The Moral Status of Germ Line Gene Manipulation: Practical Considerations

In this dissertation I discuss the moral permissibility of germ line manipulation (GLM). I begin by showing how traditional risk-benefit models of decision-making are inadequate to the task of evaluating GLM. In the next two chapters I examine objections to GLM in practice. Objections in practice need to identify some feature which is contingent to GLM such that if the feature obtained, then GLM would be morally impermissible. Objections in principle by contrast need to identify some feature about GLM that is both necessary to and inseparable from it, and are such that it would as a general rule make GLM impermissible at any time. In my Master's thesis I concentrated on the objections in principle and so here I focus exclusively on objections in practice.;In the last two chapters I argue that we, as members of present generations, and in particular prospective parents and practicing physicians, have an obligation to use GLM to prevent disease in members of future generations if it is safely possible to do so. I argue that the most compelling justification for this obligation is the moral mandate to avoid harming others.;Of all the objections in practice that I encountered in the literature, I suggest that the most pressing objections are to be found in the broad categories that I refer to as the feminist concerns and the disability rights activists concerns. After outlining a number of objections in each of the two categories, I conclude that none of the objections succeed as objections in practice to GLM.