Procreative Beneficence

The advances of Reproductive Assistance Technologies (ARTs), such as In vitro Fertilisation (IVF) and Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) have established a broad platform for debate, which until recently has focused mostly on the moral permissibility of using these technologies for the detection of non-disease genes, those which cause a physical or psychological state not associated with disease, such as sex and tissue type (Stoller 2008, 364). However, in his article “Procreative Beneficence: Why we should select the best children” Savulescu widened the scope of this debate, arguing that the use of PGD in this manner is not only morally acceptable but a moral obligation for prospective parents. He contends that all genetic information, both disease and non-disease, should be utilised to ensure prospective parents have the best child that it is possible for them to have. This essay argues that Savulescu is incorrect in his assertion that prospective parents should have the best child it is possible for them to have and his Principle of Procreative Beneficence (PPB) should therefore be rejected for a number of reasons. Firstly, the principle indirectly, yet unavoidably, impacts on various aspects of the reproductive autonomy of prospective parents and is therefore immoral in what it advocates. Secondly, since PPB has its theoretical foundation in the notion of impersonal harm (Bennett 2009, 266), and requires parents to become complacent with oppression of minority groups, it unavoidably parallels the motives of the “old” eugenics of the 1930’s (Sparrow 2007, 51). Finally, Savulescu not only over exaggerates the moral obligation parents have toward their children in his account of PPB, but also fails to adequately prove that his believed moral obligation truly exists, and thus his argument loses its credibility with prospective parents.

Savulescu defines his PPB as:

Couples (or single reproducers) should select the child, of all possible children they