GENETIC SCREENING AND SELFHOOD

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. See, in particular, Robertson (1994 Robertson, John A. 1994. Children of choice: Freedom and the new reproductive technologies, Princeton: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar]). 2. See, for instance, Buchanan et al. (2000 Buchanan, Allen, Dan, W. Brock, Norman, Daniels and Daniel, Wikler. 2000. From chance to choice: Genetics and justice, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and Resnik (1997 Resnik, David B. 1997. Genetic engineering and social justice: A Rawlsian approach. Social Theory and Practice, 23(3): 427–49. [Crossref], [PubMed] , [Google Scholar]). 3. While there is much fantastic and philosophical speculation about enhancing desirable traits such as intelligence, memory and physical agility and endurance, at least for now, genetic modification is technically more in the realm of gene replacement therapy and epigenetics, which permits the regulation of gene expression. 4. See Fukuyama (2003 Fukuyama, Francis. 2003. Our posthuman future: Consequences of the biotechnology revolution, London: Profile Books. [Google Scholar]). 5. There is, however, a considerable amount of slippage throughout Habermas's essay and he does not always remain within the limits of this epistemic approach. 6. It should be noted that I use the term ‘epistemic regimes’ in reference to Michel Foucault's analysis of the modern ‘episteme’ in books such as The Order of Things (1970 Foucault, Michel. 1970. The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences, New York: Random House. [Google Scholar]), though I am not suggesting that the details of his analysis need be adopted. 7. See Nancy's ‘Introduction’ to Who Comes After the Subject? (1991). 8. Although Nancy references Arendt infrequently, he does acknowledge the significance of her reflections on ‘human plurality’, especially in relation to Heidegger. Related to this, his emphasis on the notion of ‘who’ and on birth draws on Arendt, as do his reflections on spacing in the book The Experience of Freedom (1995). It should be noted that Nancy's reflections on ontology and ethics constitute an extremely complex and often allusive engagement with the Western philosophical tradition, and especially with Kant, Hegel and Heidegger. My comments on his work are brief and necessarily leave much to be explained further. 9. See Nancy (2000 Nancy , Jean-Luc 2000 . Being singular plural . Translated by Robert D. Richardson and Anne E. O'Byrne . Stanford : Stanford University Press .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) for a further explication of the notion of singularity and its necessary relation to co-presence or ‘being-with’, itself a central idea in his extension of Arendt. 10. On the issue of how the notion of singularity relates to conceptions of the subject, see especially Nancy's ‘Introduction’ to Who Comes After the Subject? (1991 Derrida, Jacques. 1991. “‘Eating well,’ or the calculation of the subject”. In Who comes after the subject?, Edited by: Eduardo, Cadava, Peter, Connor and Jean-Luc, Nancy. New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]) and, in the same volume, the interview with Jacques Derrida: ‘“Eating well,” or the calculation of the subject’. See also Nancy (1995). 11. This depends in part on the breadth of one's definition of the ‘technological’. 12. I emphasise ‘child’ here because, on the face of it, PGD does allow that embryos—or rather pre-embryos—be treated as fungible. 13. I am presupposing the success of the PGD and IVF process to make my point here, which in practice is far from guaranteed. For an insightful empirical study of the use of PGD in the United Kingdom, see Franklin and Roberts (2006 Franklin, Sarah and Roberts, Celia. 2006. Born and made: An ethnography of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, Princeton: Princeton University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]).