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Johnson T. Enhancing the collectivist critique: accounts of the human enhancement debate. Med Health Care Philos. 2021;24(4):721-730doi: 10.1007/s11019-021-10030-7.
Johnson, T. (2021). Enhancing the collectivist critique: accounts of the human enhancement debate. Medicine, health care, and philosophy, 24(4), 721-730. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-021-10030-7
Johnson, Tess. "Enhancing the collectivist critique: accounts of the human enhancement debate." Medicine, health care, and philosophy vol. 24,4 (2021): 721-730. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-021-10030-7
Johnson T. Enhancing the collectivist critique: accounts of the human enhancement debate. Med Health Care Philos. 2021 Dec;24(4):721-730. doi: 10.1007/s11019-021-10030-7. Epub 2021 Jun 16. PMID: 34132941; PMCID: PMC8557146.
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Med Health Care Philos. 2021 Dec;24(4):721-730. doi: 10.1007/s11019-021-10030-7. Epub 2021 Jun 16.

Enhancing the collectivist critique: accounts of the human enhancement debate.

Medicine, health care, and philosophy

Tess Johnson

Affiliations

  1. Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. [email protected].

PMID: 34132941 PMCID: PMC8557146 DOI: 10.1007/s11019-021-10030-7

Abstract

Individualist ethical analyses in the enhancement debate have often prioritised or only considered the interests and concerns of parents and the future child. The collectivist critique of the human enhancement debate argues that rather than pure individualism, a focus on collectivist, or group-level ethical considerations is needed for balanced ethical analysis of specific enhancement interventions. Here, I defend this argument for the insufficiency of pure individualism. However, existing collectivist analyses tend to take a negative approach that hinders them from adequately contributing to balanced ethical analysis, and often leads to a prohibitive stance. I argue this is due to two common problems with collectivist analyses: inappropriate acceptance of individualist assumptions, and failure to appropriately weigh individual vs collective ethical considerations. To further develop the collectivist critique in the enhancement debate, I suggest we may look to collectivism in public health ethics, which avoids these problems.

© 2021. The Author(s).

Keywords: Collectivism; Genome editing; Human enhancement; Individualism; Medical ethics

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