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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: 3, Funny) by Bot on Sunday March 10 2019, @02:39PM (3 children)
Sure, when attacked by a tiger you don't need to outrun the tiger. You only need to outrun your friend. But this particular tiger never stops being hungry. Today you need to work hard and get indebted for schooling. Tomorrow you will need stellar IQ. The day after you will need neural implants and always on connection. Afterwards you will need to worship satan or something. Afterwards you will need to sell your body. Afterwards you will need to sell your children. Afterwards you will need to sell your soul.
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(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 10 2019, @03:10PM (2 children)
which lead us to the kind of non-diversity discussed here https://fs.blog/2019/03/stormtrooper-problem/ [fs.blog] as the Stormtrooper Problem:
Diversity is how we survive as a species. This is a quantifiable fact easily observed in the biological world. From niches to natural selection,
diversity is the common theme of success for both the individual and the group. ... Without variation, selection cannot improve the lot of the higher-level group.
++ for getting at the core 'of the problem of the rich (who value conformity over diversity)'
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 10 2019, @03:44PM (1 child)
Good article. It explains why we have to kill off the mutants.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday March 11 2019, @10:11AM
Meatbags. It's spelled meatbags.
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