Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Enhancing children's intelligence: do the means matter morally?

Kara Woolley1, Merle Spriggs

  • 1Ethics Unit, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Royal Children's Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry & Health Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia.

Monash Bioethics Review
|September 18, 2007
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Children and bioethics: clarifying consent and assent in medical and research settings.

British medical bulletin·2023
Same author

Telling the truth to seriously ill children: Considering children's interests when parents veto telling the truth.

Bioethics·2022
Same author

Telling the Truth to Child Cancer Patients in COVID-19 Times.

Journal of bioethical inquiry·2020
Same author

Erratum to "'Operating is the easy part': Surgeons' decision-making processes and responses to parental requests for elective paediatric appearance-altering facial surgery" [J Plast Reconstr Aesthet Surg 72 (2019) 1379-1387].

Journal of plastic, reconstructive & aesthetic surgery : JPRAS·2019
Same author

'Operating is the easy part': Surgeons' decision-making processes and responses to parental requests for elective paediatric appearance-altering facial surgery.

Journal of plastic, reconstructive & aesthetic surgery : JPRAS·2019
Same author

The zone of parental discretion and the complexity of paediatrics: A response to Alderson.

Clinical ethics·2018
Same journal

Autonomy under uncertainty: the structural limits of substituted judgment in clinical practice.

Monash bioethics review·2026
Same journal

Clinical ethical issues in paediatric practice: exploring the awareness and opinions of paediatricians in order to grow paediatric clinical ethics services in a Malaysian teaching hospital.

Monash bioethics review·2026
Same journal

Should Australia implement regulatory changes to include Normothermic Regional Perfusion in organ donation and change our definition of death?

Monash bioethics review·2026
Same journal

The challenge of forming solidarity in Germany as a culturally diverse society during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Monash bioethics review·2026
Same journal

Changing Discourse on In Vitro Gametogenesis: Expectation, Scientific Reality, and the Ethics of Hype.

Monash bioethics review·2026
Same journal

Public engagement and bioethics as natural allies.

Monash bioethics review·2026
See all related articles

Social attitudes often disapprove of genetic intelligence enhancement but approve of environmental methods. This article argues that these differing attitudes lack ethical justification, predicting eventual acceptance of genetic intelligence enhancement.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Bioethics
  • Sociology

Background:

  • Public perception often favors environmental interventions for intelligence enhancement over genetic technologies.
  • Ethical debates surrounding human enhancement frequently distinguish between methods, attributing different moral significance to genetic versus environmental approaches.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To analyze and contrast social attitudes towards genetic versus environmental intelligence enhancement.
  • To evaluate the ethical justifications for differential social attitudes based on the means of enhancement.
  • To predict future social acceptance of genetic intelligence enhancement.

Main Methods:

  • Comparative analysis of social attitudes.
  • Ethical argumentation regarding the moral significance of enhancement means.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Exploration of philosophical arguments on means versus ends in enhancement.

    • Main Results:

    • Identified a societal tendency to disapprove of genetic intelligence enhancement while approving of environmental methods.
    • Found no ethical basis to justify the differing attitudes towards genetic and environmental enhancement means.
    • Highlighted the moral significance attributed to the method of enhancement.

    Conclusions:

    • The ethical distinction between genetic and environmental intelligence enhancement methods is not sustainable.
    • The lack of ethical justification for current social attitudes suggests a future trend towards acceptance of genetic intelligence enhancement.
    • Societal norms regarding intelligence enhancement may evolve as the ethical inconsistencies become more apparent.