In Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People (2007), John Harris argues that a proper concern for the welfare of future human beings implies that we are morally obligated to pursue enhancements. Similarly, in “Procreative Beneficience: Why We Should Select The Best Children” (2001) and in a number of subsequent publications, Julian Savulescu has suggested that we are morally obligated to use genetic (and other) technologies to produce the best children possible. In this paper I argue that if (...) we do have such obligations then their implications are much more radical than either Harris or Savulescu admit. There is an uneasy tension in the work of these authors, between their consequentialism and their (apparent) libertarianism when it comes to the rights of individuals to use—or not use—enhancement technologies as they see fit. Only through a very particular and not especially plausible negotiation of the tension between their moral theory and their policy prescriptions can Harris and Savulescu obscure the fact that their philosophies have implications that most people would find profoundly unattractive. (shrink)

We have a reason to use information which is available about such genes in our reproductive decision-making; (3) couples should selec.

The argument of Julian Savulescu’s 2001 paper, “Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the Best Children” is flawed in a number of respects. Savulescu confuses reasons with obligations and equivocates between the claim that parents have some reason to want the best for their children and the more radical claim that they are morally obligated to attempt to produce the best child possible. Savulescu offers a prima facie implausible account of parental obligation, as even the best parents typically fail to (...) do everything they think would be best for their children let alone everything that is in fact best for their children. The profound philosophical difficulties which beset the attempt to formulate a plausible account of the best human life constitute a further independent reason to resile from Savulescu’s conclusion. Savulescu’s argument also requires parents to become complicit with racist and homophobic oppression, which is yet another reason to reject it. Removing the equivocation from Savulescu’s argument allows us to see that the assertion of an obligation to choose the “best child” has much more in common with the “old” eugenics than Savulescu acknowledges. (shrink)

According to what we call the Principle of Procreative Beneficence, couples who decide to have a child have a significant moral reason to select the child who, given his or her genetic endowment, can be expected to enjoy the most well-being. In the first part of this paper, we introduce PB, explain its content, grounds, and implications, and defend it against various objections. In the second part, we argue that PB is superior to competing principles of procreative selection such as (...) that of procreative autonomy. In the third part of the paper, we consider the relation between PB and disability. We develop a revisionary account of disability, in which disability is a species of instrumental badness that is context- and person-relative. Although PB instructs us to aim to reduce disability in future children whenever possible, it does not privilege the normal. What matters is not whether future children meet certain biological or statistical norms, but what level of well-being they can be expected to have. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to examine critically Julian Savulescu's claim that people should select, of the possible children they could have, the one who is expected to have the best life, or at least as good a life as the others, based on the relevant, available genetic information, including information about non‐disease genes. I argue here that in defending this moral obligation, Savulescu has neglected several important issues such as access to selection technologies, disproportionate burdens on women, (...) difficulties in determining what is best, problems with aggregate effects of individual choices, and questions about social justice. Taking these matters into account would call such a moral requirement into serious question. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn 2001, Julian Savulescu wrote an article entitled ‘Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the Best Children’, in which he argued for the genetic selection of intelligence in children. That article contributes to a debate on whether genetic research on intelligence should be undertaken at all and, if so, should intelligence selection be available to potential parents. As such, the question of intelligence selection relates to wider issues concerning the genetic determination of behavioural traits, i.e. alcoholism. This article is designed (...) as an engagement in the intelligence selection debate using an analysis of Savulescu's arguments to raise a series of problematic issues in relation to the ethics of parental selection of intelligence. These problematic issues relate to wider assumptions that are made in order to put forward intelligence selection as a viable ethical option. Such assumptions are more generic in character, but still relate to Savulescu's article, concerning issues of genetic determinism, private allocation and inequality, and, finally, individual versus aggregate justice. The conclusion focuses on what the implications are for the question of agency, especially if intelligence selection is allowed. (shrink)

Julian Savulescu has given clear expression to a principle—that of “procreative beneficence”—which underlies the thought of many contemporary writers on bioethics. The principle of procreative beneficence holds that parents or single reproducers are at least prima facie obliged to select the child, out of a range of possible children they might have, who will be likely to lead the best life. My aim in this paper is to argue that prospective parents, just by dint of their being prospective parents, are (...) in fact not obliged to act on PPB. That is, there is something about their filling the role of prospective parents that exempts them from selecting the child with the best life. I urge that it is more realistic to view prospective parents as bound by a principle of acceptable outlook, which holds that they ought not to select children whose lives will contain an unacceptable amount of suffering. (shrink)

In der Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsches Kritik der Menschenwürde nimmt dieses Buch zugleich Stellung zur aktuellen Diskussion. Wie ist die gegenwärtige Norm der Menschenwürde, wie sie auch im Grundgesetz enthalten ist, vor dem Hintergrund der Theorien des vehementen Moralkritikers Nietzsche einzuschätzen? Welchen Stellenwert hat die Würde des Menschen im Zeitalter des Posthumanismus überhaupt? Im ersten Teil skizziert der Autor zunächst die wichtigsten philosophischen Konzeptionen der Menschenwürde von Cicero bis Kant. Dabei macht er deutlich, welche Probleme die gegenwärtige Rezeption historischer Konzeptionen aufwirft. (...) Der zweite Teil ist der ausführlichen Darstellung von Nietzsches Kritik der Menschenwürde gewidmet. Daraus ergeben sich wichtige Impulse für die gegenwärtige Diskussion und konkrete Hinweise, wie ein tragbarer Begriff der Menschenwürde für die Zukunft aussehen könnte. (shrink)

John Harris and Julian Savulescu, leading figures in the "new" eugenics, argue that parents are morally obligated to use genetic and other technologies to enhance their children. But the argument they give leads to conclusions even more radical than they acknowledge. Ultimately, the world it would lead to is not all that different from that championed by eugenicists one hundred years ago.