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by vikramkr 2295 days ago
Yes, scientifically rigorous does not equal moral. And the eugenics debate is coming up in a different form now with Gene therapy. From a moral perspective, I don't know of any genuine and sincere arguments that we should not genetically engineer an infant who was born with a devastating genetic disease. If we can cure sickle cell for example, we of anything have a moral imperative to. But, that technically lies under the umbrella of eugenics. It raises questions of what is a disease - if blue eyes (or, more realistically, dark skin) lead to discrimination in society, is that enough of a disadvantage to be worth engineering a child to have brown eyes or white skin? In general the consensus is no. So where is the middle ground? Or, is it a false question and fixing sickle cell is not even on the same sliding scale as changing skin color? We don't know the answers yet, but these are active moral and ethical questions that are technically under the umbrella of eugenics that we need to answer.