The Ethics for a Geneticist of the Genetic Engineering of Humans

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26 July 2010

The Ethics for a Geneticist of the Genetic Engineering of Humans

The vast developments in the genetic engineering of humans present opportunities and ethical challenges (Sandel 5 . There are opportunities of preventing numerous incapacitating diseases through genetic screening and stem cell therapy , but there are also ethical challenges that implicate disquieting ' notions of fallible human beings playing God and risks of violating the rights of children to autonomy (McLean 723 Sandel 8 Talbot 40 . Geneticists are particularly burdened to consider

ethical issues and their implications , because they are the designers ' of this new science (Mao 690 . On the other hand , there is scant literature on the code of ethics of geneticists , who work in the human engineering sector . This is most likely because of the view among scholars and geneticists that there are benefits and drawbacks of forming a standard code of ethics (Grey 55 Kettner 152 Wertz and Fletcher 277 . There is currently no universal code of ethics for geneticists , although international agencies provided a number of codes of ethics that aim to guide geneticists in their line of human genetic engineering work . This paper explores these codes of ethics and particularly , it discusses : 1 ) their advantages and disadvantages , and 2 ) examples of codes of ethics . It argues that there is a need for a universal code of ethics for geneticists that will serve advantages for society and science

A code of ethics is already a given for numerous professions , such as...