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Presentation at Gender and Justice in the Gene Age, New York, NY
I'm going to focus on two questions:
1 - Who is advocating genetic enhancement of future children and generations / what do they mean?
2 - Why is it that some progressives and feminists don't share our concerns about this advocacy?
Many of you know that about five or six years ago - less than a decade after the introduction of PGD - a disturbing number of influential U.S. scientists, bioethicists, biotech entrepreneurs, and others began an active campaign to promote germline engineering and other forms of inheritable genetic modification, for the explicit purpose of 'enhancing' or 'improving' future children.
Some of them predict that, within a generation, "enhanced" babies will be born with increased resistance to diseases, optimized height and weight, and enhanced metabolic function and muscle mass. Farther off, but within the lifetimes of today's children, they foresee the ability to adjust personality, extend life expectancy, and increased intelligence.
These advocates are not marginal figures like the "cowboy cloners" who maneuvered so much media attention with...