Julian Savulescu, a professor of ethics at Oxford, has argued that we should be free to design our children’s personality using genetic engineering: that, more than that, it may even be our ethical obligation to do so. “Rather than fearing genetics, we should embrace it,” he says. “We can do better than chance.”
It is easy to rise up in fury at this: at a skim read it sounds like a Nazi eugenic manifesto. But Savulescu is quick to say otherwise: that was the “coercive imposition of a state vision”, he says, while his vision is of allowing parents voluntary choice. The idea of it is uncomfortable, even viscerally disgusting, but it is the job of professional ethicists to follow their intellect even when their gut is rebelling at the journey.
View the original article here: The wrongs, and rights, of genetic screening for children – Telegraph.co.uk (blog)
