Challenging, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity, Parfit claims that we have a false view about our own nature. It is often rational to act against our own best interersts, he argues, and most of us have moral views that are self-defeating. We often act wrongly, although we know there will be no one with serious grounds for complaint, and when we consider future generations it is very hard to avoid conclusions (...) that most of us will find very disturbing. (shrink)

Derek Parfit has famously pointed out that ‘total’ utilitarian views, such as classical hedonistic utilitarianism, lead to the conclusion that, to each population of quite happy persons there corresponds a more extensive population with people living lives just worth living, which is better. In particular, for any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better, (...) even though its members have lives that are barely worth living. This world is better if the sum total of well-being is great enough, and it is great enough if only enough sentient beings inhabit it. This conclusion has been considered by Parfit and others to be ‘repugnant’. (shrink)

In “Sex selection and regulated hatred”1 John Harris launches a vehement critique of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority’s recent report Sex Selection: options for regulation, raising several issues that merit discussion.He begins by complaining about the recommendation that because of the theoretical risk associated with the use of flow cytometry as a method of sperm sorting, its use should be restricted for the moment to cases in which a clear medical benefit is to be gained from its use. Harris (...) objects that in this recommendation “an absurdly high standard of caution is employed”, since a theoretical risk is associated with almost all medical procedures. This objection is misplaced: as paragraph 142 of the report indicates, the phrase “theoretical risk” is to be understood here in the light of the earlier discussion of the risks arising from the fact that flow cytometry exposes sperm to laser energy, a procedure which is known to be liable to damage DNA. Since the application of flow cytometry to humans is a new procedure, the risk of human genetic defects caused this way is still only “theoretical”; nonetheless it is serious enough to warrant caution—hence the recommendation that at present flow cytometry should be available only when its use brings clear medical benefits. The HFEA has recently been criticised by some for not being cautious enough when permitting the use of intracytoplasmic sperm injection even though in that case there are clear medical benefits from its use. It is extraordinary that Harris should now criticise the HFEA for not throwing caution to the winds concerning flow cytometry.Harris’ next point concerns the justification for this suggestion that preimplantation sex selection should be available only where it is undertaken for medical reasons. The obvious way to justify this would appear …. (shrink)

Unprecedented advances in medicine, genetic engineering, and demographic forecasting raise new questions that strain the categories and assumptions of traditional ethical theories. Heyd's approach resolves many paradoxes in intergenerational justice, while offering a major test case for the profound problems of the limits of ethics and the nature of value.

There exists a derived negative right to procreative freedom, including a right to in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and to the exercise of selective techniques such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis. This is an extensive freedom, including not only the right to the exercise of a responsible parenthood, but also, in rare cases, to wrong decisions. It includes also a right for less than perfect parents to the use of IVF, and for IVF doctors to assist them, if they want and can (...) agree about the terms. (shrink)