How to Defend Genetic Enhancement

Science fiction novelists and Hollywood screenplay writers delight in presenting us with futures in which parents routinely genetically enhance their children. What should we make of these forecasts? Cautious commentators urge that we not over look the technological challenges confronting those who would radically reshape us. They point out that many of the traits that we may wish to enhance are geneti cally multifactorial, meaning that the relationships between changes to genes and increases in intelligence, athletic ability, or resistance to disease may be immensely complex. This chapter takes no stand on the issue of the technological viability of human enhancement, but instead addresses a moral question that must be answered as we await technological developments. What moral principles govern the use of technologies of enhancement? I defend a liberal answer to this question that would grant prospective parents the freedom to enhance some of their children's charac teristics. The first move in this defence is to depart from the standard liberal text and refuse to view enhancement as an expression of procreative liberty. Instead, I position the genetic enhancement of children as an expression of the freedom to influence the direction their lives take. This move has the advantage of offering clear guidelines on how genetic enhancement is to be regulated.