Identidade pessoal e ética: o uso de Crispr-Cas9 para aprimoramento humano

Abstract

This course conclusion work proposes to understand how the debate on improvement has currently taken place, with the intention of outlining a way of understanding and embracing the broader meaning of self-improvement. To this end, the CRISPR-CAS9 genome editing technique will be the technology that will serve as the background of the dissertation, since it is the focus of several studies and has enormous potential for application, both for treatment and improvement. The distinction between treatment and enhancement will even be addressed in the second chapter in order to understand whether a line between the two methods should be drawn or not, even if the answer to this does not compromise the direction of the discussion. Still in chapter two, it will be shown what this TCC understands as ‘improvement’. This is a question of greater importance, in which the answer dictates the way we understand the improvement and, therefore, the way we deal with the problems that arise from it. To achieve this, our position will clash with the welfarist position of philosophers such as Julian Savulescu (2020), but only in a way that allows us to further clarify the definition of improving. Having outlined the notion of improvement, it will be explained in a basic way what CRISPR is and how it works. This notion is important for the purpose of greater understanding of the topic. Therefore, it will be possible to understand why the technology has received so much attention from the scientific academy, and why the same technology has been the reason for certain moratoriums and concerns. As the title of this work predicts, we will enter the field of debate on the philosophy of personal identity. Such an investment would be justified for several reasons, but what interests us in this work is that the notion of identity is explored in an aspect that concerns people's narratives and how these narratives support an expression of an autonomous and prudential order in terms of genetic improvements. This foundation, this work hopes, consolidates an approach that tends to escape from little explanatory and well-founded constraints that are based on principles which, due to the lack of this greater foundation, lack the strength for moral action. This is the case of human dignity that will be visited in chapter three, so we move on to chapter four which deals with exploring personal identity in order to better understand narrative identity. With the notion of narrative identity, we can explore what David DeGrazia (2005) calls the project of self-creation, a notion that perhaps allows for another way of approaching the debate of improvement, or more precisely, self-improvement.