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.

One of the ways in which parenting is a learning experience and an opportunity for moral growth is that we learn as parents that we don't choose the kind of child that we have.

Economics has increasingly become the science of human behavior in general, and it's all the more unlikely to think that it can possibly be value-free - and, in fact, it isn't. Economics rests on un-argued assumptions that need to be examined.

There are really exercises in a kind of consumerist ethic that I think don't have the same moral weight as medicine or health.

One can imagine a kind of hormonal arms race or genetic arms race, whether it's to do with height or IQ, conceivably, in the future. So it's limitless, and that's another of the features that sets it apart from medical intervention.

The norm of unconditional parental love, I think, depends on the fact that we don't pick and choose the traits of our children in the way that we pick and choose the features of a car we might order, or a consumer good.

Self-knowledge is like lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be 'unthought' or 'unknown'.