Chapter Summary
Advances in reproductive genetic engineering promise to allow us to select children free of diseases, and also enable us to select children with desirable traits. However, using technologies to design the genome of one’s progeny raise a host of ethical concerns, both intrinsic (e.g. concerning the parent-child relationship) and extrinsic (e.g. concerning societal effects). In this chapter, S. Matthew Liao considers two clusters of arguments for the moral permissibility of reproductive genetic engineering, what he calls the Perfectionist View and the Libertarian View; and two clusters of arguments against reproductive genetic engineering, what he calls the Human Nature View and the Motivation View. He argues that an adequate theory of the ethics of reproductive genetic engineering should take into account insights gained from each of these views.
This chapter is excerpted from S. Matthew Liao (2008) ‘Selecting Children: The Ethics of Reproductive Genetic Engineering,’ Philosophy Compass (3): 1–19. It appears here by permission of the author.
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© 2014 S. Matthew Liao
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Liao, S.M. (2014). Selecting Children: The Ethics of Reproductive Genetic Engineering. In: Sandler, R.L. (eds) Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137349088_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137349088_8
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