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J Value Inquiry (2011) 45:351357 DOI 10.1007/s10790-011-9288-7
BOOK REVIEW
Stephen Wilkinson, Choosing Tomorrows Children:
The Ethics of Selective Reproduction
Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2010. ISBN: 978-0199273966, $60 Hbk
Katherine Bliss Teubl
Published online: 31 August 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
Articial reproductive technologies (ART) offer an alluring promise: this generation could select or perhaps even design the next. Some have greeted this promise with great hope, others with great unease. In Choosing Tomorrows Children, Stephen Wilkinson addresses this unease, arguing that selective reproduction is permissible in all but a few cases. By selective reproduction, he means attempting to create one possible future child rather than a different possible future child. (p. 2) Both laymen and philosophers who wish to understand the ethical issues surrounding selective reproduction, will nd Wilkinsons book a useful guide. They will also nd that Wilkinsons philosophical assumptions deeply inuence his approach to bioethics. It is disappointing that he does not offer any basis for these assumptions. Those who share his assumptions will understand what conclusions they should hold; those who disagree with his assumptions will nd most of his conclusions implausible. Finally, those already familiar with the literature in this eld are not likely to nd Wilkinsons book useful: he summarizes an impressive number of key arguments present in the literature but introduces almost no new ones.
Wilkinson opens his book with a brief word about his philosophical methodology; he then spends the remainder of his book addressing seven key arguments, as well as numerous minor ones, that carry implications for selective reproduction. Bioethicists frequently approach an ethical problem by selecting and defending a particular moral theory, applying its tenets to the issue at hand, and then drawing conclusions. Wilkinson believes this approach is too slow and its results too indeterminate: Bioethicists (not to mention the recipients of bioethics research, such as practitioners and policymakers) face pressing moral, legal, and policy issues now, issues that must be decided one way or another in a relatively short time frame (p. 10). He concludes that bioethicists should leave this top down theory driven method to the philosophers (p. 10). They are well-prepared by the history of
K. B. Teubl (&)
New York University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected]
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