Michael J. Sandel's The Case Against Perfection

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In Michael J. Sandel’s “The Case against Perfection,” the author looks at the idea of genetic engineering as a human dignity issue, but many people do not know how genetic engineering diminishes us. Michael J. Sandel takes an unbiased look at genetic engineering while questioning society’s standards and morality. According to Sandel, the question of ethics is a social matter that needs to question why different situations bring society to accept or deny the ideas of the genetic engineering. The example used by Sandel, was about two deaf parents who wanted a deaf child to and sought out a donor to make this possible. Many people called to question that this was inflicting a disability on purpose, or purely that they wanted a child that was similar to them (234). In the next few weeks according to Sandel, a family put an advertisement for wanting egg that had very specific features (234). One of the biggest issues of genetic engineering is the idea of making a child that is in the parents mind a “better” child, this may include being more athletic, having a higher IQ score, or a specific physical feature.…show more content…
Many scientist say that using genetics to clone will be unsafe and lead to the abnormalities and birth defects. Much of society also believes that it’s the child’s right to autonomy and the change in genes would lead to certain life choices causing the violation of right to choose (Sandel 236). The issue with this argument is that people don’t have a choice in the physical features people have when born. Autonomy explains the issue of gene engineering of others, but does not explain the issue of morals for enhancing
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