TY - JOUR T1 - Goldilocks and the two principles. A response to Gyngell <em>et al</em> JF - Journal of Medical Ethics JO - J Med Ethics SP - 524 LP - 525 DO - 10.1136/medethics-2019-105395 VL - 45 IS - 8 AU - Peter Mills Y1 - 2019/08/01 UR - http://jme.bmj.com/content/45/8/524.abstract N2 - In their paper Chris Gyngell, Hilary Bowman-Smart and Julian Savulescu offer a careful analysis of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics report, Genome Editing and Human Reproduction: social and ethical issues but they challenge us to go further still.i I want to suggest that, although their analysis is clear and accurate, its rather ‘molecular’ approach neglects the overall arc and orientation of the report. Furthermore, their conclusions about prospective parents’ reproductive obligations lack sensitivity to the proper evaluative context and offer littlein the way of policy prescriptions.A neglected aspect of the report is the dialectical relation of the three sets of considerations through which it advances: those relating to the individuals directly involved, the wider society in which they live, and the future of human being in general. In particular, Gyngell et al.’s analysis does not attend to how the second principle advanced in the report (that of solidarity and social justice) interacts with the first (that of the welfare of the future person). It also ignores an important implication of the refusal of a final synthesis (which would be that heritable genome editing – HGE – is categorically at odds with the interests of humanity), namely, to inaugurate a continual process of reflection between the first two sets of considerations. And it therefore inevitably glosses over practical questions of the mode and venue for this reflection.Something that has not been well understood in the reception … ER -