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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2015-11-15 21:51, spike wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:005901d11fef$d281c5e0$778551a0$@att.net"
type="cite">
Anders, somewhere in the discussion of ethics on this activity we
should see
someone mention externalizing risk onto society.</blockquote>
Yup. That seems to be a natural limitation of enhancement. If I
enhance myself but it makes everybody unsafe, it is not a good
enhancement. Then again, state responses to enhancement may also be
causing externalized risks that are not on par with the benefit (the
war on drugs is a good example). <br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:005901d11fef$d281c5e0$778551a0$@att.net"
type="cite">
In the creation of designer babies, it is hard to deny that we
externalize
risk onto society, for if it goes really wrong in unforeseen ways,
the
parents would exhaust their own resources with plenty of big
expenses left
afterwards. </blockquote>
<br>
Designer babies are an issue where my current morphological freedom
framework has trouble. I like Julian Savulescu's Principle of
Procreative Beneficence, but how to balance it with risk is
something I don't know how to do properly. <br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:005901d11fef$d281c5e0$778551a0$@att.net"
type="cite">On the other hand, it is unclear the federal
government has the
authority to prohibit experimentation of this kind. States can,
but at
least some will not. <br>
</blockquote>
<br>
In many legal systems the state actually claims implicit ownership
over citizen bodies. Committing mayhem has sometimes been regarded
as an offence against the state, by depriving it of an able body. <br>
<br>
A more modern interpretation is applying the harm principle: some
experimentation is not allowed because it infringes on the rights of
the child. Some philosophical arguments here about pre-persons and
who the right-infringed child actually are (the child that would
have been born, or the one that actually is born?)<br>
<i></i><br>
<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University
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