Can 'eugenics' be defended?

Walter Veit; Jonathan Anomaly; Nicholas Agar; Peter Singer; Diana S Fleischman; Francesca Minerva

doi:10.1007/s40592-021-00129-1

Can 'eugenics' be defended?

Monash Bioeth Rev. 2021 Jul;39(1):60-67. doi: 10.1007/s40592-021-00129-1. Epub 2021 May 25.

Authors

Walter Veit¹, Jonathan Anomaly², Nicholas Agar³, Peter Singer⁴, Diana S Fleischman⁵, Francesca Minerva^{6

7}

Affiliations

¹ University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. wrwveit@gmail.com.
² University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
³ Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.
⁴ Princeton University, Princeton, USA.
⁵ University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK.
⁶ University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
⁷ University of Ghent, Ghent, Belgium.

Abstract

In recent years, bioethical discourse around the topic of 'genetic enhancement' has become increasingly politicized. We fear there is too much focus on the semantic question of whether we should call particular practices and emerging bio-technologies such as CRISPR 'eugenics', rather than the more important question of how we should view them from the perspective of ethics and policy. Here, we address the question of whether 'eugenics' can be defended and how proponents and critics of enhancement should engage with each other.

Keywords: CRISPR; Embryo selection; Enhancement; Ethics; Eugenics; Gene editing; Human enhancement.

MeSH terms

Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats
Eugenics*
Genetic Enhancement*
Humans