Ethical Issues in Gene Therapy 
In response to the second assumption, it can be argued that morally 
relevant lines can and will be drawn prior to uses of gene technology. 
Public debate about genetic experiments has already provoked crea- 
tive efforts to pose differences between tolerable and intolerable 
cases of human gene therapy, although the discussion is still hypo- 
thetical (Gorovitz, 1984). In my view, the most relevant moral 
distinction is between uses that may relieve real suffering and those 
that alter characteristics that have little or nothing to do with disease. 
Real suffering involves morbidity and mortality. A condition that so 
dominates lives as to keep them in various degrees of imprisonment, 
plagued by pain and foreshortened lives, should be relieved in the 
interest of the well-being of the persons involved. Not every method 
to accomplish this end is of equal moral worth. Nazi thinkers rea- 
soned that systematic euthanasia of such sufferers was preferable to 
continued life (Mitscherlich and Mielke, 1962, p. 233). However, 
execution is hardly a fitting conclusion to an unjust imprisonment. 
Emancipation from the imprisoning condition, or at least from its 
worst features, would be most fitting. The diseases that will be 
the first candidates for gene therapy clearly fall within the scope 
of a distinction based upon severity of suffering. Severe mental 
retardation and extreme short stature are two conditions that also 
fit. 
Consider the other unacceptable side of the medical-eugenic dis- 
tinction, eugenic uses of genetic technology. The term, ‘eugenic’ 
(from the Greek, eugenes, ‘wellborn’), signifies an intention to im- 
prove the race or breed of the species. In the case of genetic tech- 
nology, a eugenic use refers to biological measures employed to 
improve characteristics in persons who can be generally viewed as 
‘normal’, or who fall within the range of functional abilities in a 
society. Eugenicists intend to add a 'plus’, assigned by group or 
private decisions, to characteristics that appear invidious by cultural, 
rather than by biological, standards. Aims to increase, by biological 
measures, the capacity to compute or remember, to alter the sex 
ratio, or to add height to the normal range are hypothetical examples 
of eugenic, and unacceptable, uses of gene technology. A justification 
based on self-realization would be needed to support such experi- 
ments, rather than arguments based upon relief of suffering or bene- 
ficence. Each proposal for a genetic experiment to improve upon the 
normal state would also be vulnerable to criticism by appeals to the 
justice principle. Why should precious resources be used to promote 
the interests of normal persons when so much remediable suffering 
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