Genetic Intervention and the Parent-Child Relationship

Abstract

There is a long history of opposition to allowing parents to use biotechnology in order to select the traits of their children. Jurgen Habermas’s book, The Future of Human Nature, is an important addition to this literature. Habermas, like C.S. Lewis and Paul Ramsey before him, is concerned that children’s futures are fixed by parental choices and that genetic selection or modification treats children as objects rather than persons. This essay aims to show both why these objections resonate with many and why they nevertheless fail to provide good reasons to prohibit deliberate selection in general, and genetic enhancement in particular

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