Merits and Dangers of Seeking Enhancement

Human genetic engineering technology is more advanced in the contemporary world, attracting numerous people support human enhancement. According to the Children's Medical Research Institute and The Children's Hospital at Westmead (2012), ‘over 1800 gene therapy clinical trials have been completed, are ongoing or have been approved worldwide’, which shown the increased significance of human engineering in the society.

In accordance with the Oxford Dictionary (2006), human genetic engineering refers to the science of changing the way of a human by altering the information in its genes. Human genetic engineering can be divided into two categories, including genetic therapy (pathological purpose) and genetic enhancement (non pathological purpose), both make oneself better by optimizing attributes or capabilities (National Human Genome Research Institute, 2006). It can also be treated as remedy a loss of normal human function that may prevent or reduce a person’s ability to function independently (Mayes, 2012).

I come to agree that seeking enhancement is not an appropriate method to improve human well-being. Sometimes, supporters seems a bit overstate the merits of human enhancement and overlook the drawbacks and side effects of it. I believe that there are real problems for seeking enhancement even though achievement is acquired for what we supposed not to be acquired.

Although the technological development of human engineering is increasingly mature, several concerns and problems are yet to be overcame. In The Case against Perfection: ethics in the age of genetic engineering, Sandel (2009) suggested that the desire of mastery is negative, which alter humility, responsibility and solidarity, the three key features of our moral la...

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Gene therapy clinical trials worldwide to 2012 - ... [J Gene Med. 2013] - PubMed - NCBI. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23355455

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Mayes, S. (2012). Genetic Enhancement: Definitions, Methodologies, and the Effect of Parental Attitudes. Penn Bioethics Journal, 8(2).

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Michael J. Sandel (2009). The Case against Perfection: ethics in the age of genetic engineering, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Chapter 5 (pp. 85-100)

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