Abstract

Would direct genetic modification of human embryos affect the welfare of future persons? Robert Sparrow’s approach to answering this question adopts Parfit’s distinction between two types of genetic intervention: “person affecting” and “identity affecting.” Sparrow’s argument is dubious along several dimensions. First, it presupposes that all persons share the same understanding the term human genetic identity. Second, Sparrow examines human identity solely as a genetic phenomenon. Third, there is no empirical evidence that parents, choosing among fertilized embryos, or contemplating the editing of embryonic germline cells, are guided in their choices by distinguishing between somatic and germline engineering. So by adopting Parfit’s approach, Sparrow neither describes how parents actually think nor captures parental motivation. If Parfit’s distinction remains useless for practical ethics, then Sparrow’s conclusion — that genome editing is not person affecting and hence neither benefits nor harms the future person — lacks practical import for the understandings and motivations of parents choosing among different forms of genetic manipulation. I develop an alternative: dignity as the decisional autonomy of future persons, held in trust by the current generation at the point of genetic manipulation. A future person likely would embrace embryonal editing if, for example, it were to overcome what otherwise would be a political disability: a genetically based incapacity (such as severe cognitive disability) for decisional autonomy. And I show how essentialist understandings of human identity render possible agreement on urgent bioethical issues even more difficult than it would otherwise be. I offer a more plausible basis for agreement: a naturalistic understanding of human nature, construed politically as the self-understanding of the human species in response to the question: To what kind of human nature should we humans aspire?