The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering
Michael J. Sandel
Language: English
Pages: 176
ISBN: 0674036387
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Breakthroughs in genetics present us with a promise and a predicament. The promise is that we will soon be able to treat and prevent a host of debilitating diseases. The predicament is that our newfound genetic knowledge may enable us to manipulate our nature―to enhance our genetic traits and those of our children. Although most people find at least some forms of genetic engineering disquieting, it is not easy to articulate why. What is wrong with re-engineering our nature?
The Case against Perfection explores these and other moral quandaries connected with the quest to perfect ourselves and our children. Michael Sandel argues that the pursuit of perfection is flawed for reasons that go beyond safety and fairness. The drive to enhance human nature through genetic technologies is objectionable because it represents a bid for mastery and dominion that fails to appreciate the gifted character of human powers and achievements. Carrying us beyond familiar terms of political discourse, this book contends that the genetic revolution will change the way philosophers discuss ethics and will force spiritual questions back onto the political agenda.
In order to grapple with the ethics of enhancement, we need to confront questions largely lost from view in the modern world. Since these questions verge on theology, modern philosophers and political theorists tend to shrink from them. But our new powers of biotechnology make these questions unavoidable. Addressing them is the task of this book, by one of America’s preeminent moral and political thinkers.
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An older sibling who has tragically died, or, for that matter, of an admired scientist, sports star, or celebrity? Some say cloning is wrong because it violates the child's right to autonomy. By choosing in advance the genetic makeup of the child, the parents con sign her to a life in the shadow of someone who 6 The Ethics ofEnhanr:t:ment PERFECTION -= :-;::ore, and so deprive the child of her - ..= _,pen future. The autonomy objection -.:: ~lL-e d not only against cloning but also !.:iY.
Our conscious designs a resolution to im prove what God deliberately or nature blindly has evolved over eons, then the first principle of ethi 76 gle design on the society as a whole: "This super market system has the great virtue that it involves no centralized decision fixing the future human type(s)."25 Even John Rawls, in his classic work, A Theory of Justice (1971), offered a brief endorsement ofliberal eugenics. Even in a society that agrees to share the benefits and burdens of the.
So liberal eugenics does not reject state-imposed genetic engineering after all; it simply requires that the engineering respect the au tonomy of the child being designed. Although liberal eugenics finds support among many Anglo-American moral and political philos ophers, Jiirgen Habermas, Germany's most prom inent political philosopher, opposes it. Acutely aware of Gennany's dark eugenic past, Habermas argues against the use of embryo screening and ge netic manipulation for nonmedical.
Frame of moral respon- . sibility that accompanies new habits of controL . The Promethean impulse is contagious. In parenting as in sports, it unsettles and erodes the giving him [everything] you can. The big-time pitcher wants to make sure you're beaning up be fore the game."l The explosion of responsibility, and the moral burdens it creates, can also be seen in changing gifted dimension of human experience. When perfurmance-enhancing drugs become common place, unenhanced ballplayers find.
Mastery misses, and may even destroy, is an app~eciation of the gifted character of human pow ers and achievements. the athlete relies on drugs or genetic fixes, the less To acknowledge the giftedness of life is to recog nize that our talents and powers are not wholly our his performance represents his achievement. At the own doing, nor even fully ours, despite the efforts extrem~, we might imagine a robotic, bionic ath lete who, thanks to implanted computer chips that perfect the angle.