The proposals of LeRoy Walters and his co-authors, Julie Gage Palmer and Eric Juengst, represent one of the most serious contemporary public-policy arguments for human genetic modification. Their work reflects an effort to create a fair social game as they consider the prospects of human genetic alteration. Although these authors do not engage in a detailed discussion
of moral theory, they display familiarity with various moral perspectives. They draw upon widely shared moral views in their discussion of public policy and human genetic engineering.

Most of the practices Walters and his co-authors describe and evaluate are futuristic. Their writings are stimulating public debate on these topics in advance of the development of many of the techniques.
Walters and his co-authors accept genetic therapies and some health-related enhancements, but they express concern over parental efforts to give children competitive advantages through genetic enhancement. Walters and his co-authors maintain that restrictions may have to be placed on such enhancement practices, since parental efforts to enhance average memory and other characteristics could represent new forms of child abuse. They are willing to allow voluntary adult enhancements to improve functioning.

Walters and his co-authors are careful to point out that the distinction between genetic therapy and enhancement is imprecise. Some enhancements, for example, are directed at enhancing the immune system and protecting individuals from disease. For this reason, genetic alterations of this sort may be classified as health-related enhancements. Walters and his co-authors generally regard health-related enhancements as acceptable.

Walters and Palmer (LeRoy Walters and Julie Gage Palmer, The Ethics of Human Gene Therapy, Oxford University Press, 1997) consider somatic-cell gene therapy, germ-line gene therapy, and enhancements of ordinary characteristics. They emphasize protection of the health of the next generation in their arguments for germ-line gene therapy. Walters and Palmer state that they assume normal or species-typical functioning as the definition of health. They accept some improvement upon normal functioning for such practices as improving the immune system.

Walters and Palmer do not categorically dismiss non-health related and non-remedial genetic enhancements. They consider physical enhancements of size, slowing the aging process, and reducing the need for sleep. Walters and Palmer also discuss
such intellectual enhancements as improving memory and cognitive ability and the moral enhancement of reducing aggressiveness. They would accept the voluntary participation of an adult to improve his or her own average memory and other characteristics “unless and until the practice of enhancement presents a clear and present danger to society” (p. 123). Walters and Palmer, however, reject utopian goals and the goal of creating perfect human beings.

Walters and Palmer consider a mandatory, public health program to rid the population of cystic fibrosis with the use of both germ-line and somatic-cell gene therapy. Although they reject the mandatory feature of
the program, they accept a voluntary program that would eradicate from the population both the carrier and disease state of cystic fibrosis.

An increase in cognitive abilities, one factor in intelligence, seems defensible to Walters and Palmer-although they differ on how an enhancement of this sort should be distributed in the population. Julie Palmer favors a libertarian distribution in the "genetic supermarket" as proposed by Robert Nozick. She would place limits only to protect the defenseless-such as children. LeRoy Walters, on the other hand, favors a distribution that would protect the least well off, in which the least endowed would be enhanced to reduce the distance in cognitive ability from the best endowed. Neither Walters nor Palmer favors a distribution that would continue present differences but upgrade everyone an equal amount.
 
Walters and Juengst (Eric T. Juengst and LeRoy Walters, "Ethical Issues in Human Gene Transfer Research," in The Development of Human Gene Therapy, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1999) maintain that enhancement of ordinary characteristics may be a form of cheating as well as an abuse of medicine. Enhancements could be viewed as cheating, much as the use of performance-enhancing drugs is currently viewed as cheating in sports. They consider whether limits should be placed on biomedical enhancements to prevent cheating. Their conclusion is that either limits will have to be put in place or the reward system of various games (recreational, educational, professional) may have to be revised in light of enhancement capabilities. Both alternatives, they state, are ethically equivalent.

Genetic enhancement of ordinary characteristics could also represent an abuse of medicine, according to Walters and Juengst. To try to improve someone's social status by changing a person's stature, changing the color of the skin, or inserting the leadership gene is to medicalize a social problem and to "blame the victim."  When enhancement is sought for such goals, the main problem does not lie within the individual; it lies within society.

Walters and Juengst maintain that attempts to address a social problem-such as prejudice against short stature-by changing the individual are self-defeating, futile, unfair, or complicitous (in complicity) with unjust social prejudices. They are self-defeating "by exacerbating the individual's sense of inadequacy by inflating expectations." They are futile if the individual's comparative gains are neutralized by everyone in the social group receiving the same enhancement. Enhancement is unfair if only some have access to the alleged improvement. The attempts are complicitous with unjust social prejudices by "forcing people into a range of variation dictated by biases that favor one group over others." Interactions with other people are necessary components of one's identity, but enhancement proposals over-emphasize individual characteristics.

Medicine would do well to adhere to its own epistemic limits (what medicine can know) and address problems with bodily dynamics. Medicine should not address problems in the sphere of social dynamics. To medicalize social problems is to exceed the epistemic limits of medicine.

Walters and his co-authors observe that it is difficult to assign rights to human beings They take note of views, however, on which a consensus seems to have emerged. A consensus has emerged over three points regarding human genetic alteration: 1) somatic-cell gene therapy does not represent a break with traditional medical therapies, although it should still be subject to public review; 2) germ-line gene therapy is currently unacceptable due to clinical risks and biohazards; 3) while therapeutic uses of genetic alteration are acceptable, eugenic or enhancement uses are not.