Publication Details

Abstract

The recent, extremely dynamic development of modern methods of biotechnological manipulation of genes, including human germline genes, presents new challenges to philosophers and especially bioethicists with unprecedented urgency. Until recently, many of these issues have been the subject of science fiction, and neither biologists nor bioethicists have expected them to be occuring now rather than in the distant future. It can be assumed that germline gene editing (together with progress in understanding of the human genome) will bring in the near future empirical knowledge, which will put the current philosophical concepts of human nature (based primarily on the speculative philosophical tradition) to the test.