Here’s the question we asked UFI readers:
“If genetic engineering were to give parents the ability to screen out ‘personality flaws’ in their children, would you take advantage of it?”
Here’s how readers responded:
0 Percent Yes
97 Percent No
3 Percent Unsure
If given the opportunity, it’s pretty clear that UFI readers would have no interest in tinkering with their children’s personalities via genetic engineering. But an Oxford professor thinks that you have a “moral obligation” to do so. After all, it is only responsible parenting to create “ethically better children,” Professor Julian Savulescu claims.
Through what he calls “rational design” he thinks we could have less violent, more intelligent, more pleasant people – in short, a better society. Evidently the technology to accomplish this is close at hand.
Professor Savulescu argues that there is no reason why we shouldn’t be willing and indeed, motivated, to create people who are less likely to harm themselves and others. You can read more about it here. And then tell us what you think?
Good idea? Bad idea? and why.