Bioethics and Human Enhancement: an Interview with Julian Savulescu

June 10, 2010

Your argument for a moral obligation to use new biotechnology to have the best children is founded on the best life (understood as the life with the most well-being) expected for them. Is then your theory utilitarian?

Utilitarians would embrace it but it is not intended to be nor derived from uti-litarianism. It is meant fall out of basic rational choice. If you are only going to have one child now, you should choose the better child, rather than leaving it to chance, just because it is better. You might have other reasons which outweigh this reason based on its value, but that is typical of all life choices. The point is that you have a good reason to choose it and absent some other reason, like health risk to you, cost to society, then you should choose the better child. This argument is not based on controversial values or theories but just on our existing approaches and attitudes to having children. Dilemata