The Pursuit of Perfection: A Debate on the Ethics of Genetic Engineering

Transcript

MICHAEL SANDEL: The topic of genetic engineering and enhancement as public policy forums go is admittedly an arcane, even rarified, subject.

It is interesting. I have only just begun to learn about genetic engineering, partly—largely, really, through my being confronted with some of these questions, as we all have been on the President's Council, but what drew me to the subject beyond the intrinsic interest of the question of remaking, reengineering ourselves and our nature is that it forces us to think about some big questions, questions even bigger than genetics and genetic enhancement, questions that really go to the terms of political discourse, questions that go to the way we conceive our public philosophy or our public ethic.

While I will try to lay out an argument here about genetic engineering, I want to do it in a way that at least invites us to have a discussion about those bigger questions of our reigning public ethic.

Just to start from people's gut-level reactions to news of genetic enhancement, most people find at least some forms of genetic engineering disquieting, but it is not easy to articulate the source of our unease. It is not easy to explain exactly what it is that we find troubling about it, and that fact has something to do, it seems to me, with the terms in which we think about morality, ethics, and politics.

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