Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have altered various human gene frequencies by inhibiting the fertility of people and groups purported to be inferior or promoting that of those purported to be superior.
Transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement that advocates the enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available new and future technologies that can greatly enhance longevity, cognition, and well-being.
Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health, including those emerging from advances in biology, medicine, and technologies. It proposes the discussion about moral discernment in society and it is often related to medical policy and practice, but also to broader questions as environment, well-being and public health. Bioethics is concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, theology and philosophy. It includes the study of values relating to primary care, other branches of medicine, ethical education in science, animal, and environmental ethics, and public health.
Nick Bostrom is a philosopher known for his work on existential risk, the anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, whole brain emulation, superintelligence risks, and the reversal test. He was the founding director of the now dissolved Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford and is now Principal Researcher at the Macrostrategy Research Initiative.
New eugenics, also known as liberal eugenics, advocates enhancing human characteristics and capacities through the use of reproductive technology and human genetic engineering. Those who advocate new eugenics generally think selecting or altering embryos should be left to the preferences of parents, rather than forbidden. "New" eugenics purports to distinguish itself from the forms of eugenics practiced and advocated in the 20th century, which fell into disrepute after World War II.
Ectogenesis is the growth of an organism in an artificial environment, outside the body in which it would normally be found, such as the growth of an embryo or fetus outside the mother's body, or the growth of bacteria outside the body of a host. The term was coined by British scientist J. B. S. Haldane in 1924.
A designer baby is a baby whose genetic makeup has been selected or altered, often to exclude a particular gene or to remove genes associated with disease. This process usually involves analysing a wide range of human embryos to identify genes associated with particular diseases and characteristics, and selecting embryos that have the desired genetic makeup; a process known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Screening for single genes is commonly practiced, and polygenic screening is offered by a few companies. Other methods by which a baby's genetic information can be altered involve directly editing the genome before birth, which is not routinely performed and only one instance of this is known to have occurred as of 2019, where Chinese twins Lulu and Nana were edited as embryos, causing widespread criticism.
Many of the tropes of science fiction can be viewed as similar to the goals of transhumanism. Science fiction literature contains many positive depictions of technologically enhanced human life, occasionally set in utopian societies. However, science fiction's depictions of technologically enhanced humans or other posthuman beings frequently come with a cautionary twist. The more pessimistic scenarios include many dystopian tales of human bioengineering gone wrong.
Human enhancement is the natural, artificial, or technological alteration of the human body in order to enhance physical or mental capabilities.
Julian Savulescu is an Australian philosopher and bioethicist. He is Chen Su Lan Centennial Professor in Medical Ethics and director of the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at National University of Singapore. He was previously Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, and co-director of the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities. He is visiting professorial fellow in Biomedical Ethics at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Australia, and distinguished visiting professor in law at Melbourne University since 2017. He directs the Biomedical Ethics Research Group and is a member of the Centre for Ethics of Pediatric Genomics in Australia. He is a former editor and current board member of the Journal of Medical Ethics, which is ranked as the No.2 journal in bioethics worldwide by Google Scholar Metrics, as of 2022. In addition to his background in applied ethics and philosophy, he also has a background in medicine and neuroscience and completed his MBBS (Hons) and BMedSc at Monash University, graduating top of his class with 18 of 19 final year prizes in Medicine. He edits the Oxford University Press book series, the Uehiro Series in Practical Ethics.
Posthuman or post-human is a concept originating in the fields of science fiction, futurology, contemporary art, and philosophy that means a person or entity that exists in a state beyond being human. The concept aims at addressing a variety of questions, including ethics and justice, language and trans-species communication, social systems, and the intellectual aspirations of interdisciplinarity.
In philosophy and bioethics, potential (future) person has been defined as an entity which is not currently a person but which is capable of developing into a person, given certain biologically and/or technically possible conditions. The term unconceived has also been used in a similar sense, but does not necessarily include the capability of being conceived or developing into a person.
Transhumanist politics constitutes a group of political ideologies that generally express the belief in improving human individuals through science and technology. Specific topics include space migration, and cryogenic suspension. It is considered the opposing ideal to the concept of bioconservatism, as Transhumanist politics argue for the use of all technology to enhance human individuals.
The nonidentity problem in population ethics is the problem that an act may still be wrong even if it is not wrong for anyone. More precisely, the nonidentity problem is the inability to simultaneously hold the following beliefs: (1) a person-affecting view; (2) bringing someone into existence whose life is worth living, albeit flawed, is not "bad for" that person; (3) some acts of bringing someone into existence are wrong even if they are not bad for someone. Rivka Weinberg has used the nonidentity problem to study the ethics of reproduction.
Jan Deckers works in bioethics at Newcastle University. His work revolves mainly around three topics: animal ethics, reproductive ethics and embryo research, and ethics of genetics.
Human germline engineering is the process by which the genome of an individual is edited in such a way that the change is heritable. This is achieved by altering the genes of the germ cells, which then mature into genetically modified eggs and sperm. For safety, ethical, and social reasons, there is broad agreement among the scientific community and the public that germline editing for reproduction is a red line that should not be crossed at this point in time. There are differing public sentiments, however, on whether it may be performed in the future depending on whether the intent would be therapeutic or non-therapeutic.
S. Matthew Liao is a Taiwanese-American philosopher specializing in bioethics and normative ethics. Liao currently holds the Arthur Zitrin Chair of Bioethics, and is the Director of the Center for Bioethics and Affiliated Professor in the Department of Philosophy at New York University. He has previously held appointments at Oxford, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, and Princeton.
Bioconservatism is a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes caution and restraint in the use of biotechnologies, particularly those involving genetic manipulation and human enhancement. The term "bioconservatism" is a portmanteau of the words biology and conservatism.
Moral enhancement, also called moral bioenhancement, is the use of biomedical technology to morally improve individuals. MBE is a growing topic in neuroethics, a field developing the ethics of neuroscience as well as the neuroscience of ethics. After Thomas Douglas introduced the concept of MBE in 2008, its merits have been widely debated in academic bioethics literature. Since then, Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu have been among the most vocal MBE supporters. Much of the debate over MBE has focused on Persson and Savulescu's 2012 book in support of it, Unfit for the Future? The Need for Moral Enhancement.
The eradication or abolition of suffering is the concept of using biotechnology to create a permanent absence of involuntary pain and suffering in all sentient beings.
