The Ethics of Selective Reproduction Research Paper

The Ethics of Selective Reproduction - Research Paper Example The ethical concerns touch on several issues, most of the complex and risky. For instance, there was the 1980s attempt to eliminate or least reduce neurological disorders of Parkinson’s by transfer of fetal brain tissues2. The attempts are yet to materialize. Scientific feats that were thought impossible before have been achieved with persistent research and trial. This has been observed in the successful cloning of non-human animals3.   Eugenics refers to the attempt to improve the human gene pool. Different mindsets have agreed on the same definition of the term although not everyone has the same idea of what counts as eugenics4. One of the aspects of eugenics that is a source of ethical concern is the significance of parental choice in the matter. Given the fact that parents have the free will to choose what kind of a child they want, it loses state enforcement of coercive methods5. Liberal eugenics leaves room for misuse by both reproductive health providers and parents. Whereas this looks like a state of coercion to some people, others believe that the nature of services provided in eugenics cannot go without the free will and choices of parents. Wilkinson states that, â€Å"But other people think that some procedures which prospective parents can choose, such as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), with embryo testing and the subsequent disposal or donation of unwanted embryos, are clearly cases of eu genics, even where events are entirely a matter of parental preference and there’s no state coercion at all†6   Despite the bad image the term eugenics had from the Nazi era, the present meaning and context of the term can be argued to be a moral and ethical position. Unlike the Nazi eugenics that involved mass murder of targets that ranged from assorted ethnicities to children with disabilities by the State, today’s eugenics does not compromise the lives of citizens at all7.