Robert Sparrow

A series of recent scientific results suggest that, in the not-too-distant future, it will be possible to create viable human gametes from human stem cells. This paper discusses the potential of this technology to make possible what I call ‘in vitro eugenics’: the deliberate breeding of human beings in vitro by fusing sperm and egg derived from different stem-cell lines to create an embryo and then deriving new gametes from stem cells derived from that embryo. Repeated iterations of this process would allow scientists to proceed through multiple human generations in the laboratory. In vitro eugenics might be used to study the heredity of genetic disorders and to produce cell lines of a desired character for medical applications. More controversially, it might also function as a powerful technology of ‘human enhancement’ by allowing researchers to use all the techniques of selective breeding to produce individuals with a desired genotype

Arming uninhabited vehicles is an increasing trend. Widespread deployment can bring dangers for arms-control agreements and international humanitarian law. Armed UVs can destabilise the situation between potential opponents. Smaller systems can be used for terrorism. Using a systematic definition existing international regulation of armed UVs in the fields of arms control, export control and transparency measures is reviewed; these partly include armed UVs, but leave large gaps. For preventive arms control a general prohibition of armed UVs would be best. If that is unattainable, several measures should be taken. An explicit prohibition of autonomous attack, that is without a human decision, should be added to IHL. Concerning armed UVs remotely controlled by a human soldier, recommendations differ according to type or mission. New kinds of uninhabited nuclear-weapon carriers should be banned. Space weapons should be prohibited in general. UVs smaller than 0.2–0.5 m should be banned. Bigger remotely controlled armed UVs not equipped with weapons of mass destruction should be subject to numerical limitations in various categories. For these the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe is an important precedent.

Disability activists influenced by queer theory and advocates of “human enhancement” have each disputed the idea that what is “normal” is normatively significant, which currently plays a key role in the regulation of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Previously, I have argued that the only way to avoid the implication that parents have strong reasons to select children of one sex (most plausibly, female) over the other is to affirm the moral significance of sexually dimorphic human biological norms. After outlining the logic that generates this conclusion, I investigate the extent to which it might also facilitate an alternative, progressive, opening up of the notion of the normal and of the criteria against which we should evaluate the relative merits of different forms of embodiment. This paper therefore investigates the implications of ideas derived from queer theory for the future of PGD and of PGD for the future of queerness

The risk posed to the community by possible xenozoonosis after xenotransplantation suggests that some form of 'community consent' is required before whole organ animal-to-human xenotransplantation should take place. I argue that this requirement places greater obstacles in the path of ethical xenotransplantation than has previously been recognised. The relevant community is global and there are no existing institutions with democratic credentials sufficient to establish this consent. The distribution of the risks and benefits from xenotransplantation also means that consent is unlikely to be forthcoming. Proceeding on the basis of hypothetical consent to a package of global health measures that includes xenotransplantation, as Rothblatt has recently advocated, is more problematic than she acknowledges. Given that it may place the lives of citizens of poor nations at risk to benefit the citizens of wealthy nations, xenotransplantation raises significant questions of international justice.

This paper analyses rhetorics of scientific and corporate enthusiasm surrounding nanotechnology. I argue that enthusiasts for nanotechnologies often try to have it both ways on questions concerning the nature and possible impact of these technologies, and the inevitability of their development and use. In arguments about their nature and impact we are simultaneously informed that these are revolutionary technologies with the potential to profoundly change the world and that they merely represent the extension of existing technologies. They are revolutionary and familiar. In debates surrounding possible regulation of these technologies it is claimed both that their development is inevitable, so that regulation would be fruitless, and that increased research funding and legislative changes are necessary in order that we can enjoy their benefits. That is, they are inevitable and precarious. An increased awareness of these rhetorical contradictions may allow us better to assess the likely impact and future of nanotechnology.

A claim about continuing technological progress plays an essential, if unacknowledged, role in the philosophical literature on “human enhancement.” I argue that—should it eventuate—continuous improvement in enhancement technologies may prove more bane than benefit. A rapid increase in the power of available enhancements would mean that each cohort of enhanced individuals will find itself in danger of being outcompeted by the next in competition for important social goods—a situation I characterize as an “enhanced rat race.” Rather than risk the chance of being rendered technologically and socially obsolete by the time one is in one’s early 20s, it may be rational to prefer that a wide range of enhancements that would generate positional disadvantages that outweigh their absolute advantages be prohibited altogether. The danger of an enhanced rat race therefore constitutes a novel argument in favor of abandoning the pursuit of certain sorts of enhancements.

Should significant enhancement of human capacities using genetic technologies become possible, each generation will have an unprecedented power over the next. I argue that it is implausible to leave decisions about the genetic traits of children entirely up to individuals and that communities will sometimes be justified in intervening to protect the interests of children against their parents. While a number of influential authors have suggested that the primary interest that the community should aim to protect is the child’s right to “an open future”, when we examine closely what we desire for our children, it is clear that sometimes we have good reasons to try to restrict their opportunities to pursue dangerous, corrupting, or meaningless projects. Rather than maximise the openness of their future, then, we should strive to ensure that children have access to sufficient opportunities to make available a reasonable range of valuable life-choices. Importantly, both the assessment of what counts as a reasonable range and our judgements about which forms of life are valuable must inevitably make reference to substantive notions about the nature of human flourishing. A more appropriate formulation, then, of what should be protected by law and/or regulation, is the child’s right to a “decent future”, understood as a future which promises a reasonable range of opportunities to lead a life of human flourishing. I then proceed to highlight the challenge posed by the task of settling upon an idea of what counts as a decent future, for multicultural societies wherein ideas about the standards against which we should evaluate human flourishing are likely to be highly contested.

A number of advances in assisted reproduction have been greeted by the accusation that they would produce children ‘without parents’. In this paper I will argue that while to date these accusations have been false, there is a limited but important sense in which they would be true of children born of a reproductive technology that is now on the horizon. If our genetic parents are those individuals from whom we have inherited 50% of our genes, then, unlike in any other reproductive scenario, children who were conceived from gametes derived from stem cell lines derived from discarded IVF embryos would have no genetic parents! This paper defends this claim and investigates its ethical implications. I argue that there are reasons to think that the creation of such embryos might be morally superior to the existing alternatives in an important set of circumstances

In “Would we even know moral bioenhancement if we saw it?”, Harris Wiseman highlights a number of distinctions, between cognitive and emotional enhancement, voluntary and compulsory enhancement, and between enhancement and therapy, which he holds, not unreasonably, to be relevant to the debate about moral bioenhancement. He also offers a new distinction, between “hard” and soft moral bioenhancement, to which he believes critics of moral bioenhancement should be paying more attention. Having made these distinctions, Wiseman, suggests that it would be wrong to rely on any of them to try to settle the ethics of moral bioehancement and that instead we need to pay close attention to context in order to determine the ethics of any particular intervention. In this commentary, I will suggest that: (1) there is a further distinction to which we need to pay attention, which Wiseman neglects, between bioenhancement and other methods of shaping peoples’ behaviour and dispositions; and (2), that both the distinction between therapy and enhancement and Wiseman’s own distinction between hard and soft moral bioenhancement, are of more import than he allows when it comes to how we should respond to the burgeoning literature on moral bioenhancement.

In this paper, I respond to recent criticisms, by Paula Casal, of my arguments about the implications of John Harris and Julian Savulescu's influential arguments for human enhancement for sex selection. I argue that, despite her protestations, her paper relies upon the idea that parents have a moral obligation to have children that will serve the interests of the nation. Casal’s use of dubious claims about inherent psychological differences between men and women to make her hypothetical case for moral enhancement and her troubling references to “evolved humans” only exacerbate the political dangers involved in the argument for human enhancement.

This chapter will sketch a political critique of recent arguments for human enhancement. While on paper it may be possible to sketch out visions of a world in which the pursuit of genetic enhancement of human beings does not lead to a renewed interest in racial hygiene and widespread violations of human rights, the political assumptions one must make in order to hold that this is possible in the real world are – I will argue – excessively optimistic. In reality, the pursuit of human enhancement is all-too-likely to lead us back to something that looks very much like the old eugenics wherein the state is, as a matter of routine, licensing who is allowed to have children and what sort of children they are allowed to have, and thus infringing the reproductive liberty of parents. Similarly, the notion that states will confine the use of technologies of genetics enhancement to the promotion of the welfare of those who are “enhanced” and will resist the temptation to engineer some for the benefits of others also relies on a number of dubious assumptions about the political cultures of the societies in which genetic technologies are likely to be used. A more realistic politics should lead us to be much more cautious about defending the “rights” of parents to enhance their children.

One day soon it may be possible to replace a failing heart, liver, or kidney with a long-lasting mechanical replacement or perhaps even with a 3-D printed version based on the patient's own tissue. Such artificial organs could make transplant waiting lists and immunosuppression a thing of the past. Supposing that this happens, what will the ongoing care of people with these implants involve? In particular, how will the need to maintain the functioning of artificial organs over an extended period affect patients and their doctors and the responsibilities of those who manufacture such devices? Drawing on lessons from the history of the cardiac pacemaker, this article offers an initial survey of the ethical issues posed by the need to maintain and service artificial organs. We briefly outline the nature and history of cardiac pacemakers, with a particular focus on the need for technical support, maintenance, and replacement of these devices. Drawing on the existing medical literature and on our conversations and correspondence with cardiologists, regulators, and manufacturers, we describe five sources of ethical issues associated with pacemaker maintenance: the location of the devices inside the human body, such that maintenance generates surgical risks; the complexity of the devices, which increases the risk of harms to patients as well as introducing potential injustices in access to treatment; the role of software—particularly software that can be remotely accessed—in the functioning of the devices, which generates privacy and security issues; the impact of continual development and improvement of the device; and the influence of commercial interests in the context of a medical device market in which there are several competing products. Finally, we offer some initial suggestions as to how these questions should be answered.

In ‘in vitro eugenics’ (IVE), I outlined a theoretical use of a technology of artificial gametogenesis, wherein repeated iterations of the derivation of gametes from embryonic stem cells, followed by the fusion of gametes to create new embryos, from which new stem cells could be derived, would allow researchers to create multiple generations of human embryos in the laboratory and also to produce ‘enhanced’ human beings with desired traits. As a number of commentators observed, my purpose in publishing this paper was to provoke ethical discussion of a largely unremarked upon technological possibility and surrounding issues. Even if this was, as Murphy observes archly, to aim ‘low’, discussion of IVE is valuable for three reasons. First, it may render us better prepared should IVE become practical. I noted of my original discussion that it was speculative and several of the respondents suggest that IVE is even less likely to come about than I allowed there. Nevertheless, second, discussion of IVE is valuable for what it reveals about the ethics of new reproductive technologies (NRTs) more generally and, third, about the ethics of genetic human enhancement in particular. The responses to my paper demonstrate this nicely by (a) illustrating the selective way in which arguments about risk are mobilised in debates about NRTs and (b) highlighting the tension between any obligation of ‘procreative beneficence’ and a concern for genetic relatedness. Even if IVE should never be pursued, then, discussion of this possibility may help us better understand the ethics of other NRTs and means of genetic human enhancement.

In “The misguided quest for the ethics of enhancement”, Tom Murray makes two related claims. First, he argues that “understanding the ethics of enhancement is deeply dependent on context". Second, he suggests that, as a consequence, we should not look for “a single all-purpose ethics for every form of human enhancement”. In this brief response, I argue that while Murray is correct in the first of these claims, there is an important sense in which he is wrong in the second. His focus on the ethics of enhancement in sport serves him well in illustrating how our reasons to embrace or resist technological change as it impacts on athletes and players depends crucially on “why we play” and, in particular, on nature of the excellences made possible by the current rules of the game. However, the thing about life is that the “rules” are unknown and the meaning of participation and the excellences it makes possible are widely disputed. For this reason, a focus on the ethics of sport serves us less well when it comes to the larger question of the attitude we should take towards “human enhancement”. In the context of the profound disputes about the nature of the good in modern liberal societies, we may indeed need a single, robust, theoretical framework through which to resolve questions about enhancement – although whether this is best thought of as an “ethics” or a “politics” of enhancement is a further (and difficult) question. Regardless of how such a framework is conceived, Murray’s observations about the importance of context, the significance of competition, and the attractions of a “public health ethics” approach, all serve to alert us to just how difficult the task of developing an ethics for human enhancement more generally is likely to be.

If people are inclined to attribute race to humanoid robots, as recent research suggests, then designers of social robots confront a difficult choice. Most existing social robots have white surfaces and are therefore, I suggest, likely to be perceived as White, exposing their designers to accusations of racism. However, manufacturing robots that would be perceived as Black, Brown, or Asian risks representing people of these races as slaves, especially given the historical associations between robots and slaves at the very origins of the project of robotics. The only way engineers might avoid this ethical and political dilemma is to design and manufacture robots to which people will struggle to attribute race. Doing so, however, would require rethinking the relationship between robots and “the social,” which sits at the heart of the project of social robotics. Discussion of the race politics of robots is also worthwhile because of the potential it has to generate insights about the politics of artifacts, the relationship between culture and technology, and the responsibilities of engineers.

This paper criticises John Harris's attempts to defend an account of a ‘harmed condition’ that can stand independently of intuitions about what is ‘normal’. I argue that because Homo sapiens is a sexually dimorphic species, determining whether a particular individual is in a harmed condition or not will sometimes require making reference to the normal capacities of their sex. Consequently, Harris's account is unable to play the role he intends for it in debates about the ethics of human enhancement.

ABSTRACTJesse Kirkpatrick's ‘Drones and the Martial Virtue Courage’ constitutes the most thorough attempt to date to show that the operators of remotely piloted aircraft can display martial courage and therefore that it may sometimes be appropriate to award them military honours. I argue that while Kirkpatrick's account usefully draws our attention to the risks faced by drone operators and to the possibility that courage may be required to face these risks, he is much less successful in establishing that operators are capable of cultivating and displaying martial courage. The risks that drone operators face are also faced by members of other professions who are very far from being ‘warriors’

When asked about humanity’s future relationship with computers, Marvin Minsky famously replied “If we’re lucky, they might decide to keep us as pets”. A number of eminent authorities continue to argue that there is a real danger that “super-intelligent” machines will enslave—perhaps even destroy—humanity. One might think that it would swiftly follow that we should abandon the pursuit of AI. Instead, most of those who purport to be concerned about the existential threat posed by AI default to worrying about what they call the “Friendly AI problem”. Roughly speaking this is the question of how we might ensure that the AI that will develop from the first AI that we create will remain sympathetic to humanity and continue to serve, or at least take account of, our interests. In this paper I draw on the “neo-republican” philosophy of Philip Pettit to argue that solving the Friendly AI problem would not change the fact that the advent of super-intelligent AI would be disastrous for humanity by virtue of rendering us the slaves of machines. A key insight of the republican tradition is that freedom requires equality of a certain sort, which is clearly lacking between pets and their owners. Benevolence is not enough. As long as AI has the power to interfere in humanity’s choices, and the capacity to do so without reference to our interests, then it will dominate us and thereby render us unfree. The pets of kind owners are still pets, which is not a status which humanity should embrace. If we really think that there is a risk that research on AI will lead to the emergence of a superintelligence, then we need to think again about the wisdom of researching AI at all.

It is likely that sex robots will exist in the near future, making the effect they might have on human relationships a pressing concern. In this future world, we can imagine sex robots shaping our personal and social relationships through their unique access to, and potential for influencing, our most intimate of behaviours. We investigate whether they might be employed to influence social behaviours in a positive way. The paper begins with an account of the state of the art, acknowledges powerful feminist criticisms that have been made of sex robots, and evaluates suggestions that it might be possible to design sex robots which do not raise these concerns and which might even work to influence social behaviours in a positive way. It then outlines a number of ways that sex robots might be used to educate, “nudge”, and influence people in positive ways. It defends the idea that it would be ethical to use sex robots to promote socially positive behaviours — behaviours that benefit others and improve social cohesion, such as fostering respect and empathy for persons — but not to promote commercial products for parochial interests. We argue that the former project could advance individual and social welfare, while preserving personal autonomy — a minimum requirement of which is the ability to make informed decisions — whereas the latter depends on a lack of transparency and democratic control for its success, targets the vulnerability of the user to achieve its ends, and reinforces the problematic symbolism of negatively gendered sexuality. If sex robot design and application meet public requirements of transparency — enabling informed consent and reflective decision making — and democratic oversight — promoting accountability and the sharing of power with the public — it is conceivable that sex robots might assist, rather than harm society.

In order to avoid the implication that ‘mitochondrial replacement techniques’ (MRT) would produce ‘three parent babies’, discourses around these techniques typically dismiss the contribution of the mitochondria to genetic parenthood and personal identity. According to many participants in debates about MRT, ‘real parenthood’ is a matter of contributing nuclear DNA, which in turn implies that men and women make the same contribution to the embryo. Even when the importance of the mitochondria is acknowledged, an emphasis on mitochondrial DNA still has the effect of valorizing the role of DNA (and thus the paternal contribution to conception) at the expense of the role played by the cytoplasm of the oocyte in the development of the embryo and placenta, and that of the mother’s body in gestation. In this way, discourses around MRT falsely imply that what men and women contribute to reproduction and parenthood is the same—nuclear DNA—and thus erase the distinctive contribution that women make to conception. The potential of MRT to reconfigure relationships between the sexes in the service of patriarchal norms is perhaps one of the most significant things about it and should, we argue, be counted in the discussion of the ethical and policy implications of legitimating these procedures.

The willingness of some scientists, futurists … and now philosophers to contemplate—or even actively pursue—their own obsolescence is a source of genuine wonder. Writers such as Hans Moravec,1 Ray Kurzweil2 and Nick Bostrom3 blithely maintain that we will soon be outclassed by our own cybernetic creations as though this were a prospect that could only be celebrated and not feared. In this context, one can only applaud Agar's clearheaded investigation4 of the prospects for creating ‘post-persons’ and his eminently sensible conclusion that there might be good reasons to avoid doing so. His discussion of the significance of the difference between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ thresholds in moral status and his inductive argument to the existence of higher levels of moral status than humans currently possess constitute significant advances in the philosophical literature on this topic. In these largely sympathetic remarks I will, however, argue both that post-persons are more easily conceived of than Agar suggests and that the threat posed by post-persons, should they eventuate, is greater than Agar allows.Agar's paper needs to be read in the context of Buchanan's discussion5 of the implications of post-personhood to which it is a response. Buchanan's discussion proceeds, for the most part, with reference to an essentially Kantian account of moral status as founded in the ability to engage in practical reasoning or practices of mutual accountability. Talk of ‘animals’, ‘persons’ …

Concern for “reproductive liberty” suggests that decisions about embryos should normally be made by the persons who would be the genetic parents of the child that would be brought into existence if the embryo were brought to term. Therapeutic cloning would involve creating and destroying an embryo, which, if brought to term, would be the offspring of the genetic parents of the person undergoing therapy. I argue that central arguments in debates about parenthood and genetics therefore suggest that therapeutic cloning would be prima facie unethical unless it occurred with the consent of the parents of the person being cloned. Alternatively, if therapeutic cloning is thought to be legitimate, this undermines the case for some uses of reproductive cloning by implying that the genetic relation it establishes between clones and DNA donors does not carry the same moral weight as it does in cases of normal reproduction.