Reproductive choice, enhancement, and the moral continuum argument

The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy
Erik Malmqvist

Abstract

It is often argued that it does not matter morally whether biomedical interventions treat or prevent diseases or enhance nondisease traits; what matters is whether and how much they promote well-being. Therapy and enhancement both promote well-being, the argument goes, so they are not morally distinct but instead continuous. I provide three reasons why this argument should be rejected when it is applied to choices concerning the genetic makeup of future people. First, it rests on too simple a conception of the badness of disease. Second, it wrongly assumes that disease avoidance and enhancement can proceed with similar accuracy. Third, it overlooks that disease avoidance tends to be more urgent than enhancement from the point of view of distributive justice. Although none of these reasons establishes a firm therapy-enhancement distinction, they show that a continuum model is not an attractive alternative.

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Feb 19, 2011·The Hastings Center Report·Erik Malmqvist

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Citations

Jul 31, 2016·The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy·John Skalko, Mark J Cherry
Jan 11, 2014·The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy·Laurence B McCullough
Oct 11, 2015·The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy·Ben Saunders
Oct 12, 2017·BMC Medical Ethics·Bjørn Hofmann
Apr 11, 2021·Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy·Jon RuedaFrancisco Lara

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