Commercialisation and the Moral Obligation to Create 'Designer' Babies
By John Galloway,
BioNews
| 12. 08. 2014
Untitled Document
Although the word was not actually used (or at least I did not hear it), this was a polemic making the case for 'eugenics'. That is, the improvement, even 'perfection' perhaps, of humanity by actively intervening in its inherited biology.
In its pursuit, Professor Julian Savulescu, presenting the first session of the Progress Educational Trust's 2014 annual conference, The Commercialisation of Life, made a good case for parents being given more of a choice in the attributes of their children. After all, what's not to like in the idea of preventing inherited genetic diseases? Preventing diseases is what public health is all about, isn't it?
Read more...
Related Articles
By Katie Hunt, CNN | 07.30.2025
Scientists are exploring ways to mimic the origins of human life without two fundamental components: sperm and egg.
They are coaxing clusters of stem cells – programmable cells that can transform into many different specialized cell types – to form...
By Rob Stein, NPR [cites CGS' Katie Hasson] | 08.06.2025
A Chinese scientist horrified the world in 2018 when he revealed he had secretly engineered the birth of the world's first gene-edited babies.
His work was reviled as reckless and unethical because, among other reasons, gene-editing was so new...
By Arthur Caplan and James Tabery, Scientific American | 07.28.2025
An understandable ethics outcry greeted the June announcement of a software platform that offers aspiring parents “genetic optimization” of their embryos. Touted by Nucleus Genomics’ CEO Kian Sadeghi, the $5,999 service, dubbed “Nucleus Embryo,” promised optimization of...
By Hannah Devlin, The Guardian | 07.05.2025
Scientists are just a few years from creating viable human sex cells in the lab, according to an internationally renowned pioneer of the field, who says the advance could open up biology-defying possibilities for reproduction.
Speaking to the Guardian, Prof...