Redesigning Life

Front matter

PILE. Peter Lang

Nathan VAN CAMP

Eugenics, Biopolitics, and the Challenge of the Techno-Human Condition a = O n O

CHAPTER Two

Bae Life ereire e rae eistvere ceive einer eee dae 47 The: Biopolitical Wut: srr rar R EEEa 47 From Life Politics to a Politics of Life... ccc cccssseceesseeeeeseeeees 49 The Power to “Make Life” and “Let Die”... ccc ccccccccesseceesseeeees 53 SaGred! E t iaae cssncassaczbusdsstacvsviavssasteeds s¥eesavoestassuecetieenavsactnes 72 Forms OFL E ierre reneisse reevei eier eaaa eierne A Na eN aai 82

Chapter Four

The Symbolic Reduction of the Event of Parturition «0.0.0.0... 118 The Prematurity of Natal Life 0.0... eoria 122

CHAPTER FIVE References ennie N E A ERN E ERS 159

Acknowledgments

Some of the work presented in this book has already appeared in academic journals. For material that is presented in Chapters 1, 3, 4, and 5, the author acknowledges its original publication in a slightly different form in Humana Mente: Journal of Philosophical Studies, Journal of Philosophy of Life, Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, Between the Species, and Journal for Cultural Research. The author sincerely thanks the editors of these journals for their permission to publish this work.

I am grateful to Gabriel Fragniére and Hendrik Opdebeeck, the series editors for Philosophy & Politics at Peter Lang, for publishing this book. My thanks go out, as well, to the managing director at PIE Peter Lang, Emilie Menz, for her patience, thoroughness, and belief in the project.

This book is derived from my doctoral dissertation which was submitted to and successfully defended at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Antwerp (Belgium) in May 2013. A project like this one requires assistance from many quarters. I give special thanks to my parents, Marc Van Camp and Anita De Hoef, for their unconditional support throughout my extended stay at the University of Antwerp. I am profoundly grateful. I also thank my brothers, grandparents, and familyin-law. They were always there when I needed them, and J am truly grateful for that.

Others whom I want to acknowledge here are all good friends who I have known for many years and who have given me the courage and strength to pursue my dreams: Bert De Smedt, Lente Dewilde, Joris Godefroit, Ines Borgonjon, Pieter Thomaes, Stephanie Williams, Nicolas Dobbeleir, Stefan Engelen, Stien Smessaert, Davy Rombouts, Kathelijne Delmeire, Dennis Soete, Griet Debussche, Winnok De Vos, Katrien Van Den Broeck, Tim Dupuis, Laicha De Cock, Steve Leung, Maria Salinas Sanchez, Carlos Rovzar, Pieter Vereycken, Sarah Shaham, Annelies Godefroit, Sophie Stas, Christophe Huybrighs, and many others who I have forgotten to mention here. I am honored to call them my friends. I also want to thank a couple of people who have come to me from the world of academia and who have each, in their own way, contributed to the coming into being of this book: Diane Enns, Jeffrey A. Barash, Bart Verschaffel, Walter Weyns, Kris Dierickx, Francis D. Raška, Cassie Striblen, Stephen Bloch-Schulman, Sophie Cloutier, Joshua Miller, Shane Wilkins, Eli Schonfeld, and Paula Schwebel.

For the generous scholarship that allowed me to carry out the research that led to this book, I express my gratitude to the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). I also thank the University Foundation of Belgium for its financial support in making this publication possible.

I am profoundly grateful to my colleagues and former colleagues in the Institute of Jewish Studies as well as in the philosophy department at the University of Antwerp. In particular, I acknowledge Joachim Leilich, Katrien Vloeberghs, Karolien Vermeulen, Luc Acke, Christophe Collard, Jo Bogaerts, Dennis Baert, David Dessin, Liesbet Quaeghebeur, Sven Braspenning, Jeff Spiessens, Geoffrey Dierickxens, Rudmer Bijlsma, Martin Michels, and Torben Wolfs.

Finally, I thank two mentors, without whom this whole enterprise would have been unattainable. Arthur Cools, chair of the Center for European Philosophy at the University of Antwerp, first sparked my interest in the broad field of what is now often referred to as “continental philosophy.” For this, and for his support and critical guidance over the years, I owe him a debt of gratitude. Last, but not least, I am forever grateful to my Doktormutter, Vivian Liska, director of the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp, for her guidance and encouragement, not only during my doctoral studies, but ever since. Without her steadfast belief in my potential as a scholar, I would simply not be the person who I am today. There are not enough words in my mind to thank her properly.

I have dedicated this book to the love of my life, Leen. This book would simply not have been possible without her unwavering love, support, patience, and belief in me as a scholar and as a person. Our love journey started well before I embarked on the journey to wisdom, and my life as a philosopher would simply be meaningless without her love. I am truly grateful in ways that I may never be able to show.

Introduction

In the late 1990s, a team of Princeton geneticists led by Joe Tsien succeeded in adding an extra copy of the NR2B gene to the genome of a mouse called Doogy.' This choice of name was definitely not arbitrary, for just like the fictional television science prodigy Doogy Howser MD, the mouse was reported to acquire new knowledge at an unparalleled pace and retain it much longer than unmodified mice. Subsequent experiments with the NR2B gene yielded less convincing results, but the research team hopes that, once proved safe, this procedure could offer a revolutionary treatment for brain damage caused by Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Even more spectacularly, they also speculate about what might be achieved by inserting additional copies of the NR2B gene in humans with normally functioning brains. Because if the treatment could restore damaged brains to health, then it could perhaps also be used to boost the capacities of the brain beyond its normal functioning.

In arecent article, the German behavioral geneticist Klaus-Peter Lesch claims to have identified a sequence of DNA on chromosome 5-HTTLPR that, in his view, has an important influence on our state of wellbeing.’ His study shows that people who are born with a shorter version of this sequence are more susceptible to negative feelings and emotions such as depression, anxiety, and frustration. Those born with a longer version of the sequence, on the other hand, are reported to be more temperamentally upbeat and optimistic than the average person. Lesch still has no definitive explanation why this is the case, but there is good evidence that it has something to do with the fact that this sequence of DNA is responsible for regulating the reuptake of serotonin, the monoamine neurotransmitter also targeted by the antidepressant Prozac. But if his thesis proves to be correct, then it would be theoretically possible for parents to give their prospective children a guaranteed happy life by having only the longer version of this sequence engineered into their genome.

A number of recent announcements of progress and innovations in genetic science indicate that we are on the verge of entering a whole new era

Tang, Y., Shimzu, E., Dube, G. R., et al. (1999), ‘Genetic enhancement of learning and memory in mice,’ Nature 401: 63-69.

Lesch, K., Greenberg, B. D., Higley, J. D., et al., ‘Serotonin transporter, personality, and behavior,’ in Molecular Genetics and the Human Personality, eds. J. Benjamin, R. Ebstein and R. Belmaker (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2002).

in human evolution. Rapid advancements in genomics, most notably the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2000, have opened up the way for the manipulation of the human genetic heritage by technological means. In Jürgen Habermas’s words, “what hitherto was ‘given’ as organic nature, and could at most be ‘bred,’ now shifts to the realm of artifacts and their production.”* Although there are still a lot of practical barriers that have to be overcome before it will be possible to modify human DNA in the same way as DNA in plants and non-human animals can be modified, “the question is no longer whether we will manipulate embryos, but when, where, and how.”* The most obvious application of human genetic technologies is in the prevention and healing of disease. It would, for example, become possible to insert healthy copies of a gene into cells that contain a defective gene so that the cells start to make the correct protein. However, as innovative as gene therapy may be, its sole aim is to restore diseased bodies to health, and as such it is still largely continuous with established medical practices. But this is far less clear, though, in the case of what is called “genetic enhancement,” for here genetic knowledge about the genetic underpinnings of the phenotype is not used for treating disease, but to design human beings according to human will. It remains to be seen how radical these developments will prove to be, but, as biophysicist Gregory Stock maintains, it is already certain that “the enormous collective project of conscious human evolution has begun.”°

While the technologies for genetic modification are quite recent, the attempt to enhance the biological characteristics of human beings is hardly unique to the “age of genomics,” for clear parallels could be drawn with the ideals of eugenics. Formulated in the late 19" century by Francis Galton, the term eugenics refers to both a branch of science and a popular movement that sought to improve human hereditary traits through a variety of social policies and practices. Although the content of the eugenic project varied considerably from country to country, it is best known for its support for policies of racial segregation and enforced sterilization in the United States and Nazi Germany. Although very little of the scientific basis on which these 20" century eugenic practices were premised withstands critical scrutiny, they do provide an important background to the contemporary politico-philosophical debate over the moral acceptability or otherwise of human genetic modification. The central

Jürgen Habermas, The Future of Human Nature (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), 12.

Gregory Stock, Redesigning Humans: Choosing our Genes, Changing our Future (Boston/New York: Mariner Books, 2003), 2.

See for example George J. Annas and Sherman Elias, Gene Mapping: Using Law and Ethics as Guides (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

Introduction assumption guiding much of the literature on the socio-ethical implications of new genetic technologies is that if they have eugenic effects, then they are also morally unacceptable. Recently, however, some commentators have taken a different approach to this issue, arguing that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the goals of eugenics as such, and that its moral acceptability depends on the values and principles of the political ideology that regulates its implementation in society.’ They reject as unjustified any comparison that might be drawn between the contemporary idea of human genetic modification and the Nazi eugenics program by indicating that the “new eugenics” will be firmly rooted in the liberal principles of individual autonomy and value plurality. Their central claim is that if the state remains neutral in this matter and does not intervene to enforce a particular conception of the good to be sought through genetic modification, then a “liberal eugenics” will greatly reinforce the freedoms associated with reproduction. Critics, on the other hand, claim that any attempt to integrate the eugenic ideal into a liberal framework is bound to fail and that it will corrupt the central tenets of liberalism to the point of turning it into its opposite.* Although this argument takes many different forms, the basic assumption is that human genetic enhancement should be rejected because it poses a potential threat to human nature. Moreover, since the idea of an immutable human nature is intrinsic to the notion of human dignity, this threat extends to the whole meaning of what it is to be human.

Although it is not our intention to intervene directly into this contemporary debate over human genetic enhancement by taking position, it nonetheless constitutes the starting point and focus of the present book.

See for example Agar, Liberal Eugenics; John Harris, Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); Lee M. Silver, Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family (New York: Avon Books, 1998); Ronald Dworkin, ‘Playing God: Genes, clones and luck,’ in Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); Jonathan Glover, What Sort of People Should There Be? (New York: Penguin Books, 1984); Philip Kitcher, The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities (London: Penguin, 1996); Nick Bostrom (2003), ‘Human genetic Enhancements: A Transhumanist Perspective,’ Journal of Value Inquiry 37 (4): 493-506.

See for example Francis Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future. Consequences of the Biotechnological Revolution (London: Profile Books, 2002); Habermas, The Future of Human Nature; Michael J. Sandel, The Case Against Perfection. Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Cambridge MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008), George J. Annas, American Bioethics. Crossing Human Rights and Health Law Boundaries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) and Leon Kass (2003), ‘Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Perfection,’ The New Atlantis 1: 9-28.

The question of human genetic modification currently remains just that — a question. The ultimate threshold has still not yet been crossed. Should humanity go beyond this point of no return? Both advocates and opponents of human genetic modification seem to be narrowing the scope of the debate to this mode of questioning, without realizing that they thereby base their position on a similar set of assumptions about the nature of and relation between the concepts of “life” and “technology” that prevents them from reflecting on the question of human genetic modification in a sufficiently radical way. Regardless of whether the question is answered in the negative or in the positive, in both lines of reasoning the underlying assumption is that the question of human genetic modification essentially concerns the implications of an epochal confrontation between two radically heterogeneous forces: human life on the one side and technology on the other. In what follows, we will argue that this bespeaks a thoroughly inadequate conception of the human-technology relation, one that obfuscates more than it clarifies. Yet, the disturbing fact that many still uncritically rely on such an instrumental conception of technology — even at the very moment that its impotency stands exposed — indicates that it is very hard when not even impossible to extricate oneself completely from its hold. Be that as it may, we will take a completely different approach to this issue, and will seek to argue in what follows that the very fact that it is possible to modify the human genome retroactively reveals that there never was anything like a human nature in the first place. Is the human being’s proper dwelling place the realm of physis or the realm of tekhné? Such a question might at first sight seem strange or even nonsensical, but it surely can no longer be left in abeyance if we want to stand up to the demands of our age.

The first chapter (Enhanced Life) will critically discuss the current politico-philosophical debate concerning the permissibility of a liberal eugenics and argue that none of the dominant positions on human genetic enhancement is entirely satisfactory due to the limited, monadic conception of the human that is adopted in these models. It will be argued that the positions of both advocates and opponents of a liberal eugenics are inconsistent on a conceptual level as, ultimately, both end up violating the very central liberal principle of individual autonomy that they each nonetheless pretend to defend. In particular, it will be shown that while the argument against a new eugenics necessarily entails a preemptive dehumanization of any potential enhanced form of life, the argument for it threatens to reduce any non-enhanced form of life to the status of “wrongful life” or a life not worth living.

In the second chapter (Bare Life), it will be argued that the contradiction that any attempt to either improve or protect human nature produces

Introduction a form of life devoid of intrinsic value can only be properly understood when it is transcribed in terms of what Michel Foucault called biopolitics. Foucault’s thesis holds that modernity saw the gradual substitution of the sovereign model of power by a regime of biopower, in the sense that the deployment, strengthening and improvement of the biological dimension of human existence became the principal object and target of modern political strategies. Both Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito have, however, recently pointed out that Foucault left us with a paradox which he was never able to resolve. For how is it possible that the rising to dominance of a form of power that precisely seeks to protect and strengthen life also generated a political regime — Nazism — whose eugenic practices aimed at the suppression of life? After discussing Agamben’s and Esposito’s responses to this question, it will be argued that the future emergence of a responsible eugenics is predicated on a critical understanding of the conceptions of life that they have developed: on the one hand, the human being exposed to the violence of a politics over life (“bare” or “sacred” life) and, on the other hand, the human being who will become the subject of a politics of life to come (“form-of-life’’).

The third chapter (Enframed Life) starts from the still widely neglected fact that Heidegger’s writings contain several critical remarks on what he considered to be the ultimate aim of “technological enframing,” namely the “the artificial breeding of human material.” It will be argued that, contrary to what has been generally assumed, Heidegger didn’t refer to these developments as a mere illustration of his theory of technology but that genetic intervention figured as the negative paradigm on the basis of which he developed this theory in the first place. For Heidegger, the danger of biotechnology does not consist in concrete empirical threats posed by technical interventions in the human genome but in the threat that man will completely forget his ecstatic belonging to Being. The question will be raised, however, how Heidegger can substantiate the claim that genetic modification puts man’s essence at risk, given his well-known criticism of attempts to ground man’s essence in a biological dimension. It will be argued that this suggests that Heidegger’s philosophy is not completely anti-naturalistic, as has been generally believed, but that he was only critical of the “zoological” conceptions of man of the metaphysical humanist tradition, because it is on the basis of these conceptions that man currently understands himself solely in biogenetic terms.

The fourth chapter (Natal Life) will use Hannah Arendt’s brief but poignant remarks in the prologue to The Human Condition about the

? Martin Heidegger, Four Seminars, trans. A. Mitchell and F. Raffoul (Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 2003), 106.

advent of a biotechnological revolution as a starting point for a renewed reflection on her concept of natality. Arendt calls natality, the fact that human beings enter the world through birth, the central category of political thought. But how can she assert that being born conditions one to act freely if she also seems to maintain that it is through labor, not action, that human beings deal with their biologically conditioned processes? Expanding on Arendt’s largely neglected references to the work of the German anthropologist Arnold Gehlen, it will be argued that the concept of natality precisely undoes any strict division between zoé and bios, the conditioned and spontaneous, because it names the radical co-implication of biological birth and politico-linguistic birth. On the basis of this new understanding of natality, it will be argued that technological intervention in human reproduction will not irrevocably infringe on the human capacity to make radical new beginnings.

The fifth chapter (Prosthetic Life) will draw on Bernard Stiegler’s theory of originary technicity to argue that human life is phylogenetically as well as ontogenetically radically bound up with technical prostheses and thus that, in a sense, the human is always already technologically “enhanced.” According to Stiegler, the human can be defined as neither a biological state nor a philosophical condition (mind, consciousness, etc.) because it comes into being through technics. To substantiate this claim, we will focus on Stiegler’s reading of the French paleontologist André Leroi-Gourhan who has argued that the stone flint and the cerebral cortex co-evolved in a process of reflexive development, and thus that the appearance of homo sapiens is in the most literal sense an effect of the pre-hominid’s tool-use. This will allow us to conclude that biogenetic intervention is neither unprecedented, nor “anti-natural,” but that it has made the process of humanization possible in the first place. One of the most important consequences of seeing technology as the intrinsic condition of humanity will be that simply being “for” or “against” genetic modification will become an impossible position to sustain.

Chapter One

At the beginning of the 1970s, less than two decades after James Watson and Francis Crick had first described the basic structure of the DNA molecule and famously claimed to have unraveled “the secret of life,” microbiologists Kathleen Dana and Daniel Nathans made a lesserknown yet equally groundbreaking discovery. They showed that the restriction enzyme endonuclease R, found in Haemophilus influenzae bacteria, can be used to cut DNA at specifically targeted locations.' This discovery, for which Nathans — together with Hamilton Smith and Werner Arber — received the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, was so remarkable that it would come to be regarded as the first major breakthrough on the path to the deliberate modification of the genome of a living being. A decisive step was taken approximately two years later by Dana and Nathans’ colleagues, Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen,” who became the first scientists to succeed in using Nathans’ cutting technique to isolate a DNA molecule and attach it to a plasmid, a piece of extrachromosomal DNA found in £. coli bacteria, using DNA ligases. Proceeding in this way, they were able to create what is known as a recombinant DNA molecule. The special characteristic of such an artificial DNA molecule is that it can be transferred to any other living organism, where — if all goes well — it will be transcribed, translated, and, ultimately, caused to produce a particular protein. Boyer later founded the biotech company Genentech and used recombinant DNA technology to produce synthetic human insulin. The possibilities inherent to deliberately altering an organism’s genome will obviously allow for many more promising medical applications in the near future, however.

Yet, there is little doubt that the domain which will be most radically affected by these developments in genetics is that of human reproduction.

Kathleen Dana and Daniel Nathans (1971), ‘Specific cleavage of simian virus 40 DNA by restriction endonuclease of Hemophilus influenzae,’ Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 68: 2913-2917. ° Stanley N. Cohen, Annie C. Y. Chang, Herbert W. Boyer and Robert B. Helling (1973), ‘Construction of Biologically Functional Bacterial Plasmids In Vitro,’ Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 70: 3240-3244.

It is true that over the last few decades, this domain has already undergone a number of major changes as a result of the introduction of new technologies such as artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization (IVF). But there are good reasons to assume that genetic modification technologies will bring about even more radical transformations. After all, unlike assisted reproduction technologies, human genetic modification technologies are not intended to improve the chances of new human beings’ coming into being, but to allow us to make decisions about what kind of human beings come into being. That is to say, these technologies will give us the power to endow human beings with specific genetic traits and characteristics. Although these technologies are still very much in their infancy, speculation about their future applications has encompassed significant improvements in the therapies currently available for known genetic disorders and engineered immunity to serious diseases such as cancer and HIV as well as the creation of entirely new biological functions, such as flight and the breeding of a superior race of transhuman beings.’ Whether some, all, or none of these predictions are actually realized remains to be seen. Perhaps scientists are simply too optimistic about where the current revolution in molecular genetics is headed. Nicolas Agar, for example, reminds us that at the beginning of the 20" century, many believed we would be using nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners and growing ready-to-serve portions of chicken by the end of the century.’ Some of the predictions surrounding genetic technologies may also turn out to be products of overactive imaginations, but it could be argued that this is no reason to postpone critical reflection until there is more certainty about what is realistically possible. After all, as has been shown on many occasions, there is always the risk that scientific and technological developments occur so unexpectedly that any thorough discussion about their possible impact is rendered impossible. As Hans Jonas pointed out in the 1970s with regard to genetic engineering, “[s]ince no less than the very nature and image of man are at issue, prudence becomes our first ethical duty, and hypothetical reasoning our first responsibility.”

Yet, if the main question is not if but when these technologies will be available, it would probably be no exaggeration to say that we are on the threshold of a post-Darwinian era in evolution. The central assumption of (Neo-)Darwinism holds that selection only occurs at the genetic

See for example Andy Miah (2008), ‘Engineering Greater Resilience or Radical Transhuman Enhancement?’ Studies in Ethics, Law, and Technology 2 (1): 1-18.

Nicolas Agar, Liberal Eugenics: In Defence of Human Enhancement (Malden, MA/ Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 23.

Hans Jonas, Philosophical Essays. From Ancient Creed to Technological Man (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), 141.

level, in the sense that variations acquired at the somatic level are not passed from one generation to the next. This idea was first formalized in the 19" century by the German biologist August Weismann, who argued that an impermeable barrier exists between the germ cell line and the line of somatic cells. According to Weismann, evolution is a one-way street: germ cells produce somatic cells and are heritable, but somatic cells exert no influence on germ cells and are therefore evolutionary inert. What counts in evolution is the genotype, not the phenotype. In modern biology, a revised version of Weismann’s germplasm theory was formulated by Francis Crick, who called it the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology.‘ The Central Dogma describes the normal flow of biological information in an organism and states that the flow proceeds from DNA to RNA and then to proteins, but not in the reverse order. As there is no back-flow of information from the body to the genome, the only changes that can occur in the genome are random mutations and rearrangements. In other words, any changes that may occur in the body of an individual organism and any knowledge or skills it might acquire during its lifetime are inevitably and irrevocably lost to the species as a whole when the individual organism dies. However, if it is true that Neo-Darwinism is constructed entirely upon the premise that “the genetic program does not take lessons from experience,” then it seems that the emergence of genetic technologies will cause the human species to enter a new phase in evolution. After all, if it is possible to introduce changes in the genome deliberately, then it appears that the genetic program can indeed “take lessons” from experience. Ultimately, as these technologies come to be applied more widely, evolution will no longer occur through natural selection, but through artificial selection.

However, some argue that while it may be true that these technologies are completely new, the goal of deliberate selection is not in fact as revolutionary as it first appears. Clearly, deciding whom we want to have children with already provides us with some measure of control over the genetic characteristics of our children. Moreover, the assisted reproductive technologies that are currently available can also be used for this purpose. A paradigmatic example of an attempt to use assisted reproduction technology for the singular purpose of wielding greater influence over the future of one’s prospective child is the famous Repository for Germinal Choice. Founded in 1978 by the American millionaire Robert K. Graham, the Repository offered access to sperm samples from men who had é Francis Crick (1970), ‘The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology,’ Nature 227: 561-563.

Frangois Jacob, The Logic of Life, trans. Betty E. Stillmann (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), 30.

excelled in their fields to women who hoped that inseminating themselves with the sperm cells of a gifted scientist or successful athlete would give their children a good chance of developing the same traits as their donor-father. However, although it has been reported that at least some of the Repository children came to be about as successful as their donors in later life, many attempts to select specific characteristics have failed because they were not based on scientific knowledge of the genetic foundations underpinning the traits and characteristics the researchers aimed to produce in a child. Unless such procedures are combined with a certain amount of genetic technology, it is highly unlikely that they will yield the desired result. For this reason, but possibly also because the prices were simply too high, the Repository failed to attract enough customers to be profitable and eventually went out of business in 1999.

Perhaps the most fine-tuned procedure currently available for selective reproduction is preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).* The general idea behind PGD is that a number of embryos are first created using IVF and subsequently tested genetically. On the basis of these test results, the prospective parents can choose which of the embryos will be retained for implantation. Of course, this technique presupposes that sufficient information is available about the genetic basis of the condition the parents are interested in. Assuming this is the case, though, PGD is clearly a much more refined technique for selecting a particular type of child than paying a visit to Graham’s Repository. Inevitably, however, there are also some serious disadvantages to PDG. Any procedure that involves the selection of embryos for implantation will also entail a decision about what will happen to the embryos that are not selected. These may be stored and implanted at a later date; used for research purposes; or, given that they possess certain undesired characteristics, simply discarded. This issue raises a number of legal and ethical questions which we shall not explore here.’ It should be clear, though, that PGD requires that parents make a selection not among different versions of one possible future child, but among different possible children who already exist in a premature state. Moreover, PDG restricts prospective parents’ choices to the types of possible future children that would normally be provided by nature; it does not allow them to design a child entirely according to their own wishes. If this were ever to be possible, human genetic modification technologies would be required.