Very often when we aim at the best, or what we may think is the best for our children, we aim really at lesser things, such as getting into a certain college.

I am trying to get at the moral arguments and the ethical status of various attempts at enhancement, or genetic engineering, or the bid for designer children. But there are implications for society at large.

The relief of suffering is a great good. The curing of illness and disease - these are great human goods. This is the mission of medicine.

Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share in a common life.

In most of our lives, we are accustomed to aiming at mastery and control and dominion- - over nature, over our lives, over our jobs, over our careers, over the goods that we buy.

Very often when we aim at the best, or what we may think is the best for our children, we aim really at lesser things, such as getting into a certain college.

What intrigued me most was not the technology as such but the questions about the human goods, the fundamental human values and virtues that are raised by debates over biotechnology.