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Why We Should Defend Gene Editing as Eugenics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2018

NICHOLAS AGAR
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Abstract:

This paper considers the relevance of the concept of “eugenics,”—a term associated with some of the most egregious crimes of the twentieth century—to the possibility of editing human genomes. The author identifies some uses of gene editing as eugenics but proposes that this identification does not suffice to condemn them. He proposes that we should distinguish between “morally wrong” practices, which should be condemned, and “morally problematic” practices that call for solutions, and he suggests that eugenic uses of gene editing fall into this latter category. Although when we choose the characteristics of future people we are engaging in morally dangerous acts, some interventions in human heredity should nevertheless be acknowledged as morally good. These morally good eugenic interventions include some uses of preimplantation genetic diagnosis. The author argues that we should think about eugenic interventions in the same way that we think about morally problematic interventions in public health. When we recognize some uses of gene editing as eugenics, we make the dangers of selecting or modifying human genetic material explicit.

Keywords

eugenicsgene editingpreimplantation genetic diagnosismorally problematic practicemorally wrong practicemoral marketing
Type
Special Section: Genome Editing: Biomedical and Ethical Perspectives
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , January 2019 , pp. 9 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

Notes

1. Galton, F. Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development. London: Macmillan; 1883 at 17, fn 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. For two excellent histories of eugenics see Kevles, D. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press; 1998Google Scholar and Paul, D. Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 To the Present. Atlantic Highlands NJ: Humanity Books; 1995.Google Scholar

3. The view about eugenics advanced here, therefore, differs from the view I have earlier defended. The focus of the liberal eugenics presented in Agar N. Liberal eugenics. Public Affairs Quarterly 1998;12(2):137–55 and Agar N. Liberal Eugenics: In Defence of Human Enhancement. Oxford: Blackwell; 2004 is on individual procreators. In those works, I argued that prospective parents should have a constrained freedom to choose some of the characteristics of their future children. I focused on the populations of which those individuals are a part only when considering potential limits on exercises of reproductive liberty. The focus of this paper is on populations. Individuals may be the proximal recipients of benefits or harms, but the goal of eugenics is a healthier population. It is thus a closer match with Galton’s original formulation. For an earlier presentation of this line, see Agar N. What was right about eugenics. Medical Ethics 2015:4–5.

4. Gladwell, M. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. New York: Little Brown; 2000:chapter 7.Google Scholar

5. See the entry on transhumanism at https://ieet.org/index.php/tpwiki/transhumanism/

6. Agar, N. Humanity’s End: Why We Should Reject Radical Enhancement. Cambridge MA: MIT Press; 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Agar, N. Truly Human Enhancement: A Philosophical Defense of Limits. Cambridge MA: MIT Press; 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Take, for example, the second clause of Bostrom’s definition: “the study of the ramifications, promises, and potential dangers of technologies that will enable us to overcome fundamental human limitations, and the related study of the ethical matters involved in developing and using such technologies.”

8. Bostrom, N. Why I Want to Be a Posthuman When I Grow Up. Medical Enhancement and Posthumanity, Gordijn, B, Chadwick, R. eds. Dordrecht: Springer; 2009 at 111-112.Google Scholar

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10. For an accessible presentation of the recent science of development see Parrington, J. The Deeper Genome: Why There Is More to the Human Genome than Meets the Eye. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2016.Google Scholar

11. See Kevles, D. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press; 1998 and Paul, D. Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 To the Present. Atlantic Highlands NJ: Humanity Books; 1995.Google Scholar

12. See Robertson, J. Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 1994.Google Scholar

13. Jurgen Habermas states that once one commits oneself to a liberal approach to enhancement, “it virtually goes without saying that decisions regarding the genetic composition of children should not be submitted to any regulation by the state, but rather should be left to the parents.” Habermas J, The Future of Human Nature. Cambridge: Polity Press; 2003 at 76.

14. Robertson J. Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 1994 argues that procreative liberty establishes a presumption in favor of free procreative choices. For exploration of the implications of this presumption, see Agar N. How to defend genetic enhancement. In: Gordijn B, Chadwick R. eds. Medical Enhancement and Posthumanity. Dordrecht: Springer; 2009:55–67.

15. For one campaign targeting childhood obesity that sought to trade of stigmatization against effectiveness at reducing obesity, see the State of Georgia’s controversial “Stop Sugarcoating” run in 2011. Critics charged that it went too far in stigmatizing young obese people.

16. See Silberman, S. NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity. New York: Avery Publishing; 2015.Google Scholar