Procreative Beneficence: A New Exploration (original) (raw)
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The Moral Obligation to Create Children with the Best Chance of the Best Life
Bioethics, 2009
According to what we call the Principle of Procreative Beneficence (PB), couples who decide to have a child have a significant moral reason to select the child who, given his or her genetic endowment, can be expected to enjoy most well-being. In the first part of this paper, we introduce PB, explain its content, grounds, and implications, and defend it against various objections. In the second part, we argue that PB is superior to competing principles of procreative selection such as that of procreative autonomy. In the third part of the paper, we consider the relation between PB and disability. We develop a revisionary account of disability, in which disability is a species of instrumental badness that is context-and person-relative. Although PB instructs us to aim to reduce disability in future children whenever possible, it does not privilege the normal. What matters is not whether future children meet certain biological or statistical norms, but what level of well-being they can be expected to have.
Procreative Beneficence and Genetic Enhancement
Kriterion – Journal of Philosophy, 2018
Imagine a world where everyone is healthy, intelligent, long living and happy. Intuitively this seems wonderful albeit unrealistic. However, recent scientific breakthroughs in genetic engineering, namely CRISPR/Cas bring the question into public discourse, how the genetic enhancement of humans should be evaluated morally. In 2001, when preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and in vitro fertilisation (IVF), enabled parents to select between multiple embryos, Julian Savulescu introduced the principle of procreative beneficence (PPB), stating that parents have the obligations to choose the child that is expected to have the best life. In this paper I argue that accepting the PPB and the consequentialist principle (CP) that two acts with the same consequences are morally on par, commits one to accepting the parental obligation of genetically enhancing one's children.
In defence of procreative beneficence
Journal of Medical Ethics, 2007
The Principle of Procreative Beneficence is the Principle that we should select the best child, of the possible children we could have. I elaborate this principle and defend it against a range of objections. In particular, I focus on four objections which Michael Parker raises: that is it underdetermining, that it is insensitive to the complex nature of the good, that is self-defeating and it is overly individualistic. Procreative Beneficence is a useful principle in reproductive decision making. We should be more active in making selection decisions about what kind of child to have.
The aim of this article is to investigate whether techniques used for artificial reproduction safeguard or promote the future child’s welfare, and whether they are capable of offering potential future children the best possible chance for the best life, in keeping with guidelines derived from the Principle of Procreative Beneficence. This analysis will be important for discerning the parental responsibility of couples or single reproducers who plan to use or have used any of these techniques, and also for those who defend the Principle of Procreative Beneficence, which implicitly entails the use of techniques of assisted human reproduction. The paper concludes that prospective parents should be informed not only of the specific level of risk and potential damages associated with each IVF technique, but also of the fact that given the available evidence none of the standard IVF techniques can be considered to be risk free, there is reason to believe that none of these techniques can be reconciled with the responsibility of prospective parents to the promote welfare of future children and/or to offer them the best possible life
Failures of Imagination: Disability and the Ethics of Selective Reproduction
Bioethics, 2015
The article addresses the problem of disability in the context of reproductive decisions based on genetic information. It poses the question of whether selective procreation should be considered as a moral obligation of prospective parents. To answer this question, a number of different ethical approaches to the problem are presented and critically analyzed: the utilitarian; Julian Savulescu’s principle of procreative beneficence; the rights-based. The main thesis of the article is that these approaches fail to provide any appealing principles on which reproductive decisions should be based. They constitute failures of imagination which may result in counter-intuitive moral judgments about both life with disability and genetic selection. A full appreciation of the ethical significance of recognition in procreative decisions leads to a more nuanced and morally satisfying view than other leading alternatives presented in the article.
PROCREATIVE BENEFICENCE: WHY WE SHOULD SELECT THE BEST CHILDREN
Eugenic selection of embryos is now possible by employing in vitro fertilization (IVF) and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). While PGD is currently being employed for the purposes of detecting chromosomal abnormalities or inherited genetic abnormalities, it could in principle be used to test any genetic trait such as hair colour or eye colour. Genetic research is rapidly progressing into the genetic basis of complex traits like intelligence and a gene has been identified for criminal behaviour in one family. Once the decision to have IVF is made, PGD has few`costs' to couples, and people would be more inclined to use it to select less serious medical traits, such as a lower risk of developing Alzheimer Disease, or even for non-medical traits. PGD has already been used to select embryos of a desired gender in the absence of any history of sex-linked genetic disease. I will argue that: (1) some non-disease genes affect the likelihood of us leading the best life; (2) we have a reason to use information which is available about such genes in our reproductive decision-making; (3) couples should select embryos or fetuses which are most likely to have the best life, based on available genetic information, including information about non-disease genes. I will also argue that we should allow selection for non-disease genes even if this maintains or increases social inequality. I will focus on genes for intelligence and sex selection. I will defend a principle which I call Procreative Beneficence: couples (or single reproducers) should select the child, of the possible children they could have, who is expected to have the best life, or at least as good a life as the others, based on the relevant, available information.
On Our Obligation to Select the Best Children: A Reply to Savulescu
Bioethics, 2004
The purpose of this paper is to examine critically Julian Savulescu's claim that people should select, of the possible children they could have, the one who is expected to have the best life, or at least as good a life as the others, based on the relevant, available genetic information, including information about non-disease genes. I argue here that in defending this moral obligation, Savulescu has neglected several important issues such as access to selection technologies, disproportionate burdens on women, difficulties in determining what is best, problems with aggregate effects of individual choices, and questions about social justice. Taking these matters into account would call such a moral requirement into serious question. ;
Moral Virtue and the Principles of Practical Reason. (The Ethics of Reproductive Genetics)
The Ethics of Reproductive Genetics - Between Utility, Principles, and Virtues, ed. M. Soniewicka, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2018
In this paper I enter into discussion about the morality of reproductive choices and objection to the principle of procreative beneficence by appealing to Aristotelian virtue ethics and its concepts of practical wisdom and eudaimonia which may provide us with a deeper understanding of the good life and flourishing.