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Negative and Positive Genetic Interventions: Is There a Moral Boundary?1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Norman Daniels
Norman Daniels
Affiliation:
Department of PhilosophyTufts UniversityMedford, Massachusetts
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Abstract

Some have claimed that negative genetic interventions are morally permissible while positive ones are not, but the distinction cannot be used to draw this moral boundary. Underlying the negative/positive distinction is a distinction between treatment and enhancement. The treatment/enhancement distinction at best provides an imperfect guide to which health care services we are obliged to provide and which we are not. It offers only some “warning flags” to help us think about what is permissible or not.

Type
Genetic Services Eugenic Practices?
Information
Science in Context , Volume 11 , Issue 3-4 , Autumn-Winter 1998 , pp. 439 - 453
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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Footnotes

1

This article is drawn from a much longer chapter by the same name (see Buchanan, Brock, Daniels, and Wikler 1998, chap. 4). I thank my coauthors of the book for their support and criticism throughout the drafting of the chapter, for which I had primary responsibility, and for permission to use this material here. I also draw on arguments from Daniels 1996, chaps. 10 and 11.

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