New eugenics

New eugenics, also known as liberal eugenics (a term coined by bioethicist Nicholas Agar), is used to describe those who advocate enhancing human characteristics and capacities through the use of reproductive and human genetic engineering. Those who advocate new eugenics generally think selecting or altering embryos should be left to the preferences of parents, rather than the state.

History

Liberal eugenics, or new eugenics, is often distinguished from early 20th century eugenics in its emphasis on informed parental choice rather than coercive government control.

Eugenics is sometimes broken into the categories of positive eugenics (encouraging reproduction among the designated "fit") and negative eugenics (discouraging reproduction among those designated "unfit"). Another distinction is between coercive eugenics and non-coercive eugenics. Bioethicists often consider coercive eugenics harder to justify than non-coercive eugenics, though both come in a matter of degree. For example, laws forbidding cousin marriage are coercive but widely considered justifiable. Whereas forced sterilization of those deemed unfit is a form of coercive eugenics that is much more controversial.

New Eugenics practices

New eugenics generally supports genetic modification or genetic selection of individuals for traits that are likely to improve human welfare. The underlying idea is to improve the genetic basis of future generations and reduce incidence of genetic diseases and other undesirable traits. Some of the practices included in new eugenics are: pre-implantation diagnosis and embryo selection, selective breeding, and human enhancement through the use of genetic technologies, such as embryo engineering or gene therapy.

Ethics

New eugenics places more emphasis on parental autonomy than older versions of eugenics, and it often emphasizes providing access for all parents to genetic enhancement technologies in order to minimize unfair inequalities. Arguments used in favor of new eugenics include that parents usually have better information and incentives than bureaucrats in making reproductive decisions. Arguments against new eugenics stress that individual parents sometimes make irresponsible reproductive choices that other people bear the costs of, and that parents may place too much focus on their own children's prospects without thinking about the broader social patters that emerge when each parent chooses their children's traits for their own reasons.

Criticism

Critics of new eugenics include Dov Fox, who argues that it may involve what he considers to be some illiberal infringements on parental choice, since sometimes governments are more likely to determine that some parents make poor reproductive choices.

The United Nations International Bioethics Committee wrote that new eugenics should not be confused with the ethical problems of the 20th century eugenics movements. Regardless, they have stated that it is still problematic as it challenges the idea of human equality and opens up new ways of discrimination and stigmatization against those who do not want or cannot afford the enhancements.

Further reading

• Agar, Nicholas (2004). Liberal Eugenics: In Defense of Human Enhancement. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Anomaly, Jonathan (2020). Creating Future People: The Ethics of Genetic Enhancement. New York, New York: Routledge.
• Buchanan, Allen (2017). Better than Human? The Promise and Perils of Enhancing Ourselves. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
• Fox, Dov (2007). "The Illiberality of Liberal Eugenics". Ratio.
• Sandel, Michael (2004). "The Case Against Perfection". The Atlantic Monthly.