Genethics: moral issues in the creation of people

Abstract

Unprecedented advances in medicine, genetic engineering and demographic forecasting raise new questions of traditional ethical theories. Do potential people have rights? Can a child that is born handicapped sue the parents? Have people living in the present any moral obligation to future generations and populations, including the obligation to continue the race? This book is a systematic exposition of moral principles that can guide our decisions concerning the existence, number and identity of future people. David Heyd claims that potential people do not have moral status. Reproductive choices must therefore be guided only by the rational desires and values of those who already exist. Heyd's approach resolves many paradoxes in intergenerational justice, while offering a major test case for the profound problems of the limits of ethics and the nature of value.