La biología sintética y el imperativo de mejoramiento

Abstract

Synthetic Biology has a huge capacity for the transformation of living beings, including for the transformation of the human genome in a future perhaps not too distant. There are, thus, clear connections between this potential to biological transformation and the aspirations of the supporters of human bioenhancement. The construction of completely synthetic genomes could eventually change in a definitive and irreversible way the central aspects of the human life, and it could give risen even to a new organism as different of our species as we are different of big apes. This paper discusses the main arguments offered in this debate, and points out some of the most problematic assumptions in recent proposals concerning human bioenhancement.