Breakthroughs in genetics presents both the promise that physicians might be able to treat and prevent a host of debilitating diseases and the predicament that the newfound genetic knowledge might enable the people to manipulate human nature. Sandel discusses the issues regarding designer children, bionic athletes, and genetic engineering.

Michael J. Sandel, a professor of political philosophy at Harvard and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, writes about genetic engineering in the April issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Subscription required for access to full text, or pick up a copy at a newsstand near you. A few excerpts:

The genomic revolution has induced a kind of moral vertigo. In order to grapple with the ethics of enhancement, we need to confront questions largely lost from view -- questions about the moral status of nature, and about the proper stance of human beings toward the given world.

The fundamental question is not how to ensure equal access to enhancement but whether we should aspire to it in the first place.

The problem is not the drift to mechanism but the drive to mastery. And what the drive to mastery misses and may even destroy is an appreciation of the gifted character of human powers and achievements.

The problem is not that parents usurp the autonomy of a child they design. The problem lies in the hubris of the designing parents, in their drive to master the mystery of birth.

We used to speak of nonmedical drug use as "recreational." That term no longer applies. The steroids and stimulants that figure in the enhancement debate are not a source of recreation but a bid for compliance -- a way of answering a competitive society's demand to improve our performance and perfect our nature.

What would be lost if biotechnology dissolved our sense of giftedness?

The Case Against Perfection | The Atlantic, April 2004