Creating Future People

Creating Future People offers readers a fast-paced primer on how new genetic technologies will enable parents to influence the traits of their children, including their intelligence, moral capacities, physical appearance, and immune system. It deftly explains the science of gene editing and embryo selection, and raises the central moral questions with colorful language and a brisk style. Jonathan Anomaly takes seriously the diversity of preferences parents have, and the limits of public policy in regulating what could soon be a global market for reproductive technology. He argues that once embryo selection for complex traits happens it will change the moral landscape by altering the incentives parents face. All of us will take an interest in the traits everyone else selects, and this will present coordination problems that previous writers on genetic enhancement have failed to consider. Anomaly navigates difficult ethical issues with vivid language and scientifically informed speculation about how genetic engineering will transform humanity. Key features: Offers clear explanations of scientific concepts; Explores important moral questions without academic jargon; Brings discoveries from different fields together to give us a sense of where humanity is headed

Ethics, Antibiotics, and Public Policy

The widespread use of antibiotics in medicine and agriculture is encouraging the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant infections around the world. Our use of antibiotics is a global, inter-generational collective action problem. Public policies intended to solve the problem involve difficult moral tradeoffs

Great Minds Think Different: Preserving Cognitive Diversity in an Age of Gene Editing

It is likely that gene editing technologies will become viable in the current century. As scientists uncover the genetic contribution to personality traits and cognitive styles, parents will face hard choices. Some of these choices will involve trade‐offs from the standpoint of the individual's welfare, while others will involve trade‐offs between what is best for each and what is good for all. Although we think we should generally defer to the informed choices of parents about what kinds of children to create, we argue that decisions to manipulate polygenic psychological traits will be much more ethically complicated than choosing Mendelian traits like blood type. We end by defending the principle of regulatory parsimony, which holds that when legislation is necessary to prevent serious harms, we should aim for simple rules that apply to all, rather than micro‐managing parental choices that shape the traits of their children. While we focus on embryo selection and gene editing, our arguments apply to all powerful technologies which influence the development of children

Collective action and individual choice: rethinking how we regulate narcotics and antibiotics.

Governments across the globe have squandered treasure and imprisoned millions of their own citizens by criminalising the use and sale of recreational drugs. But use of these drugs has remained relatively constant, and the primary victims are the users themselves. Meanwhile, antimicrobial drugs that once had the power to cure infections are losing their ability to do so, compromising the health of people around the world. The thesis of this essay is that policymakers should stop wasting resources trying to fight an unwinnable and morally dubious war against recreational drug users, and start shifting their attention to the serious threat posed by our collective misuse of antibiotics

Creating Future People

Creating Future People offers readers a fast-paced primer on how new genetic technologies will enable parents to influence the traits of their children, including their intelligence, moral capacities, physical appearance, and immune system. It deftly explains the science of gene editing and embryo selection, and raises the central moral questions with colorful language and a brisk style. Jonathan Anomaly takes seriously the diversity of preferences parents have, and the limits of public policy in regulating what could soon be a global market for reproductive technology. He argues that once embryo selection for complex traits happens it will change the moral landscape by altering the incentives parents face. All of us will take an interest in the traits everyone else selects, and this will present coordination problems that previous writers on genetic enhancement have failed to consider. Anomaly navigates difficult ethical issues with vivid language and scientifically informed speculation about how genetic engineering will transform humanity. Key features: Offers clear explanations of scientific concepts; Explores important moral questions without academic jargon; Brings discoveries from different fields together to give us a sense of where humanity is headed

Combating Resistance: The Case for a Global Antibiotics Treaty

The use of antibiotics by one person can profoundly affect the welfare of other people. I will argue that efforts to combat antimicrobial resistance generate a global collective action problem that only a well-designed international treaty can overcome. I begin by describing the problem of resistance and outlining some market-friendly policy tools that participants in a global treaty could use to control the problem. I then defend the claim that these policies can achieve their aim while protecting individual liberty and state autonomy. Finally, I offer some suggestions for a treaty, drawing lessons from the failure of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and the success of the Montreal Protocol on ozone depletion