Reprogenetics and the parents have always done it argument

Hastings Center Report

Volumn 41, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 43-49

  Malmqvist, Erik ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BIOETHICS; CHILD; CHILD REARING; ETHICS; GENETIC ENHANCEMENT; HUMAN; INFERTILITY THERAPY; METHODOLOGY; PARENT; PRENATAL DIAGNOSIS; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS; STANDARD;

BIOETHICAL ISSUES; CHILD; CHILD REARING; GENETIC ENHANCEMENT; HUMANS; PARENTS; PREIMPLANTATION DIAGNOSIS; REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS; REPRODUCTIVE TECHNIQUES, ASSISTED;

EID: 79551582452     PISSN: 00930334     EISSN: 1552146X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/j.1552-146X.2011.tb00099.x     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. E. Parens, "Should We Hold the (Germ) Line?" Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 23 (1995): 173-76, at 173. Parens points out that the argument is an instance of a broader style of analogical reasoning sometimes called the argument from precedent.
2. L.P. Knowles and G.E. Kaebnick, eds., Reprogenetics: Law, Policy, and Ethical Issues (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), ix.
3. The enthusiasts are divided on the question whether such uses are merely permissible or sometimes also obligatory. For a defense of the first view
4. see N. Agar, Liberal Eugenics: In Defence of Human Enhancement (Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 2004).
5. Proponents of the second view include J. Harris, Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007)
6. J. Savulescu, "Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the Best Children," Bioethics 15 (2001): 413-26.
7. D.B. Resnik, "The Moral Significance of the Therapy-Enhancement Distinction in Human Genetics," Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 9 (2000): 365-77, at 368-69.
8. J.A. Robertson, Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 167.
9. Another influential group of authors writes: "If parents modify phenotype in pursuit of their goal of producing the 'best' offspring they can, then why not add to their arsenal of methods whatever genetic interventions may make it easier to accomplish some of those goals?"
10. See A. Buchanan, D.W. Brock, N. Daniels, and D. Wikler, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 160. I hesitate to count these authors among the proponents of what I call the "parents have always done it" argument, however; they seem less wholeheartedly enthusiastic than Robertson, Harris, and Agar about reprogenetic improvement of offspring.
11. Harris, Enhancing Evolution, 2.
12. Agar, Liberal Eugenics, 113.
13. M. Sandel, The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 2007), 52-62.
14. This is not just idle speculation. Recent criminological research suggests that self-control is partly genetically determined
15. see K.M. Beaver et al., "Genetic and Environmental Influences on Levels of Self-Control and Delinquent Peer Affiliation: Results from a Longitudinal Sample of Adolescent Twins," Criminal Justice and Behavior 36, no. 1 (2009): 41-60. Of course, this means neither that a particular genetic combination has been associated with the trait, nor that there are currently methods for detecting or manipulating that combination.
16. For a recent review of current possibilities and limitations of these technologies
17. see J.E.J. Rasko and D.J. Jolly, "The Science of Inheritable Genetic Modification," in The Ethics of Inheritable Genetic Modification: A Dividing Line? ed. J.E.J. Rasko, G.M. O'Sullivan, and R.A. Ankeny (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 17-33.
18. R. Cole-Turner, "Do Means Matter?" in Enhancing Human Traits: Ethical and Social Implications, ed. E. Parens (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1998).
19. That is, discussions of reprogenetic technologies tend to proceed from what Agar calls a "pragmatic optimism" about such technologies
20. see Agar, Liberal Eugenics, 34-38.
21. Such considerations also clearly advise against clinical research aimed at developing many imagined reprogenetic interventions
22. see N. Daniels, "Can Anyone Really Be Talking About Ethically Modifying Human Nature?" in Human Enhancement, ed. J. Savulescu and N. Bostrom (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2009), 25-42, at 38-41.
23. This is why Aristotle characterizes each virtue as a mean between two vicious extremes, but regarding where that mean is to be found, only says that this is to be determined "by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it."
24. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. W.D. Ross (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1980), 1107a.
25. The nature of techne is most extensively laid out in the Metaphysics.
26. See Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. H. Tredennick (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), 980a-982b.
27. H-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd ed. (London, U.K.: Continuum, 1989), 319
28. J. Dunne, Back to the Rough Ground: 'Phronesis' and 'Techne' in Modern Philosophy and in Aristotle (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), 290-95.
29. For an excellent discussion of this issue, see C. Taylor, "To Follow a Rule mellip; ," in Bourdieu: A Critical Reader, ed. R. Shusterman (Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 1999), 29-44. Taylor notes that Wittgenstein's point implies a need for something like Aristotelian phronesis
30. Ibid., 41.
31. O. O'Neill, "Practical Principles and Practical Judgment," Hastings Center Report 31, no. 4 (2001): 15-23.
32. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 320-36.
33. Ibid., 385-91.
34. Agar, Liberal Eugenics, 116-20
35. Harris, Enhancing Evolution, 137-42
36. E. Fenton, "Liberal Eugenics and Human Nature: Against Habermas," Hastings Center Report 36, no. 6 (2006): 35-42.
37. J. Habermas, The Future of Human Nature (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2003), 61-62.
38. Ibid., 63.
39. Bernard G. Prusak has provided readers of this journal with an excellent explication and unusually charitable appraisal of Habermas's argument, noting its unavoidably tentative character.
40. See B.G. Prusak, "Rethinking 'Liberal Eugenics': Reflections and Questions on Habermas and Bioethics," Hastings Center Report 35, no. 6 (2005): 31-42.
41. D.S. Davis, "The Parental Investment Factor and the Child's Right to an Open Future," Hastings Center Report 39, no. 2 (2009): 24-27.
42. Habermas is right to emphasize the child's response to the intervention and the parents' intentions, regardless of whether he is right about the profound effects that the response may have on the child's self-determination.
43. See Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, 53-60.
44. Parens, "Should We Hold the (Germ) Line?"