You Can't Go Wrong With Fish And

It's True That To Speak Of An Ethic Of Giftedness, Which Is Very Much The Ethic That I Deploy In Raising Questions About Designer Children And Genetic Engineering - An Appreciation Of The Giftedness Of The Child Or The Giftedness Of Life Does Have Religious Resonance, Because A Great Many Religious Traditions Emphasize The Sense In Which The Good Things In Life Are Not All Our Own Doing; They Are Gifts From God.

I Think It Would Be A Great Tragedy To Devote Medical Resources And Genetic Technological Breakthroughs To Purposes That Are Not To Do With Health Or Medicine, But Instead Are To Do With Satisfying The Desires That Are Created By The Consumer Society.

There's No Necessary Connection Between Maximizing Social Utility Or Economic Wealth And Creating A Flourishing Democracy. The First Does Not Guarantee The Second. The Only Way To Create A Flourishing Democracy Is To Find Ways To Reason Together About The Big Questions, Including Hard Questions About Justice And The Common Good, To Reason Together About These Questions So That We As Citizens Can Decide How To Shape The Forces That Govern Our Lives.

The Relief Of Suffering Is A Great Good. The Curing Of Illness And Disease - These Are Great Human Goods. This Is The Mission Of Medicine.

The Other Effect That I Worry About Is The Effect On The Parent, That The Moral Teaching Of Humility And Of The Limits To Our Control That Parenthood Teaches- - That That Will Be Lost And That We Will Begin To Think Of Children More As Consumer Goods Than As Gifts That We Can't Fully Control And For Which We Aren't Fully Responsible.