“How can we be devoted to the proposition that all men are created equal if we’re think of ourselves as free to creatively negate that fact?”

I’m not following this. Are you suggesting that the Rawlsian suggestion I quoted above entails that “we’re to think of ourselves as free to creatively negate” the proposition that we are equals? How is that supposed to follow–especially if what it means to say that we’re equals is to say that we’re each deserving of an equal respect “that doesn’t depend on… intelligence, moral excellence, or productive accomplishments” (or, presumably, any natural or genetic endowment)?

We should do everything we can, Rawls says, to improve “the general level of natural abilities,” as well as “to prevent the diffusion of serious [defects].”

This is a serious distortion. Here’s what Rawls actually says:

The pursuit of reasonable policies in this regard is something that earlier generations owe to later ones, this being a question that arises between generations. Thus over time a society is to take stepsat least to preserve the general level of natural abilities and to prevent the diffusion of serious defects. These measures are to be guided by principles that the parties would be willing to consent to for the sake of their successors.

I can appreciate that, but it would be just as true to substitute “technological advancement” for “being natural.”

The argument you are using has often been used, ludicrously, in the past. For example, the early airplanes were often opposed by religious persons, with the same argument you use here. It was said that airplanes were evil, because they were not nature; “if God had meant us to fly, he would have given us wings.”

Your argument is wrong for many, many reasons. But examples of the problem with this specific core principle that you have noted here, are easy to find.

For example: would you refuse a blood infusion to a sick person, on the grounds that we should allow natural healing only? Some Christian denominations do this – and some of their members have died because of it.

Being natural sounds good. But carried too far, it is ridiculous. And even, deadly.

In the present case, you specifically are here and now actively fighting, opposing the science that would do more than probably any other invention in the history of mankind, to better our lot.

Unfortunately, the NYTimes tells me otherwise regarding the human genome project–

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/health/research/13genome.html?scp=1&sq=human%20genome&st=cse

I guess I’m gonna die in spite of my faith in the good intentions of serious and well funded scientific research. What am I to do?

Sorry to be so facetious, but isn’t that the moniker of postmodernism?

To my mind, a really consistent application of the original position and the veil of ignorance would necessarily a) outlaw abortion, embryo-destroying stem-cell research, etc., (b/c the veiled ME wouldn’t want to take the chance that the actual ME will be snuffed out just as I’m coming to be) but would also b) demand that society as aggressively as possible make, as you say, genetic enhancements available to all, but more importantly, that it would pursue policies that make the ME that is yet to be (or, strictly speaking, yet to be known) as likely as possible to have as good as genetic endowments as can be supplied by a modern society. Behind the veil, the abstract ME has a right to a good-as-society-can-make-me actual ME. Right? And as long as the abstract ME calculates that being as free of significant genetic burdens (including of course various syndromes and deformities) as law and science can arrange is a value that outweighs the personal freedom of choosing a mate or having government stay out of my reproductive choices, then some scheme of aggressive eugenics is DEMANDED by the logic of the original position.

I’m open to being corrected on this, but not in the common “Rawls ruled that possibility out of bounds in the second edition of…” authority-speak manner that some Rawlsian scholars employ.