A duty to enhance? Genetic engineering for the human Mars settlement.

Aerospace medicine Bioethics Eugenics Extremophile adaptation Germline editing Human enhancement Human genetic engineering Mars settlement Space ethics Synthetic biology

Journal

Monash bioethics review

ISSN: 1836-6716

Titre abrégé: Monash Bioeth Rev

Pays: United States

ID NLM: 100973394

Informations de publication

Date de publication:
01 Nov 2024

Historique:

accepted: 22 10 2024

medline: 1 11 2024

pubmed: 1 11 2024

entrez: 1 11 2024

Statut: aheadofprint

Résumé

Humans living off-world will face numerous physical, psychological and social challenges and are likely to suffer negative health effects due to their lack of evolutionary adaptation to space environments. While some of the necessary adaptations may develop naturally over many generations, genetic technologies could be used to speed this process along, potentially improving the wellbeing of early space settlers and their offspring. With broad support, such a program could lead to significant genetic modification of off-world communities, for example, to limit radiation damage on body systems or prevent bone and muscle loss in reduced gravity conditions. Given the extreme stressors of living off-world, and the need to have a healthy workforce to support a fledgling human settlement, those in favour of using genetic technologies to enhance settlers might even claim there is a moral imperative to protect their health in the face of the unique threats of space travel, especially for children born in settlements who did not take on these risks voluntarily. For some, this might simply be an extension of procreative beneficence. However, ethical concerns arise regarding the risks of embracing a eugenicist agenda and the potential impacts on the rights of future settlers to refuse such genetic enhancements for themselves or their children.

Identifiants

DOI: 10.1007/s40592-024-00221-2 PMID: 39485589

pubmed: 39485589

doi: 10.1007/s40592-024-00221-2

pii: 10.1007/s40592-024-00221-2

doi:

Types de publication

Journal Article

Langues

eng

Sous-ensembles de citation

Informations de copyright

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