Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
J Med Ethics. 2011 Oct;37(10):606-10. doi: 10.1136/jme.2010.041210. Epub 2011 May 5.
The purpose of this paper is to unveil the incompleteness of John Harris' view that parents have a moral obligation to genetically enhance their unborn children. Specifically, here two main conclusions are proposed: (1) at present there exist insufficient empirical data for determining whether prenatal genetic enhancement (PGE) is a moral obligation on prospective parents. Although the purpose of PGE research would be to determine the extent to which PGE is safe and effective, the task of determining the veracity of Harris' premises is impossible to achieve without begging the question; we would be forced to assume the moral permissibility of PGE in order to generate the data that are required for determining its moral standing. So, given this empirical blindness, consequence-based normative frameworks like that of Harris cannot determine the moral standing of PGE, but merely push the question of the moral standing of PGE back a step, without offering any plausible and morally endorsable recourse for how to answer it; (2) even if PGE research were legal, which it is not, parents nevertheless have good reason not to consent to it for their children, especially as participants in the first wave(s) of such research.
本文旨在揭示约翰·哈里斯（John Harris）观点的不完整性，即父母有道德义务对其未出生的孩子进行基因增强。具体来说，这里提出了两个主要结论：（1）目前，尚缺乏足够的经验数据来确定产前基因增强（PGE）是否是准父母的道德义务。尽管 PGE 研究的目的是确定 PGE 在多大程度上是安全有效的，但如果不回避问题，就不可能确定哈里斯前提的真实性；为了生成确定 PGE 道德地位所需的数据，我们将被迫假设 PGE 的道德可允许性。因此，鉴于这种经验上的盲目性，像哈里斯那样基于后果的规范框架不能确定 PGE 的道德地位，而只是将 PGE 的道德地位问题往后推了一步，而没有为如何回答这个问题提供任何合理和在道德上可接受的方法；（2）即使 PGE 研究是合法的（实际上它并不合法），父母也有很好的理由不同意为他们的孩子进行 PGE，尤其是作为此类研究的首批（批）参与者。
