L'acceptation du clonage reproductif et de l'eugénisme du design dans la bioéthique du Mexique. Un dialogue critique

Mexico is a complex country where modern medical practices and biological innovations contrast with daily life occupations. The loud voice of certain intellectuals celebrating advances in biomedical issues such as cloning or the perspectives of positive eugenism may not be heard by the general population. Here, we attempt to show how in Mexico, tension on these two subjects develops between outspoken liberal opinions and ontologico-existential thinking. Regarding reproductive cloning, two Mexican philosophers believe that it is not an immoral process and thus cannot be prohibited since absolute genetic determinism does not exist. For them, genes alone cannot predict beforehand what will be the thoughts or the psychic characteristics of any individual, albeit a human clone. A person's psyche will always override genetic determinism. My perspective is to say that though the ontological dignity of the clone could probably be guaranteed, the construction of existential dignity, the dignity that a person constructs by gaining independence from others, would be highly perturbed and much more difficult to conquer. Eugenism by design, i.e. positive eugenism, means modifying genes or germinal lines for the purpose of enabling another humanity to adapt to new technologies have to be refuted. In my opinion, these two modifications, even though they may depend on the will of individual persons and not the state, constitute an eugenism by fact. One could say that human freedom is being discarded since the other becomes a technical object.