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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday March 10 2019, @01:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the maybe? dept.

Phys.org:

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.


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by shortscreen on Sunday March 10 2019, @10:56PM (1 child)

    by shortscreen (2252) on Sunday March 10 2019, @10:56PM (#812455) Journal

    If they aren't mindless they may escape from Takyon's basement, and then third parties beyond God and the NSA would end up sticking their noses in.

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  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday March 11 2019, @04:09PM

    by Freeman (732) on Monday March 11 2019, @04:09PM (#812743) Journal

    "The Island" (I think that was the name of the movie) was a really fun movie, based on that concept.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"