So enhanced height is a positional good, while enhanced resistance to viruses is an absolute good.

Preimplantation diagnosis involves fertilizing an egg with sperm in a Petri dish, doing tests on the resulting embryosI to determine their genetic characteristics, and then implanting into a woman’s womb the embryo with the most desired traits. It allows parents to choose the gender of their child and avoid having a child who carries a genetic

The issue is one of the most profound we humans have ever faced. For the first time in the evolution of life on this planet, a species has developed the capacity to edit its own genetic makeup. That offers the potential of wondrous benefits, including the elimination of many deadly diseases and debilitating abnormalities. And it will someday offer

If we could safely edit genes to make our children less susceptible to HIV or coronaviruses, would it be wrong to do so? Or would it be wrong not to do so?

The title of the gathering was “Engineering the Human Germline,” and it focused on the ethics of making genetic edits that would be inherited. These “germline” edits were fundamentally different, medically and morally, from somatic-cell edits that affect only certain cells in an individual patient. The germline was a red line that scientists had

Our respect for nature and nature’s God should, indeed, instill some humility about meddling with our genes. But should it absolutely forbid it? After all, we Homo sapiens are part of nature, no less so than bacteria and sharks and butterflies. Through its infinite wisdom or blind stumbling, nature has endowed our species with an ability to edit

“Perhaps the most exciting finding of this study is that Dicer can be reengineered,” their 2006 paper noted.4 It was a very useful discovery. It permitted researchers to use RNA interference to turn off a wide variety of genes, both to discover what each gene does and to regulate its activity for medical purposes.

Stock went on to write a pro-editing manifesto, Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future. “A key aspect of human nature is our ability to manipulate the world,” he argued. “To turn away from germline selection and modification without even exploring them would be to deny our essential nature and perhaps our destiny.” He emphasized that

There are some truly grand questions that our mortal minds may never be able to answer: How did the universe begin? Why is there something rather than nothing? What is consciousness? Others may be wrestled into submission by the end of this century: Is the universe deterministic? Do we have free will? Of the really big ones, the closest to being