--- alias: - Julian Savulescu born: 1963 category: Scientists & Researchers created: 2026-06-20 location: Oxford, England; Singapore summary: Julian Savulescu is an Oxford bioethicist who founded the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, edited the Journal of Medical Ethics, and advanced 'procreative beneficence' and the case for human genetic and moral enhancement. tags: - Person - Bioethics - Transhumanism - HumanEnhancement - Oxford - EffectiveAltruism updated: 2026-06-20 --- Julian Savulescu (born 1963) is an Australian bioethicist who held the Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford and founded its Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. He is best known for the principle of "procreative beneficence," which holds that prospective parents have a moral reason to select the children expected to have the best lives, and for his advocacy, with Ingmar Persson, of biomedical moral enhancement. He trained under Peter Singer and then Derek Parfit before founding his own program in applied ethics at the [effective-altruism](/concepts/effective-altruism/)-adjacent Oxford centers.[^1][^2] ### From Singer and Parfit to the Uehiro Chair Savulescu studied medicine at Monash University in Melbourne before completing a doctorate under [Peter Singer](/people/peter-singer/) on ethical questions in end-of-life care. As a Sir Robert Menzies Medical Scholar he moved to Oxford between 1994 and 1997 to work under [Derek Parfit](/people/derek-parfit/). He thus passed directly through the two figures who carried classical utilitarianism into late-twentieth-century moral philosophy before establishing his own program in applied ethics.[^1][^3] In 2002 he was appointed to the Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, endowed by the Japanese philanthropist Eiji Uehiro, and in 2003 he founded and directed the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, which was renamed the Uehiro Oxford Institute in 2024. He served as editor-in-chief of the *Journal of Medical Ethics*, the leading English-language bioethics journal, and from August 2022 also held the Chen Su Lan Centennial Professorship in Medical Ethics and directed the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at the National University of Singapore.[^1] ### Procreative Beneficence In "Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the Best Children," published in the journal *Bioethics* in 2001, Savulescu argued that when couples using in-vitro fertilization can choose among embryos, they have a moral obligation to select, on the available genetic information, the child expected to have the best prospects for a good life, including non-disease traits such as temperament or intelligence. He defended the principle as following from a general duty to do the most good and distinguished it from coercive state eugenics by locating the choice with parents.[^4] Critics charged that procreative beneficence revived eugenic reasoning by treating some lives as preferable to bring into existence than others and that the appeal to "best life prospects" smuggled contested social judgments into reproductive medicine. Savulescu extended the position across later work on embryo selection, gene editing, and what he termed liberal eugenics, arguing that enhancement technologies should be permitted where they improve expected welfare without coercion.[^4][^5] ### Human and Moral Enhancement Savulescu was a leading academic proponent of human enhancement, the use of biotechnology to extend human physical, cognitive, and emotional capacities beyond the species norm. In 2009 he and [Nick Bostrom](/people/nick-bostrom/) co-edited the volume *Human Enhancement* (Oxford University Press), bringing the Uehiro Centre's bioethics together with the transhumanist program of Bostrom's [Future of Humanity Institute](/organizations/future-of-humanity-institute/), the two Oxford centers that became the institutional base for radical-enhancement and existential-risk research.[^6] In *Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement* (Oxford University Press, 2012), written with the Swedish philosopher Ingmar Persson, Savulescu argued that human moral psychology evolved for small groups and is now mismatched against globalized technology capable of "ultimate harm," such as engineered pandemics, climate collapse, or weapons that could end the species. They concluded that traditional moral education would work too slowly and that researchers should investigate biomedical means of enhancing human moral motivation. The framing of technology-driven extinction risk overlapped with the existential-risk agenda that [Toby Ord](/people/toby-ord/) and [William MacAskill](/people/william-macaskill/), who emerged from the same Oxford practical-ethics environment and co-founded Giving What We Can in 2009, later built into longtermism.[^7][^2] [^1]: "Professor Julian Savulescu," Uehiro Oxford Institute, on the Uehiro Chair, the founding of the Oxford Uehiro Centre in 2003 and its 2024 renaming, the *Journal of Medical Ethics* editorship, and the National University of Singapore appointment. https://www.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-julian-savulescu [^2]: "Training Transhumanists at Oxford University," Europe in the World, University of Notre Dame, on the Future of Humanity Institute, the Uehiro Centre, procreative beneficence, and human enhancement. https://eitw.nd.edu/articles/training-transhumanists-at-oxford-university/ [^3]: "Julian Savulescu," Centre for Biomedical Ethics, National University of Singapore, on the doctorate under Peter Singer and the Menzies scholarship at Oxford under Derek Parfit. https://medicine.nus.edu.sg/cbme/people_uri/julian-savulescu-bioethics/ [^4]: Savulescu, Julian. "Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the Best Children." *Bioethics,* vol. 15, no. 5-6, 2001. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12058767/ [^5]: "Interview with Julian Savulescu on Genetic Selection and Enhancement," Practical Ethics (University of Oxford blog), 2019. https://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2019/11/interview-with-julian-savulescu-on-genetic-selection-and-enhancement/ [^6]: Bostrom, Nick, and Julian Savulescu, eds. *Human Enhancement.* Oxford University Press, 2009. [^7]: Persson, Ingmar, and Julian Savulescu. *Unfit for the Future: The Need for Moral Enhancement.* Oxford University Press, 2012, on the mismatch between human moral nature and "ultimate harm." https://global.oup.com/academic/product/unfit-for-the-future-9780199653645