Enriching, Rather than Revising, the Conceptual Toolbox on Germline Interventions

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This article refers to:

Revising, Correcting, and Transferring Genes

Notes

1 It is sometimes assumed that the distinction between treatment, prevention, and enhancement describes discrete, mutually incompatible categories of intervention. However, as I have argued in the wake of other authors, this assumption is mistaken. We should rather view these categories as overlapping to some extent. While there may be “pure” instances of each, there are also hybrid cases: preventive enhancements, such as vaccinations (including genetic vaccination of the kind attempted by He), and therapeutic or curative enhancements, as in the case of someone with myopia who undergoes LASIK surgery and ends up with better than 20/20 vision. See e.g. Wolbring et al. 2013; Erler, 2017; and Juengst, 2017.