Disability activists influenced by queer theory and advocates of “human enhancement” have each disputed the idea that what is “normal” is normatively significant, which currently plays a key role in the regulation of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Previously, I have argued that the only way to avoid the implication that parents have strong reasons to select children of one sex (most plausibly, female) over the other is to affirm the moral significance of sexually dimorphic human biological norms. After outlining the (...) logic that generates this conclusion, I investigate the extent to which it might also facilitate an alternative, progressive, opening up of the notion of the normal and of the criteria against which we should evaluate the relative merits of different forms of embodiment. This paper therefore investigates the implications of ideas derived from queer theory for the future of PGD and of PGD for the future of queerness. (shrink)

The idea that a world in which everyone was born “perfect” would be a world in which something valuable was missing often comes up in debates about the ethics of technologies of prenatal testing and preimplantation genetic diagnosis . This thought plays an important role in the “disability critique” of prenatal testing. However, the idea that human genetic variation is an important good with significant benefits for society at large is also embraced by a wide range of figures writing in (...) the bioethics literature, including some who are notoriously hostile to the idea that we should not select against disability. By developing a number of thought experiments wherein we are to contemplate increasing genetic diversity from a lower baseline in order to secure this value, I argue that this powerful intuition is more problematic than is generally recognized, especially where the price of diversity is the well-being of particular individuals. (shrink)

Some philosophers, most notably Julian Savulescu, have argued that potential parents have a moral reason to do what they can to have a child with the highest expected level of well-being.1 This is not just a reason to do what will make a particular child better off than he or she would otherwise be but also a reason to choose, from among different possible children, the one that has the highest expected well-being. The claim that potential parents have such a (...) reason is then often deployed as a premise in arguments in support of genetic enhancement. Robert Sparrow has argued in response that this claim implies that potential parents have a reason to choose to have female children only, primarily because women are genetically disposed to live, on average, 3–7 years longer than men.2 He takes this implication to be a reductio of this particular form of argument in support of human enhancement. In her paper, Sexual dimorphism and human enhancement, Paula Casal seeks to rebut Sparrow's argument and then goes on to suggest that a better case for the selection of female children could be made on grounds of moral enhancement, since women are far less genetically disposed to be violent and aggressive than men.3 Recognising, however, that the creation of only female children would lead to human extinction, she concludes that the way to achieve the best outcome would be to use techniques of genetic modification, should they become available, to make men more like women in certain respects: smaller, less aggressive, less competitive, less violent, less obsessed with sex, less prone to taking great risks, and less likely to die early from accident, combat, or disease.Like Larry Temkin, I am largely in agreement with Casal on these matters. In this short commentary, I …. (shrink)