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Human Nature Technologically Revisited*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr
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Extract

This essay is meant as a form of philosophical exorcism. The goal is to dispel the view that there are general secular grounds for holding human germline genetic engineering to be intrinsically wrong, a malum in se, or a morally culpable violation of human nature. The essay endorses the view that major obligations of prudence and care attend the development of this technology. However, these justifiable moral concerns can be seen more clearly when one has dispelled what must, from a secular perspective, be regarded as pseudo-issues.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Autumn 1990 , pp. 180 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1990

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References

1 By general secular moral grounds for or against particular actions or policies, I mean grounds that should be recognized as having moral weight by moral agents without the presuppositions of particular religious or ideological premises.

2 The Old Church Slavonic word “podvig,” which identifies the spiritual value of accepting the trials of this life, has been advanced by Orthodox theologians in their discussion of new reproductive technologies as a ground for accepting infertility rather than striving to treat it. See, for example, the remarks of Makarios, Bishop Vladika in Orthodox Outreach, vol. XII (October 1989), p. 13.Google Scholar

3 St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, argued on natural law grounds that, all else being equal, masturbation – because it violates the natural law – was a more serious sin than fornication, which violates considerations of charity. Summa Theologica II–II, pp. 153–54. 5 Pius XI, “Casti connubii” (31 December 1930), Five Great Encyclicals (New York: Paulist Press, 1957), p. 92. This encyclical and statements like it are embedded within a philosophical tradition that has attempted to generate general rational arguments to establish the immorality of a range of actions on the grounds that they are immoral. In this regard, one might note the special papal endorsement of the philosophy of St. Thomas by Pope Leo XIII in his encylical “Aeterni patris” (August 4, 1879).

4 It is worth noting that religious understandings of nature have led to considering nature sacred and worthy of protection against unwarranted injury or intrusion. Thus, one finds an argument against environmental pollution and destruction by Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin's co-author of The Origin of Species. “To pollute a spring or a river, to exterminate a bird or beast, should be treated as moral offences and as social crimes; while all who profess religion or sincerely believe in the Deity – the designer and maker of this world and of every living thing – should, one would have thought, have placed this among the first of their forbidden sins…” The World of Life (New York: Moffat, Yard, & Co., 1911), pp. 300–301. Such arguments from design seem to provide the foundations for some of the general objections against genetic engineering. For example, Jeremy Rifkin, in his 1983 resolution, presumes that “no individual, group of individuals, or institutions can legitimately claim the right or authority to make such decisions on behalf of the rest of the species alive today or for future generations…”, and this assumes that the biological status quo is in and of itself for some reason preferable to a revised human biological state of affairs in which there would be less biologically-based disease and greater capacity to realize important personal goals. Genetic Engineering News (July-August 1983), p. 4. Aside from some design-based argument, his considerations are open to the riposte, “How may individuals or institutions, who affirm a commitment to diminishing human suffering, not employ germline genetic engineering whenever it becomes clear that it will achieve considerable benefits at little risk?”

5 For a study of the intertwining of theological and philosophical arguments bearing on the condemnation of contraception as an unnatural or an immoral act, see Noonan, John T. Jr., Contraception (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1966).Google Scholar A secular philosophical review of recent natural law arguments regarding contraception is provided by Cohen, Carl, “Sex, Birth Control, and Human Life,” Ethics, vol. 79 (July 1969), pp. 251–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 I will use “philosophical argument” to identify arguments that do not rest on divinely revealed truths, but on what can be established through the use of natural reason unaided by divine grace or revelation. I will use “religious argument” and “theological argument” to identify those arguments that rest on revealed truths or special culturally or traditionally established premises. I thus include natural theology under philosophy and identify religious arguments with revealed religion. I also would include, though it is not crucial for my discussions here, special cultural assumptions, which may not be religious in involving the endorsement of a transcendent or ultimate reality.

7 By germline genetic engineering I mean an altering of the genetic material of those cells responsible for producing sperm or ova such that the changes can be passed on to future generations. In contrast, somatic cell therapy alters the genetic conformation in cells that do not produce sperm or ova so that the changes will not be passed on.

8 I have addressed a number of these issues elsewhere. See, for example, Engelhardt, H. T. Jr., “Persons and Humans: Refashioning Ourselves in a Better Image and Likeness,” Zygon, vol. 19 (September 1984), pp. 281–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Gentherapie an menschlichen Keimbahnzellen,” in Ethische und rechtliche Fragen der Gentechnologie und der Reproduktionsmedizin, ed. Braun, V., Mieth, D., and Steigleder, K. (Munich: Schweitzer Verlag, 1987), pp. 255–62Google Scholar; and The Foundations of Bioethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), especially pp. 375–87. See also David, Bernard and Engelhardt, H. T. Jr., “Genetic Engineering: Prospects and Recommendations,” Zygon, vol. 19 (September 1984), pp. 277–80.Google Scholar

9 Culliton, Barbara J., “Gene Therapy Guidelines Revised,” Science, vol. 228 (May 3, 1985), pp. 561–62.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

10 Office of Technology Assessment, New Developments in Biotechnology (Washington: USGPO, 1987), p. 71.Google Scholar

11 ibid., p. 74.

12 Subunit on Church and Society, World Council of Churches, “Biotechnology: Its Challenges to the Churches and the World,” adopted July 1989.

13 Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, 23rd Ordinary Session, Recommendation 934, Strasbourg (1982). The statement as it stands is strategically ambiguous. On the one hand, it can be interpreted as condemning germline genetic engineering save for rather narrowly drawn exceptions (perhaps the cure of fatal hereditary disease). On the other hand, it can be interpreted as simply requiring informed consent and a positive benefit-harm ratio. Such ambiguity likely serves political ends.

14 Genetic Engineering News (July-August 1983), p. 4.

15 Office of Technology Assessment, Mapping Our Genes (Washington: USGPO, 1988).Google Scholar

16 Culliton, Barbara J., “Gene Therapy Guidlines Revised,” Science, vol. 228 (May 3, 1985), pp. 561–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Gene Therapy OK'd,” Science, vol. 242 (October 7, 1988), p. 21; Roberts, Leslie, “Human Gene Transfer Test Approved,” science, vol. 243 (January 27, 1989), p. 473CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; “Human Gene Transfer Test,” Science, vol. 241 (July 22, 1988), p. 419.

17 I do not here raise the separate issue of functional explanations in biology or of the role of immanent teleological explanations in accounting for biological phenomena. See, for example, Kantor, J. R., The Logic of Modern Science (Bloomington: Principia Press, 1953)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 11, “Events and Constructs in Biology.” See also Wright, Larry, “Functions,” Philosophical Review, vol. 82 (1973), pp. 139–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Boorse, Christopher, “Wright on Functions.” Philosophical Review, vol. 85 (January 1976), pp. 70–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; See also Nagel, Ernest, Teleology Revisited and Other Essays in the Philosophy and History of Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 12, “Teleology Revisited,” pp. 275–316; and Ayala, Francisco J., “The Autonomy of Biology as a Natural Science,” Biology, History, and Natural Philosophy, ed. Breck, Allen D. and Wolfgang, Yourgrau (New York: Plenum, 1972), pp. 1–16.Google Scholar

18 Depending on how much individuals value the long-range survival of the species, they will need to take steps – at least until the advent of quickly and easily applicable genetic engineering – to preserve genes that do not provide adaptation in our current environment, but which would contribute to human survival in possible future environments (e.g., after a nuclear war, a collision with a large asteroid, radical environmental changes due to the loss of ozone, etc.).

19 Medawar, Peter Brian, The Future of Man (London: Methuen, 1960), pp. 100ff.Google Scholar

20 Some have written of menopause as a disease, indicating the perceived need to use disease language in order to authorize desired medical interventions. Kistner, Robert W., “The Menopause,” Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology, vol. 16 (December 1973), pp. 107–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

21 It is at best doubtful that one can discover without appeal to particular cultural and individual values what should count as states of disease or states of health. For some excerpts from the controversies regarding this issue, see Boorse, Christopher, “On the Distinction Between Disease and Illness,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 5 (Fall 1973), pp. 49–68Google Scholar, and “Health as a Theoretical Concept,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 44 (December 1977), pp. 542–73, Engelhardt, H. T., The Foundations of Bioethics (New York: Oxford, 1986), pp. 157–201Google Scholar; Goosens, William K., “Values, Health, and Medicine,” Philosophy of Science, vol. 47 (March 1980), pp. 100–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Political structures have generally been regarded as ways of containing or directing human impulses because of the view that in a state of nature, without political structures, “the life of man [would be] solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or the Matter, Forms, & Power of a Common wealth Ecclesiastical and Civill (London: Andrew Crooke, 1651), pt. 1, ch. 13, p. 62. It is for such considerations that Immanuel Kant argues, for example, that it would be immoral to resolve to remain in the state of nature. “In general they act in the highest degree wrongly by wanting to be in and to remain in a state that is not juridical, that is, a state of affairs in which no one is secure in what belongs to him against deeds of violence.” The Metaphysical Elements of Justice (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), p. 72, Akademiea usgabe vol. 6, 307ff. I do not mean to suggest that genetic engineering could obviate the need for political structures, only that some particular forms of violence for which now the only remedy is police power may in fact be curable.

23 Laws II, 659d, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith, Hamilton and Huntington, Cairns, trans. Taylor, A. E. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 1256.Google Scholar

24 Utilitarianism, ed. Oskar, Piest (Indianopolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957), pp. 34–35.Google Scholar

25 Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964)Google Scholar, bk. III, “Of Morals,” pt. 2, sec. 2, p. 500.

26 ibid.

27 Sheptulin, A. P., Marxist-Leninist Philosophy (Moscow: Progress, 1980), p. 488.Google Scholar

28 ibid., p. 473.

29 ibid.

30 For an account of the sociobiological basis of male aggressiveness, see Livingstone, F. B., “The Effects of Warfare on the Biology of the Human Species,” ed. Fried, M., Harris, M., and Murphy, R., War: The Anthropology of Armed Conflict and Aggression (Garden City: Natural History Press, 1967), pp. 3–15.Google Scholar See also Symons, Donald, The Evolution of Human Sexuality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 144–58.Google Scholar For an ethnographic study of violence, see Chagnon, Napoleon A., Yanomano: The Fierce People (2nd ed.; New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977).Google Scholar

31 These prudential considerations regarding mass destruction would play a role in addition to other moral judgments that one would want to make regarding homicidal proclivities even under “natural” circumstances.

32 For a description of some of the syndromes I have in mind, see Mark, Vernon H. and Ervin, Frank R., Violence and the Brain (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).Google Scholar The authors indicate their view that some dispositions to extreme violence may have important genetic components.

33 Hume, David, Enquiries concerning the Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A. (2nd ed; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), pp. 172–73.Google Scholar

34 ibid., see pp. 174–75.

35 There are serious difficulties with hypothetical choice theorics, which I do not deny. Rather, insofar as such accounts can be reasonably held to succeed, the envisaged choice to use germline genetic engineering should meet the criteria set by such accounts.

36 National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, The Belmont Report (Washington: USGPO, 1978).Google Scholar

37 Engelhardt, H. T. Jr., Mind-Body: A Categorial Relation (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), pp. 130–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 By a Cartesian or Kantian contrast, I mean the contrast between that element of us that is known in self-conscious reflection (e.g., my plans, desires, etc.) and that element of us that is disclosable only through empirical study or observation (i.e., determining whether I have sufficient cardiorespiratory reserve to climb a particular mountain in two days). Thus, for Kant, morality becomes a matter of what is articulable in reason; the particularities of embodiment and the character of human inclinations become irrelevant. “But since moral laws should hold for every rational being as such, the principles must be derived from the universal concept of a rational being generally.” Kant, Immanuel, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Beck, L. W. (Indianopolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976), p. 28Google Scholar, Akademietextausgabe, vol. 4, p. 412.