Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Human Enhancement

Beyond The Blueprint

Russell Powell says it’s not easy using genes to enhance humanity, even in theory.

On display in the National Portrait Gallery of London is a ‘DNA portrait’ of geneticist Sir John Sulston. The work is billed by the artist as “the most realistic portrait in the gallery” because it “carries the actual instructions that led to the creation of John. It is a portrait of his parents, and every ancestor he ever had back to the beginning of life.”

Since the discovery of the structure of DNA, the idea that the genome (the organism’s genetic code) serves as a blueprint for the adult organism, has run deep in scientific and popular consciousness. This notion that DNA contains packets of information in the form of units called ‘genes’ which provide a set of encoded instructions for assembling the human body, motivates a wide range of ethical, political and regulatory positions on genetic technologies.

…