SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The paper, "Designing humans: A human rights approach," was published in Bioethics in 2018 and builds on Liao's previous writings, including The Right to Be Loved, a 2015 book in which he makes the case that children, as human beings, have the right to certain "fundamental conditions" necessary to pursue a good life (love is one such condition, according to Liao; so are food, water, and air).
In "Designing humans," Liao applies the same approach to gene editing and argues that part of the fundamental conditions necessary to have a good life are so-called "fundamental capacities," which might include but are not limited to: the capacity to act, to move, to reproduce, to think, to be motivated, to have emotions, to interact with others and the environment, and to be moral.
"The basic idea is that if we think about what human beings need in order to pursue a good life, maybe from there we can generate some principles that can guide us in reproductive genetic engineering," he says.
Liao introduces those principles with four "claims" on the ethics of genetic engineering:
Claim 1: It is not permissible to deliberately create an offspring that will not have all the fundamental capacities
Claim 2: If such an offspring has already been created, it is permissible to bring that offspring to term
Claim 3: It Is Not permissible to eliminate some fundamental capacity from an existing offspring
Claim 4: If it is possible to correct some lack of fundamental capacity—without undue burdens on parents or society—it may be impermissible not to do so
Liao's four claims neglect the question of superhuman augmentation.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Bot on Sunday March 10 2019, @02:35PM (1 child)
> human rights and equality is a western philosophy trait
Hehehe I notice propaganda worked well.
Those came out after the industrial revolution, which in hindsight is the shittiest thing happened to our planet ever. Luddites were right, but their prophecies took too long to materialize. People 400 years ago would not put up with what we are putting up with (what do you mean I can't get water from the well but I must pay somebody? what do you mean my bees die because of what you use to poison your field? what do you mean you want more than 1/10 of my income, and what do you mean I must pay with those colored pieces of paper instead of my surplus goods? what do you mean i cannot go around armed? what do you mean I need a permit to build a house in my own land?)
human rights = entirely sidestepping the hypothetical authority of the hypothetical god
equality = control over everybody's wealth
social democracy = we don't bother with small fish but try getting big, either you get assimilated or you get destroyed
Now, I too believe in those human rights (with the exception that I consider equality a compromise for the situations where Justice can't be enforced.
Account abandoned.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 10 2019, @09:43PM
People 400 years ago would, however, put up with digging the land 12 hours a day rain or shine and would put up with going hungry for a few days and would put up with a few dead kids. Ah yes, proof by good ol' days.