The Case Against Perfection

By Michael J. Sandel. The Ethics of Sports Technologies and Human Enhancement, 2007

468 citations recorded by the source corpus.

reakthroughs in genetics present us with a promise and a predicament. The promise is that we may soon be able to treat and prevent a host of debilitating diseases. The predicament is that our newfound genetic knowledge may also enable us to manipulate our own nature—to enhance our muscles, memories, and moods; to choose the sex, height, and other genetic traits of our children; to make ourselves "better than well." When science moves faster than moral understanding, as it does today, men and women struggle to articulate their unease. In liberal societies they reach first for the language of autonomy, fairness, and individual rights. But this part of our moral vocabulary is ill equipped to address the hardest questions posed by genetic engineering. The genomic revolution has induced a kind of moral vertigo.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Psychology, Philosophy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1be9dc7742df9f3aa18949faaa3166df2d5be3b7

Citations in the corpus

• Ethical issues in human enhancement (2007, unknown): “39 Julian Savulescu, “Sex Selection—The Case For”, Medical Journal of Australia, 171 (1999): 373-375.”
• Why I Want to be a Posthuman when I Grow Up (2013, unknown): “size and diversity of S P is in itself a prima facie reason for thinking that it is likely to contain some very great values ( Bostrom 2004 ).”