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Reprogenetics will enable parents to give their children genes that they themselves do not carry, thereby increasing their offspring's chances for health, longevity, happiness, and success -- this is an appalling prospect for many bio ethicists.
Eugenics embodies the desire and attempts of a society's leaders to control the breeding practices of its citizens, including the forcible sterilization or murder of those deemed as carrying undesirable genes. Reprogenetics, by contrast, is concerned with the question of what genes an individual child will receive, not with the vague, unscientific goal of improving a society's gene pool. Moreover, it…show more content…
If reprogenetics is used to increase chances of health, happiness and success, what could be wrong with it?
Once issues of technical safety are resolved, a fundamental objection to reprogenetics is its inherent unfairness to families unable to afford it. All modern democratic societies must balance individual autonomy and social justice. In the US, individual autonomy is of paramount importance. In most other Western countries, social solidarity looms much larger.
MostEuropean countries try to realize it by providing equal healthcare and educational opportunities to all children. But the argument that genetic enhancements are immoral because not all children can receive them is flawed. Children are not biologically equivalent to begin with. Everyone is born with advantages or disadvantages across a whole range of physical characteristics as well as innate abilities. Life is not fair.
So, in the future the critical question will be this: "Who decides how genetic advantages are distributed?" Who decides which child will get the HIV resistance gene and who will be born susceptible to AIDS? Who will decide which child will have superior protection against cancer and heart disease?
Should the decision be left to the randomness of nature, as it is now? Should it be determined by the parents' affluence? Or should it be controlled by a benevolent state that doles out life-enhancing
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