bioethics 9: 1–15PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Agar N (2004) Liberal Eugenics: In Defence of Human Enhancement. Blackwell, OxfordGoogle Scholar
- Archard D (2003) Children, Family and the State. Ashgate, Aldershot, EnglandGoogle Scholar
- Buchanan A, Brock D, Daniels N, Wikler D (2000) From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice. Cambridge University Press, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
- Chadwick R (1993) What counts as success in genetic counselling? Journal of Medical Ethics19:43–46PubMedCrossRefGoogle Scholar
- Feinberg J (1980) The Child's Right to an Open Future. In: Aiken W, LaFollette H (eds) Whose Child? Children's Rights, Parental Authority, and State Power. Rowman & Littlefield, Totowa, NJ: 124–153Google Scholar
- Fukuyama F (2002) Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New YorkGoogle Scholar
- Habermas J (2003) The Future of Human Nature. Polity, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
- Hamer D (2004) The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes. Doubleday, New YorkGoogle Scholar
- Harris J (1998) Clones, Genes, and Immortality: Ethics and the Genetic Revolution. Oxford University Press, OxfordGoogle Scholar
- Harris J (2004) On Cloning. Routledge, LondonGoogle Scholar
- Kevles D (1995) In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. University of California Press, Berkeley, CAGoogle Scholar
- McMahan J (1998) Wrongful Life: Paradoxes in the Morality of Causing People to Exist. In: Coleman J, Morris C (eds) Rational Commitment and Social Justice: Essays for Gregory Kavka. Cambridge University Press, New YorkGoogle Scholar
- Murray T (1996) The Worth of a Child. University of California Press, Berkeley, CAGoogle Scholar
- O'Neill O (2002) Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics. Cambridge University Press, CambridgeGoogle Scholar
- Parfit D (1984) Reasons and Persons. University Press Oxford, OxfordGoogle Scholar
- Paul D (1995) Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 to the Present. Humanities Press, New JerseyGoogle Scholar
- Pinker S (2003) Session 3: Human Nature and Its Future: Address to Council on Bioethics http://www.bioethics.gov/transcripts/march03/session3.htmlGoogle Scholar
- Robertson J (1994) Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJGoogle Scholar
- Robertson J (2003) Procreative liberty in the era of genomics. American Journal of Law and Medicine 29: 439–87PubMedGoogle Scholar
- Ruddick W (1999) Parenthood: Three Concepts and a Principle. In: Houlgate L (ed) Morals, Marriage, and Parenthood: An Introduction to Family Ethics. Wadsworth, Belmont, CAGoogle Scholar
- Sandel M (2004) The case against perfection. The Atlantic Monthly 293(3): 51–62Google Scholar
- Sober E (2000) The Meaning of Genetic Causation. In: Buchanan A, Brock D, Daniels N, Wikler D (eds) From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 347–370Google Scholar