Is Medical Genetic Engineering Morally Permissible?

Rebecca Kish
Final paper

The term Genetic engineering encompasses a wide variety of topics such as selecting which two sperm and egg cells are fertilized, cloning, eliminating genetic diseases, and cosmetically designing custom children. I think it is necessary to specify and focus on one area at a time when it comes to determining what is morally permissible and what isn’t. Genetic engineering is too broad a topic to say yes, all genetic engineering is morally permissible or no, it is not. Because of this, I will focus on two types, medical genetic engineering and engineering for purely physical attributes. Medical genetic engineering is morally permissible whereas, cosmetic genetic engineering is not. By cosmetic engineering, I mean engineering

If we have the tools to make a child’s life worth living vs. letting it come into existence only to have a life barely worth living, we are morally obligated to do the former. For example, think about a couple was pregnant, and the fetus was found to have the genes for something like Down syndrome or Huntington’s. The doctor tells them, you can either have a procedure in which we go in and modify the genes to allow your child to be completely normal and have a life uninhibited by these diseases or you can elect to not intervene. In this case, not intervening would bring about a child with a life barely worth living. It is clearly immoral to do so when the tools to bring a healthy child who has the potential for a great life that is worth living into existence. Additionally, from a utilitarian view, medical genetic engineering is furthering the greater good of the human population by bringing more good into the world. It is not harming anyone and it is giving any future offspring the chance and opportunity to live a healthier life free of serious, preventable, medical complications. In the case of most diseases, genetic engineering seems intuitively right. For example, when someone has a treatable medical condition, refusing to cure to him seems fundamentally unethical. If we are able to lessen someone’s suffering, why would we not? This can be applied to the

My response to this is that the type of diversity and purpose is different. Medical genetic engineering seeks to eradicate genes that are detrimental to a being, whereas cosmetic engineer eradicates unfavorable genes. In the latter case, the genes are not always detrimental to the being, such as having brown eyes vs. green. In medical engineering, all of the diversity (provided it is not related to a medical condition) is kept in the gene pool and only a small number of bad genes will be