Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 49-50.

There is an unspoken distinction in ethical criteria in bioethics. On the one hand, there are criteria that can be used with discretion and judgment by an individual or small group of people like a...

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 41-43.

Participants in the long-running bioethical debate over human germline genetic modification (HGGM) tend to imagine future people abstractly and on the basis of conventionalized characteristics familiar from science fiction, such as intelligence, disease resistance and height. In order to distinguish these from scientifically meaningful terms like “phenotype” and “trait,” this article proposes the term “persemes” to describe the units of difference for hypothetical people. In the HGGM debate, persemes are frequently conceptualized as similar, modular entities, like building blocks to be (...) assembled into genetically modified people. They are discussed as though they each would be chosen individually without affecting other persemes and as though they existed as components within future people rather than being imposed through social context. This modular conceptual framework appears to influence bioethical approaches to HGGM by reinforcing the idea of human capacities as natural primary goods subject to distributive justice and supporting the use of objective list theories of well-being. As a result, assumptions of modularity may limit the ability of stakeholders with other perspectives to present them in the HGGM debate. This article examines the historical trends behind the modular framework for genetically modified people, its likely psychological basis, and its philosophical ramifications. (shrink)

Though questions about whether gene editing should be done at all have dominated ethical discussion, a literature about how it can be done ethically has been growing. Work on responsible translational pathways for human germline gene editing has been criticized for focusing on the wrong questions. But questions about responsible translational pathways—questions about how gene editing could be done ethically—are, in an important sense, prior to questions about whether it is desirable and permissible. Asking “whether” questions about gene editing requires (...) a model of what responsible clinical use of gene editing would look like. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 25-27.

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 38-40.

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 23-25.

There are good theoretical rationales for considering germline gene editing (GGE) as a recommended and perhaps even necessary procedure for future long-term human space missions. This paper examines the arguments for applying GGE in a hypothetical future scenario where future parents living on Earth make decisions about applying GGE to their future children with the goal of allowing them to participate in space missions. The paper presents an ethical rationale for GGE. The paper also recognizes an area of potential moral (...) controversy that is not so much related to the application of GGE itself, but to the risk of different perceptions of well-being by parents and children that may result in the need for genetically modified children to leave Earth against their will. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 51-53.

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 32-36.

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 44-46.

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 27-29.

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 46-49.

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 30-32.

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 21-23.

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page W1-W3.

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 36-38.

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 1-4.

On September 5, 2020, the International Commission on the Clinical Use of Human Germline Genome Editing, established by the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Science,...