Liberal Eugenics: In Defence of Human Enhancement by Nicholas Agar

Author:Nicholas Agar [Agar, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, Ethics & Moral Philosophy, General
ISBN: 9781405123907
Google: TB0Ekrhh_aMC
Amazon: 1405123907
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Published: 2004-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

engineers of the future may be able to pursue the benefits without

producing the harms. If they are constitutive, then separating them will

be impossible; the mental powers will always come at a price.

Suppose we find that the costs are constitutive of the cognitive abilities.

Should parents be permitted to use genetic engineering to increase the

chance that their child will have the combination of mental focus and

Asperger’s? It seems unlikely that boosting a child’s performance in this

way, thereby improving her chances of successfully pursuing certain life

plans in academia, does fully compensate for the suffering resulting from

the social handicap. In this chapter I have separated the question of

permissions to use enhancement from the question about obligations to

use them. However, imagine there is a general requirement to remove

harmful genetic arrangements. If such a requirement is tenable there is

likely to be a threshold of harm that genetic arrangements will have to pass

before there is an obligation to remove them. Asperger’s may not pass this

threshold if it, on balance, reduces real freedom to only a small degree.

This would mean that humanity would not be deprived of the distinctive

achievements of people with Asperger’s.

Many people will find it easy to see why parents should be permitted to

exchange a genetic arrangement that predisposed their child to less intelli-

gence for one that predisposed her to be more intelligent. But what about

the reverse case – parents who want to swap a predisposition to be highly

intelligent for a predisposition to be averagely so? Does NATURE legitim-

ize this modification? It might.

Suppose an injury to a person with an IQ of 160 reduces her IQ to 100.

This reduction in IQ causes harm: the victim will already have embarked

on projects requiring the higher intelligence and her pursuit of them will

be set back. However, replacing an embryo’s predisposition to become

someone with a high IQ for a predisposition to become someone with an

average IQ is a different matter. The embryo does not yet have a life plan.

A gene predisposing to intellectual disability reduces one’s positive free-

dom, but it is not so clear that introducing a gene that predisposes to

average intelligence causes this kind of harm. Although there are some

goods available to the more intelligent that are not readily accessible to

those of average intelligence, an average IQ may compensate for these

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losses. Those of average intelligence can enjoy uncomplicated pleasures

denied to some with superior intelligence. They can develop parts of their

characters that highly intelligent people tend to leave relatively undevel-

oped. Perhaps they are more likely to find intellectually compatible com-

panions. Parents who value these benefits above high intelligence are

entitled to think of the gene therapy as enhancement. They make a similar

choice when they prefer an ordinary education for their child to an

academically elite one.

Note that this conclusion relies on a factual claim. Exchanging a genetic

arrangement that predisposes to an IQ of 160 for an arrangement that

predisposes to an IQ of 100 may reduce prospects associated with some

life plans – but it offers improvements in prospects associated with other

plans of sufficient magnitude to compensate for the loss.

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