The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of eugenics, ableism, racism, abortion, and the Holocaust.

“‘We do not view what we did as very different from what many straight couples do when they have children,’ said Duchesneau.”

For Duchesneau and many other Deaf people, Deafness is a cultural identity. Seeking a Deaf sperm donor, then, is no different from a Black couple seeking a Black sperm donor. She believes that the outcry over her baby is based on ableism and homophobia. Her experiences raise questions about the politics of choosing any of a child’s traits in advance, with or without bioengineering.

“To grapple with the ethics of enhancement, we need to confront questions largely lost from view in the modern world—questions about the moral status of nature, and about the proper stance of human beings toward the given world.”

Humans seek to gain ever more Mastery and Control over the environment, and that desire can reveal worrying things about how people see themselves in relation to nature. Here, Sandel is setting up his later argument about the status of embryos and his argument about Openness to the Unbidden.

“The distinction between curing and improving seems to make a moral difference, but it is not obvious what the difference consists in.”

This quote raises implications about the relationship between Health and Eugenics. Medicine is meant to cure people, but it might also have the power to improve people’s health beyond the usual human standard. Whether there is a line between the two, and where that line is, is not only difficult to determine; its implications are also difficult to predict.