The notion of germinal human enhancement as a bioethical dilemma

Abstract

This article critically examines embryonic bioenhancement through a theoretical framework that combines Parfit’s distinction between “same person” and “different number” scenarios with the principles of bioethical principlism as articulated by Beauchamp and Childress, while also engaging in a critical analysis of transhumanist narratives. It argues that the notion of “enhancement lacks a neutral and operational definition capable of guiding irreversible decisions concerning the germline. The central thesis maintains that there is a moral obligation to prevent serious diseases in “same person” contexts, but no general duty to pursue non-therapeutic enhancements in “different number” scenarios. Accordingly, a conditional moratorium is proposed for embryonic interventions aimed at enhancement, grounded in three cumulative thresholds: safety and reasonable capacity for correction; deliberative legitimacy, and justice/anti-eugenics. Methodologically, it develops a second-order bioethical analysis that interrogates the very concept of “enhancement,” evaluates technical and distributive risks, and reviews major international regulatory frameworks. The results highlight the need to clearly distinguish between preventive therapeutic interventions and non-therapeutic enhancements; they identify three operative conditions for classifying an intervention as enhancement—absence of underlying pathology, intergenerational transmissibility, and persistence of technical uncertainty (off-target effects, reversibility, mosaicism); and they confirm an emerging international regulatory consensus that currently rejects the clinical use of heritable germline editing, restricting it to preclinical research under strict multilayered oversight. In conclusion, the article contends that, in the absence of validated metrics of “enhancement,” robust evidence, and a governance framework with public participation, transparency, and independent control, germline bioenhancement must remain outside clinical practice; any future transition toward its application would require meeting the three proposed thresholds in order to prevent ideological bias, private capture of risk, and genetic homogenization.