ABSTRACT
Human genetic engineering (HGE), the intentional transformation of genes in the body or the descendants of a person through chemical manipulation, has long been the most controversial of the various technologies that could be used to change the genetic constitution of humans. This is because, unlike other means of influencing the genetic characteristics of a person, the term ‘engineering’ has suggested a precision not found in other techniques. However, while its advocates and critics continue to predict that HGE will give humans unprecedented powers to self-design our species, attempts to actually engage in HGE have led to frustration. Yet research and ethical debate continue apace. The debate has come full circle in the past 50 or so years. In the reform eugenics
debate of the 1950s many participants advocated seizing control of the genetic constitution of the human species. This brought much controversy to the issue, and by the early 1970s a number of conceptual distinctions were created with the effect of making some types of HGE a matter of ethical debate while making other types seem to be a part of medicine and thus no more controversial than any other medical research. Since then these concepts have been continuously modified to bring more and more instances of HGE under the aegis of ‘medicine’. Today, what is left to controversy is a very restricted set of genetic enhancements very similar to what was being advocated in the 1950s.
