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The tempting illusion of genetic virtue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Athena Andreadis
Athena Andreadis*
Affiliation:
Department of Cell Biology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, 55 Lake Avenue North, Worcester, MA 01655 [email protected]
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Extract

Mark Walker has put forth a proposal which he calls the Genetic Virtue Program or GVP, whose kernel is that it is both possible and desirable to improve virtue by preimplantation selection or in utero engineering. Walker lists caveats to his thesis, although he consistently implies that their validity is doubtful by stating at each instance that he is including them “merely for the sake of completeness.”

Type
Forum: Genetic virtue, reconsidered
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 76 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

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References

1.Walker, Mark, “Enhancing genetic virtue: A project for twenty-first century humanity?” Politics and the Life Sciences 2009, 28(2): 27–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2.Butcher, Lee M., Davis, Oliver S. P., Craig, Ian W., and Plomin, Robert, “Genome-wide quantitative trait locus association scan of general cognitive ability using pooled DNA and 500K single nucleotide polymorphism microarrays,” Genes, Brain and Behavior 2008, 7(4): 435–446.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3.For more on this issue, see my essay, Of mice and men, http://www.starshipreckless.com/blog/?p=578Google Scholar
4.Moore, Jason H. and Williams, Scott M., “Epistasis and its implications for personal genetics,” American Journal of Human Genetics 2009, 85:309–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5.Beckwith, Jon, Making Genes, Making Waves: A Social Activist in Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6.Fausto-Sterling, Anne, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (New York: Basic Books, 2000).Google Scholar
7.Risch, Neil, Herrell, Richard, Lehner, Thomas, Liang, Kung-Yee, Eaves, Lindon, Hoh, Josephine, Griem, Andrea, Kovacs, Maria, Ott, Jurg, and Merikangas, Kathleen Ries, “Interaction between the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR), stressful life events, and risk of depression: A meta-analysis,” JAMA 2009, 301(23): 2462–2471. See also, Moncrieff, Joanna, The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8.For more on this issue, see my essay, Why our brains will never live in the Matrix, http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/ghost-shell-why-our-brains-will-never-live-matrixGoogle Scholar