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176 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2007
The moral quandary arises when people use such therapy [the kind that repairs or replaces defective genes] not to cure a disease but to reach beyond health, to enhance their physical or cognitive capacities, to lift themselves above the norm.
THE CASE AGAINST PERFECTION, P. 08
…the explosion, not the erosion, of responsibility. As humility gives way, responsibility expands to daunting proportions. We attribute less to chance and more to choice. Parents become responsible for choosing, or failing to choose, the right traits for their children.
THE CASE AGAINST PERFECTION, P. 87
This takes us back to the notion of giftedness. Even if it does not harm the child or impair its autonomy, eugenic parenting is objectionable because it expresses and entrenches a certain stance toward the world—a stance of mastery and dominion that fails to appreciate the gifted character of human powers and achievements, and misses the part of freedom that consists in a persisting negotiation with the given.
(THE CASE AGAINST PERFECTION, P. 98)
The problem with eugenics and genetic engineering is that they represent the one-sided triumph of willfulness over giftedness, of dominion over reverence, of molding over beholding. But why, we may wonder, should we worry about this triumph? Why not shake off our unease with enhancement as so much superstition? What would be lost if biotechnology dissolved our sense of giftedness?
THE CASE AGAINST PERFECTION, P. 85