Christianity and the New Eugenics

What will it mean for society if science enables us to choose a future child whose health, athletic ability or intelligence is predetermined? This future is becoming ever more likely with the latest developments in human reproduction -- but concerns are growing about the implications.

New procedures making possible heritable genetic modifications such as genome editing open the door to 'sanitized' selective eugenics; but these practices have some unnerving similarities to the discredited eugenic programmes of early twentieth-century regimes. A Christian perspective based on Scripture gives us the resources we urgently need to evaluate both current and future selection practices.

Calum MacKellar offers an accessible, inter-disciplinary analysis, blending science, history and Christian theology. This book will enable you to become fully informed about the new scientific developments in human reproduction - developments that will affect us all.

Auteur

Director of Research of a medical charity in Scotland and a Visiting Lecturer in Bioethics at St Mary's University in London, England. He is also a Fellow with the Centre for Bioethics and Human Dignity at Trinity International University, Chicago, USA. In 1998, he was ordained an elder of the Church of Scotland (the Reformed and Presbyterian national church in Scotland since 1560) and was a member of its Church and Society Council from 2005 to 2013. Previously, he had been a senior civil servant with the Bioethics Division of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France. He is the author of The Image of God, Personhood and the Embryo (SCM Press) and the co-editor of several volumes on biomedical ethics including The Ethics of the New Eugenics (Berghahn Books).