Genetic Essentialisim and Embroy Identitiy.

This is a difficult position to defend, even from a standpoint to embryonic identity. However this situation only worsens when we begin to consider things other than embryo’s. It seems difficult to suggest that a persons identity is constituted by his genome and whenever there is a mutation or alteration in it occurs then his identity changes. This seems strange, if this was the case then our identity would change regularly, I would not be the same person on a regular basis. Admittedly Zohars attempts to limit his claims to embryo’s but even here there appears to be problems. Yes he is right in that if a small portion of genetic material is changed or mutated from one moment to the next with and embryo that the embryo’s are no longer strictly identical, in the sense that everything about them is the same. Almost everything about them is identical to what it was previously, they are continuous spatio-temporally and are still perform the same functions as they did previously.As with persons changes, even some quite radical changes, such as the loss of limbs or sight do not by themselves change a persons identity from what it was previously.

Genetic enhancements which are an opposite extremes....

Before coming to a conclusion about whether or not there are actually any conditions that can be considered to be legitimate targets for enhancement, we need to establish a methodology for determining what would be acceptable. Once we have established this it is then possible for us to assess various claims with respect to the status of conditions or procedures to determine whether they fall within the boundary of acceptable enhancements.
If we begin by considering two viewpoints on genetic enhancements which are an opposite extremes and that are seriously flawed, we will have a starting point from which a more sensible account can be constructed. The first view is that all enhancements are unacceptable. There are a number of problems with this view. The first is that there are some hard borderline cases. Let us for a moment suppose that IQ becomes something, as easy to alter as eye colour, and further that if a person has an IQ of under 60 they are considered to have a malady that should be corrected. In this case a number of problems arise for the advocates of the all enhancements are unacceptable view. Take for example a person who has an IQ of 50. Clearly they fall into the treatment category and should be able to access genetic interventions to correct their condition. What does correction mean in this case? Does it mean that, because enhancements are unacceptable, that the IQ of the person in question can only be raised to the minimum acceptable level; 60? If this is the case then, the value of the procedure as a treatment seems small. If treatments were only meant to bring people up a very minimal level of functionality, then a large number of medical procedures we take for granted today seem to be ruled out by this minimal functionality story, which is an unacceptable conclusion. A procedure as simple as that of setting a broken bone would become problematic under this minimal functionality position as a person with broken arm, but nothing else wrong with them would appear to still be minimally functional. There would appear to be no reason for us to need to properly fix the arm in question because the person would still be able to function reasonably well and probably somewhat more than minimally even if the arm was never attended to and as a result became unusable.