The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering

Sandel opens with the story of Sharon Duchesneau and Candy McCullough, a Deaf lesbian couple who deliberately sought out a Deaf sperm donor when they conceived their child in 2002. Their decision caused an uproar among hearing people who, unlike Duchesneau and McCullough, viewed Deafness as a disability rather than a cultural identity. Sandel notes that, around the same time, another couple put out a call for an egg donor who was “five feet, ten inches tall, athletic, without major family medical problems, and [with] a combined SAT score of 1400 or above” (2). Sandel finds it ironic that this ad caused no controversy, while Duchesneau and McCullough faced intense backlash. Sandel asks why one is different from the other. Sandel then tells another story, about a woman who, in 2003, paid $50,000 to have her cat cloned. The process worked, raising inevitable questions about the possibility of cloning human beings.

As genetic technology advances in the coming years, Sandel notes, it may become possible for parents to choose their children’s genetic makeup before they are born. Cloning has been possible since 1997, although Dolly, the first cloned sheep, lived a short life. If cloning and genetic alterations were completely safe, would they be ethical? Sandel first addresses the argument of autonomy: the argument that choosing a child’s genome means that the child cannot live a fully free life.