John C. Fletcher 
Repairing a defect is one thing, but once that is routine, it will become much 
harder to argue against adding genes that confer desired qualities, like better 
health, looks, or brains. There is no discernible line to be drawn between making 
inheritable repairs of genetic defects, and improving the species. 
This view casts doubt on common human traits, i.e., the logical 
capacity to make meaningful distinctions and the moral readiness of 
those most capable of acting on the distinction, in this case clinical 
investigators, to use them. Contrary evidence, from research and 
medical ethics, does not support this critique. If one examines the 
record of the ethics of clinical research in the past forty years, the 
evolution of meaningful moral lines between acceptable and unac- 
ceptable research practices clearly emerges (Fletcher, 1983). Doubt 
about linedrawing prevails in the early stages of moral conflict, when 
emotions and the fever of conflict run highest. In the 1950s and early 
1960s, a favorite response of those who opposed any change in 
research practice (Landau, 1967, p. 137) was, “Where do you draw 
the line between research and medical practice?”. But many useable 
lines have been drawn in contemporary research ethics. Today, a 
body of morally viable practices exists in human research that is 
followed, with wide variations in consistency, in many nations 
(Tran^y, 1983, p. 3). Also, older moral distinctions that no longer 
serve to mediate the moral conflicts of new situations can be re- 
formed successfully. In medical ethics, a good example is the result 
of the President’s Commission’s (1983, p. 60) examination of choices 
in health care of the terminally ill. Older distinctions, e.g., acting/ 
refraining, withholding/withdrawing, are nonviable in many settings 
of intensive care. A newer moral distinction, which originally derived 
from Roman Catholic ethical teaching on differences between 
‘ordinary and extraordinary’ care, was reshaped in terms of a differ- 
ences between harms and benefits to the patient’s best medical 
interests. 
Societies do differ in the allocation of resources to systematic 
labors of making moral distinctions and assuring their acceptance 
into public morality. However, other societies besides the United 
States are at work on critical reform of medical and research ethics. 
France is the most recent example (Comite Consultatif National 
d’Ethique, 1984). The United States has had two distinguished na- 
tional bodies for such work. Neither has been criticized for inability 
to make logical moral distinctions between beneficial and harmful 
uses of technology. 
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Recombinant DNA Research, Volume 12 
