Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People
John Harris
Language: English
Pages: 242
ISBN: 0691148163
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In Enhancing Evolution, leading bioethicist John Harris dismantles objections to genetic engineering, stem-cell research, designer babies, and cloning and makes an ethical case for biotechnology that is both forthright and rigorous. Human enhancement, Harris argues, is a good thing--good morally, good for individuals, good as social policy, and good for a genetic heritage that needs serious improvement. Enhancing Evolution defends biotechnological interventions that could allow us to live longer, healthier, and even happier lives by, for example, providing us with immunity from cancer and HIV/AIDS. Further, Harris champions the possibility of influencing the very course of evolution to give us increased mental and physical powers--from reasoning, concentration, and memory to strength, stamina, and reaction speed. Indeed, he says, it's not only morally defensible to enhance ourselves; in some cases, it's morally obligatory.
In a new preface, Harris offers a glimpse at the new science and technology to come, equipping readers with the knowledge to assess the ethics and policy dimensions of future forms of human enhancement.
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and yet this same unease was felt by Galileo’s compatriots with the same degree of justification! I will return to the distinction between mechanical and chemical enhancements in a moment, but first let’s consider another example. Example 2: Disease and Vaccination Suppose there are some infectious diseases we can eliminate by operating on the environment. We can, we shall suppose, kill airborne infectious agents by introducing into the atmosphere a substance harmless to flora and fauna
between therapy and enhancement and a reconsideration of the question of our motives for and the justification of our interference in the natural lottery of life. Here it is fruitful to look at the attempts by Buchanan et al. to grapple with this. Our Commitment to Intervene in the Natural Lottery of Life In one of the most famous and influential philosophical books on this subject, Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, Norman Daniels, and Dan Wikler have argued that the motive we have for
fact nothing to do with the level of disability or even the presence of disability, but rather involved prior acceptance of the legitimacy of abortion rather than infanticide (however ethically confused such acceptance might be). That is to say, the moral justification for accepting fetal handicap as a reason for abortion right up to term depends upon the judgment that abortion is permissible, justifiable, in a way that infanticide is not; justifiable, that is, in a way that admits of the
related to accepting or rather celebrating giftedness and “a certain humility.” But why should we accept either of these? I personally do not regard humility as a virtue. Those who do have reason to find fault with my character, but the issue here is not the question of whether or not I am (or anyone is) less than perfect, or whether humility is a virtue or a vice,8 but the question of whether or not I am to be free to be less humble than others and, if not more “gifted,” at least cleverer or
girls? Suppose (perish the thought) that in the United Kingdom there were already about 1,250,000 more women than men! In such a terrible eventuality perhaps we should hope that gender selection would predominantly favor males, and that some inroads into this adverse balance might thereby be made. Of course this is in fact the situation we currently face in the United Kingdom with just that (favorable?) gender balance in favor of females.7 A Case Study: Gender Selection A report by the