If those who survive are the fittest, does that also make them the best? And if so, is engineering ‘better’ babies just evolution, or another step in a long history of eugenics?
Once genetic lesions for diseases such as cystic fibrosis and haemophilia were identified, the idea of replacing or correcting defective genes grew into what we now call “gene therapy”.
Professor Marcia Langton opened this year’s Boyer Lectures with an observation that William Stanner’s 1968 Boyer Lectures had “given credence, perhaps inadvertently” to the idea that Aboriginal people…