Abstract

McMahan and Savulescu have put forward a two-tier view that combines person-affecting and impersonal considerations and that is supposed to both favour gene editing over genetic selection and favour saving an existing person over creating a new person. This note shows that a contrastive construal of person-affecting reasons does favour saving over creating, but fails to favour gene editing over genetic selection, whereas a non-contrastive construal does the reverse. Moreover, it shows that both approaches lead to dynamic inconsistencies and to sub-optimal outcomes being chosen.