"Choosing Children" by Jonathan Glover: John Lanigan considers problems Jonathan Glover has with Choosing Children. Intro: >>This book is a lucid account of many of the issues surrounding genetic intervention and the possibilities it has opened up for the future of humankind. To what extent should we use genetic engineering and genetic selection to fix the characteristics of our children before they are born? In his first chapter, Jonathan Glover, Professor of Medical Ethics at King's College, London, discusses the ways in which 'disability', which genetic intervention (GI) may aim to overcome, could be defined. Glover has no prejudice concerning what is termed the 'expressivist' view, ie the idea that 'normal' people neither know nor have any right to judge that what seems to them a disadvantaged life is somehow less rich than their own. Nevertheless, Glover concludes that on balance there are no a priori reasons to reject the use of GI either to overcome disability or to promote enhanced human flourishing for a 'normal' foetus or implanted embryo. Furthermore, this promotion of human flourishing needn't necessarily exclude 'non-medical' interventions to produce 'designer babies'.<< Link
monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993. [more]
