CFP: A POLITICAL TURN TO THE GENETIC ENHANCEMENT DEBATE

Submission deadline: July 1, 2023

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CALL FOR PAPERS

A POLITICAL TURN TO THE GENETIC ENHANCEMENT DEBATE

(Enrahonar: An international journal of theoretical and practical reason)


Genetic enhancement has been a prolific topic in bioethics literature for the last decades. Recently, innovations in genetic and genomic technologies are reviving this controversial debate. Novel gene-editing techniques such as CRISPR-Cas and next-generation genomic sequencing tools are bringing closer than ever to the possibility of improving traits that are not related to disease prevention. These technologies seem to enable the enhancement of the normal and healthy capabilities of our descendants.  

There has been a prevalence of ethical approaches in the genetic enhancement debate. For example, one of the predominant lines of discussion has been whether parents have moral obligations to enhance their children. While such discussions are extremely important, they miss an important point. Genetic enhancement has political implications that precede the ethical dilemmas that prospective parents may encounter in their reproductive decisions. 

Before individuals come to confront vividly the moral quandaries of genetic enhancement, our institutions (as political agents) will have to address them. In fact, genetic enhancement depends on the development of emerging technologies that may still be subject to different types of governance and regulation, depending on very diverse democratic, political, and socio-economic interests.

In this special issue, we welcome articles that focus on the genetic enhancement debate from a wide variety of perspectives within political philosophy and the politics of technology. We particularly encourage proposals that shed light on the political factors that may condition the development and diffusion of genetic enhancement technologies.

Some particular topics of interest include (but are not restricted to) the following:

  • The political dimension of the democratic governance of genetic enhancement technologies.

  • Genetic enhancement policies from traditional political theories (e.g., liberalism, socialism, contractualism, or libertarianism) and from different models of democracy (e.g., representative, deliberative, participatory, associative, and so on).

  • Genetic enhancement debate from different theories of distributive justice.  

  • Genetic enhancement in relation to political concepts such as freedom, liberty, equality, equity, solidarity, fraternity, or sorority.

  • ‘Liberal eugenics’ paradigm beyond liberal democracies. 

  • Genetic enhancement technologies as socially and morally disruptive technologies: political approaches that anticipate and tackle prospective societal disruption.

  • Genetic enhancement from different social movements perspectives, such as disability rights, feminism, ecologism, antiespecism, biohacking/DIY-bio, or religious movements.

  • Experimental political psychology and empirical studies about the perceptions of genetic enhancement across ideologies and demographic variables.

  • Genetic enhancement from a global perspective: governance from global observatories, transnational institutions, and international regulation, as well as controversies around reprogenetic tourism.

  • The political dimension of the regulatory challenge of genetic enhancement technologies.

  • Genetic enhancement and the design of policies regarding future generations.

  • The role that scientific communication and public perceptions should play in informing policies regarding genetic enhancement.

  • The role that markets should play in the innovation and research on genetic enhancement technologies.

  • Controversies around allocating research funds to develop genetic enhancement technologies from the “democratic science” paradigm.

  • Genetic enhancement and low-income or middle-income countries.


  • Languages: English, Spanish, Valencian/Catalan. 

  • Guest editors: Jon Rueda (Universidad de Granada, Spain) and Marcos Alonso (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain).

  • Deadline: 01/07/2023.

  • Publication of the special issue: March 2024 (but accepted articles will appear online before).

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