An ethics(!?) professor said:

consumer-driven eugenics

I see, the drive to consume babies is fine.

He said:

motivated by the free play of human desire

I see, that's an ethic principle, dear Mr professor of ethics!

He said:

motivated by the free play of technology

I see, doing the doable is ethically unobjectionable.

He said:

motivated by the free play of markets

That's the gist of Green's ethics! The freedom of trade is (1) an ethic postulate, (2) a model for ethic acting in general.

He said:

This vision of the human future is [...] very likely inevitable.

In bygone days, ethics professors enjoined on us the need for stopping the inevitable. Th...

An ethics(!?) professor said:

consumer-driven eugenics

I see, the drive to consume babies is fine.

He said:

motivated by the free play of human desire

I see, that's an ethic principle, dear Mr professor of ethics!

He said:

motivated by the free play of technology

I see, doing the doable is ethically unobjectionable.

He said:

motivated by the free play of markets

That's the gist of Green's ethics! The freedom of trade is (1) an ethic postulate, (2) a model for ethic acting in general.

He said:

This vision of the human future is [...] very likely inevitable.

In bygone days, ethics professors enjoined on us the need for stopping the inevitable. The positivist ethics professors nowadays however earn their money by giving us a reality check.

Gosh, what a Green ethics!

wildcat, I don't object to the creation of better garage doors and toothpastes. But I do keep on distinguishing human beings, and especially babies, from wares one can cataloguize. Must I really explain that?

What do you think is a "better" human?
What do you think what the genetic engineers as the creators of a "better" human and the orderers of ameliorated babies à la catalogue think is a "better" human?
Will there be a warranty of quality of the catalogue babies? (Of course!) Will there be a right to return unsatisfactory products? (Of course! That's the rule of the marketplace's play.)
Will the fact of being a "better" human (being created eugenically) be certified (answer: of course...

wildcat, I don't object to the creation of better garage doors and toothpastes. But I do keep on distinguishing human beings, and especially babies, from wares one can cataloguize. Must I really explain that?

What do you think is a "better" human?
What do you think what the genetic engineers as the creators of a "better" human and the orderers of ameliorated babies à la catalogue think is a "better" human?
Will there be a warranty of quality of the catalogue babies? (Of course!) Will there be a right to return unsatisfactory products? (Of course! That's the rule of the marketplace's play.)
Will the fact of being a "better" human (being created eugenically) be certified (answer: of course!), and will holding such a certificate ground social privileges? Will a new class system develop then (in addition to the fact that the spending power one must have to order babies à la catalogue is of course a class-specific attribute)?

I can't imagine anybody would think that the politics would keep its nose out of this "play". Ring any bells? Heinrich Himmler would have seized the new eugenic means enthusiastically. Nothing else would have met the National Socialist "plan to breed an Aryan master race of blonde-haired, blue-eyed babies for the 1,000-year Reich" better (see here and there and there).
Want more to come to vomit? OK, here you are:

The SS race and settlement main office handles through its offices the racial selection of the SS coming generation, directs the choosing of mates of the SS men, and promotes the creation of child-rich families, valuable from a hereditary and biological point of view.
Der Soldatenfreund, 1943

Professor Green is either a greenhorn among the "ethics" professors, or he is a rogue. Either is bad.

Johanna, we live in an age when technology (especially genetic tech) advances at an increased pace and daily breakthroughs. To put advances in healing practices that may (and will) eliminate genetic inadequacies such as obesity, Parkinson, cancerous tendencies and so on in the same category as eugenics is a false premise at the onset. Not only is it bad philosophy it does a disservice to all those pioneers that seek to redress unfairness born of genetic deficiencies which puts millions at a disadvantage and allows an immense amount of suffering to be perpetuated on the grounds of historical ethical misappropriation.
That bad things have happened in the past cannot be taken as grounds for sto...

Johanna, we live in an age when technology (especially genetic tech) advances at an increased pace and daily breakthroughs. To put advances in healing practices that may (and will) eliminate genetic inadequacies such as obesity, Parkinson, cancerous tendencies and so on in the same category as eugenics is a false premise at the onset. Not only is it bad philosophy it does a disservice to all those pioneers that seek to redress unfairness born of genetic deficiencies which puts millions at a disadvantage and allows an immense amount of suffering to be perpetuated on the grounds of historical ethical misappropriation.
That bad things have happened in the past cannot be taken as grounds for stopping the future of human evolution. The lesson should be learned and care and attention should be pursued with utmost severity , yes, but to throw the baby with the water is not only irresponsible but also at last count, unethical.

Ethics, a very powerful concept indeed. Lately it becomes more of a political weapon of sorts, instead of serving its original meaning, finding what is good, at least according to the old Greek tradition. So, it seems to me that ethics is not about preventing bad things from happening as it is about making the happening of good things more probable. Perhaps it sounds a bit simplistic, but I think there is a profound difference here. Instead of exploring how really powerful technologies can improve human existence, a lot of intellect and imagination are invested in what can go wrong. Things have gone wrong many times in the past, are going wrong nowadays, and probably will go wrong in the f...

Ethics, a very powerful concept indeed. Lately it becomes more of a political weapon of sorts, instead of serving its original meaning, finding what is good, at least according to the old Greek tradition. So, it seems to me that ethics is not about preventing bad things from happening as it is about making the happening of good things more probable. Perhaps it sounds a bit simplistic, but I think there is a profound difference here. Instead of exploring how really powerful technologies can improve human existence, a lot of intellect and imagination are invested in what can go wrong. Things have gone wrong many times in the past, are going wrong nowadays, and probably will go wrong in the future as well. Things going wrong is old news in the history of humanity. So let us all invest in an optimistic vision for humanity instead of projecting fear and guilt into the future.

wildcat, I did not utter anything about "healing practices" and "genetic deficiencies". Bringing that into focus is clearly off-topic. Hayes's critique on Green applies to you, too:

Hayes said:

In his essay, Green doesn't distinguish clearly between different uses of genetic technology -- and the distinctions are critical. It's one thing to enable a couple to avoid passing on a devastating genetic condition [...]. But it's a different thing altogether to create children with a host of "enhanced" athletic, cosmetic and cognitive traits that could be passed to their own children [...]. It's this second use of gene technology [...] that Green most fervently wants us to embrace.[/...

wildcat, I did not utter anything about "healing practices" and "genetic deficiencies". Bringing that into focus is clearly off-topic. Hayes's critique on Green applies to you, too:

Hayes said:

In his essay, Green doesn't distinguish clearly between different uses of genetic technology -- and the distinctions are critical. It's one thing to enable a couple to avoid passing on a devastating genetic condition [...]. But it's a different thing altogether to create children with a host of "enhanced" athletic, cosmetic and cognitive traits that could be passed to their own children [...]. It's this second use of gene technology [...] that Green most fervently wants us to embrace.

The topic of Hayes's review on Green's essay is the latter's promotion of a "consumer-driven eugenics motivated by the free play of human desire, technology and markets". The essential passages are:

neo-eugenic future of "designer babies,"

parents assembling their children quite literally from genes selected from a catalogue

It's about this heritable genetic enhancement, not about the medical aspects of gene technology to which my comments relate. I expressly underline my statement that Green's enthusiasm for designer babies, catalogue-gene-wise assembled by a consumer-driven eugenics, equates to the National Socialist enthusiasm for designer babies, breeded by copulations in Lebensborn facilities under official eugenic control.
"The lesson should be learned" appears to me to be a euphemistic, naive, pious hope in a world where smart bombs kill children under the shabby justifications of criminal governments of states the citizens of which want nothing more than to be amused to death.
Nota bene: The hightech homo sapiens is stuck for a proof of being more sapiens than his Stone Age ancestry. For this reason, I also cannot join in Silkweaver's well-meant hymn.

Johanna, thanks for the vote of confidence
I would very much like to have your definition of sapience, and how exactly are you going to measure its change across human history. I do not think we are going anywhere productive with this. Regarding the general condition of humanity today, its much much better than it was 5000 thousand years ago, alas much worse than it should have been by now. See Steven Pinker's lecture in TED here for some further arguments. Consumer driven eugenics sounds really bad, no offence but I smell a witch hunting approach. The issue here is not crossing the line between responsible medical uses of germ l...

Johanna, thanks for the vote of confidence
I would very much like to have your definition of sapience, and how exactly are you going to measure its change across human history. I do not think we are going anywhere productive with this. Regarding the general condition of humanity today, its much much better than it was 5000 thousand years ago, alas much worse than it should have been by now. See Steven Pinker's lecture in TED here for some further arguments. Consumer driven eugenics sounds really bad, no offence but I smell a witch hunting approach. The issue here is not crossing the line between responsible medical uses of germ line genetic modifications, and consumer driven eugenic fancies. The issue here is where would we put the line in the first place, because this line defines what a human is. Indeed it demands maturity of a new kind. A responsible continuous upgrade of the norm, as bio thectology will allow within well gaurded safety zones, may eliminate within a few generations, sickness, old age, and suffering in many other forms. More intelligent, our children would be able to address the real problems of humanity more effectively, and perhaps better understand each other.