Julian Savulescu's The Principle Of Procreative Beneficence Analysis

Julian Savulescu makes the philosophical claim that people should select the child who is expected to have the best possible life based on the relevant, available information to maximize utility. The aim of this paper is to evaluate and analyze that claim, which he coins the Principle of Procreative Beneficence. I will briefly outline and explain Savulescu’s supporting arguments for claiming why selecting a child without disease traits is morally right; then, I will explain his argument for claiming why selecting for enhancement traits is justified. Afterwards, I will evaluate and challenge his argument, and then acknowledge possible responses to my challenge and the reasons behind it. In order to prove his moral principle, Savulescu first presents to us a situation where we have to pick between a healthy embryo and an embryo with disease traits. Imagine, for example, a couple having IVF in an attempt to have a child. It produces two embryos and both were tested for common diseases; while Embryo A has no abnormalities on the tests performed, Embryo B’s genetic profile reveals a predisposition to develop asthma. He argues that we should not choose Embryo B because asthma ultimately reduces the quality of the …show more content…
If the aim is to give the child the best life possible, the best opportunities would not only be presented to the most intelligent, healthy, athletic, and attractive child, but also to the child with a certain sexual orientation, sex, or race. Imagine, for instance, a society that rewards people for being male, white, tall or heterosexual. According to the Principle of Procreative Beneficence, there is a prima facie obligation then to select children who are male, white, tall, or heterosexual. This phenomenon, while not the cause of social injustice, would exacerbate it as the population of minorities would