Week 2: Genetic enhancement and the challenge to equality

Question 1

What is the legal framework of CRISPR-cas9?

Answer 1

Allowed in 11 countries on embryos

Question 2

What is CRISPR-cas9?

Answer 2

Way of editing DNA/genes, may be used to treat or cure single-gene diseases. Can be used on humans but also on plants and animals. Just as important as the insight in DNA structures.

Question 3

What are some ethical concerns about CRISPR?

Answer 3

1) autonomy
2) non-maleficence
3) beneficence
4) justice

Germline editing: there may be unintended outcomes (safety).
There may be a differentation between ‘natural’ and ‘created’ humans
Distinction between negative and positive eugenics (‘rasverbetering door gene-editing’)

Question 4

What are some ethical issues regarding germline editing?

Answer 4

Habermas: what is MADE v.s. what is GROWN

Anomaly: procreative beneficence and procreative altruism

Question 5

What is the ethical theory Habermas draws from?

Answer 5

Neo-Kantian: highlights the need for respect for the moral status of individuals and warns against the instrumentalisation of human beings

Question 6

What is the ethical theory Anomaly draws from?

Answer 6

Utalitarian: foregrounds the well-being of the largest number over the rights or interests of individuals

Question 7

HABERMAS

What does the differentation between ‘what is manufactured’ and ‘what has come to be by nature’ help?

Answer 7

It helps shape our self-understanding as human beings

Question 8

What is Habermas afraid about?

Answer 8

That the knowledge that one’s parents have manipulated one’s genetic make-up will affect one’s sense of self and lead to a form of alienation that undermines one’s position as a free and equal person.

Question 9

What is Habermas’ main problem with genetic manipulation?

Answer 9

Autorship over one’s own life. It is predetermined by parents.

The nagging question remains: Is this me? Or is this what my parents decided I would be?

Question 10

What does Anomaly argue?

Answer 10

That in the debate on genetic enhancement we need to consider the normative principles of procreative beneficence and procreative altruism.

Question 11

ANOMALY

What holds procreative beneficence?

Answer 11

Parents should create children with the best chance of the best life

Question 12

ANOMALY

What holds procreative altruism?

Answer 12

Parents should select a child whose existence is likely to contribute more to the welfare of other people than any alternative child they could have

If the social benefits of heightened intelligence for society outweigh
its downsides, Anomaly argues, the principle of procreative altruism
demands that we enhance the intelligence of our children.

Question 13

What does Anomaly argue concerning intelligence? And why?

Answer 13

That boosting the intelligence of our children through genetic enhancement would be good not only for them, but also for wider society.

He claims that intelligence has social benefits:
- Studies suggest higher average IQ in society corresponds to higher levels of
trust, cooperation, and adherence to rule of law.

• Prediction is that boosting IQ will lead to more scientific and technological
  innovations that would benefit society (although this brings with it the risk of
  greater potential to do harm).

Question 14

What does Anomaly argue concerning those who are unable to afford cognitive enhancement for their children?

Answer 14

Providing subsidies:

Although he does not explicitly argue, that we may need to ‘coercively prevent’ people from making reproductive choices that do not promote their children’s welfare.

Another option: communities with like-minded people

Question 15

Why does Anomaly argue that it is not a problem that differences between enhanced and non-enhanced people may lead to moral inequality?

Answer 15

He supports
making a distinction between moral standing (which makes something
worthy of moral consideration) and moral status (as a comparative notion).

Question 16

What do Habermas and Anomaly agree on?

Answer 16

Both Habermas and Anomaly agree that genetic enhancement challenges the equal moral status of people.

For Habermas, this is because the knowledge that one has been ‘made’ may undermine one’s self-understanding as a free and equal person.

For Anomaly, this is because vast differences in capacity (as brought about through enhancement) can allegedly make the enhanced morally superior.

In both cases, genetic enhancement disrupts the way people are simultaneously inside and outside nature. (For Habermas, this is a bad thing; for Anomaly it is a good thing.)

Equality comes from the idea that we’re ‘thrown’ into the world as natural beings with more or less similar abilities and vulnerabilities.

If this natural similarity is disrupted, belief in fundamental human equality may be undermined as well.

Question 17

What difference does Dworkin make?

Answer 17

Chance v.s. Choice

This decisive line between chance and choice is the backbone of our morality […] We are afraid of the prospect of human beings designing other human beings, because this option implies shifting the line between chance and choice which is the basis of our value system.” (Dworkin, as cited in Habermas, p. 28)

Question 18

How does human gene editing affect the agency and vulnerability of human beings? (prospective parents)

Answer 18

• Habermas and Anomaly point out that genetic enhancement challenges the equal moral status of people
• H&A point out that CRISPR increases agency of prospective parents
• Also creates vulnerability: parents are accountable for changing their children
• The relation between parents and children may also be strained through a lack of recognition and potentially strong differences in capacities between parents and children.

Question 19

How does human gene editing affect the agency and vulnerability of human beings? (enhanced persons)

Answer 19

A: positive
However, he sees this risks: higher change of depression by higher intellegence.
Also: enhanced persons may feel sorry for those whose parents weren’t able to enhance them.

H: worried: thwarted self-understanding and enhanced persons may be vulnerable to existential doubts.
Parents might also have unrealistic high expectations from their children

Question 20

How does human gene editing affect the agency and vulnerability of human beings? (unenhanced persons)

Answer 20

Anomaly indicates that the agency of unenhanced persons may be negatively affected due to a relative loss in social opportunities.
Unenhanced persons run the risk of suffering from social injustice through living in a society with unfair advantages for those who are enhanced.
Discrimination may result from moral and social differentiation.
In the most extreme case, unenhanced persons may risk not being (allowed to be) born if coercive action would be taken to avoid their birth.

Question 21

How does human gene editing affect the agency and vulnerability of human beings? (humankind)

Answer 21

• instrumentalising the human (Habermas)
• Human flourishing (Anomaly)
• Reducing sources of suffering (Anomaly
• Risk of fragmentation of the enhanced and unenhanced

Question 22

How does human gene editing affect the agency and vulnerability of human beings? (for others)

Answer 22

Anomaly argues for distinguishing between moral standing and moral status to allow for the alleged moral superiority of the genetically enhanced without having to deny that unenhanced persons require moral consideration.

The question of whom is included in the moral community of beings with moral status tends to be answered by those who hold power. In a society with enhanced and unenhanced persons, the latter are likely to be vulnerable to submission by the former.