What's natural?
Callahan, Daniel
ETHICS WATCH DANIEL CALLAHAN WHAT'S NATURAL? It's hard to say One of my favorite examples of contemporary moral confusion, too little noted, is the status of nature as a moral guide. A...
...That same Europe has lately seen a furious debate about the use of genetically modified food products (now known as GM), with strong opposition in many countries, Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom in particular...
...The great debate among environmentalists has been between the preservationists, following John Muir, who have held that nature has intrinsic value and should be preserved for its own sake...
...Yet of late there has been a powerful movement toward alternative medicine, and particularly the notion of holistic health based on a supposedly richer understanding of nature...
...If there is any single principle compelling that movement, it is the necessity for humans to learn how to live with, and to respect, the natural world—a world said to offer guides to sensible living if only they will be heeded...
...Nature does not stand a chance against the twin gods of progress and prosperity...
...Who cares what is "natural...
...I have never been quite convinced about that...
...In any case, the axiom is constantly turned on its head by enthusiasts of genetic engineering: Since it is possible to change nature, which limits our choices and makes us sick, then it ought to be done...
...and the conservationists, for whom Gifford Pinchot was the model, and who have held that nature should be protected—but also carefully managed—to serve human needs...
...The repugnance so vivid there is, however, not matched in the United States, where there has hardly been any widespread opposition to GM...
...It is hard to think of a moral theory that has come upon harder times, having only a minute following these days...
...It is a prospect that many speak of as "unnatural," and for that reason alone to be banned...
...Now that was a really repugnant idea for many, who responded by charging ageism and pressing the individuality of the elderly...
...It is just as well that I have no more space...
...and a no less strong emphasis, in conventional medicine, on the development of good health habits, based on the ancient Greek notion of hygeia, that a proper heeding of the needs of the body will allow the body to take care of itself with minimal medical intervention...
...American advertisers can't resist advertising products as "natural," yet the United States would be at the top of the list of countries willing to put aside moral claims based on what is considered unnatural...
...That environmentalist position is not far from a stance one can readily discover in medicine and biotechnology: There is no reason that biomedicine should not try to enhance and improve human nature, and no reason to see nature as offering any intrinsic reasons not to be manipulated...
...The entire history of modern medicine, it has plausibly been argued, has been a war against nature, that nature which sickens, cripples, and kills us...
...And what's left of it seems so split by internal squabbles that it is hard to know where it stands in any case...
...Why not, respond the technological enthusiasts...
...It was the philosopher David Hume who first argued that an "ought" cannot be derived from an "is," and that view has remained almost axiomatic right up to the present...
...In Europe, by contrast, bans against research on human cloning were quickly put in place in a number of countries...
...Something like that may already be happening with the idea of human cloning: The widespread call for a ban has not yet been heeded and there seems to be a sharply declining congressional momentum to go that way...
...The initially hostile reaction to anesthesia in the mid-nineteenth century is one instance...
...The more suitable emotion is excitement, the thrill of discovery, and the heady prospect of greater choice over our genetic destiny, Commonweal 7 July 16,1999 a destiny in our hands to remake as we see fit...
...Prudence is needed—nature can bite back—but that's about all the caution necessary...
...Commonweal 8 July 16,1999...
...Heavyhanded technologists, and much of industry, have taken the conservationist position and usually pushed it further than Pinchot: Nature is malleable and resilient and what technology harms more technology can cure...
...Another is that, since death is natural, there should be a limit on money spent, say, to extend the human life span...
...The environmental movement has of course been another important arena for trying to determine how humans should best adapt to nature...
...that was the main reason the researchers, fearing a public backlash, worked hard to stay out of sight...
...More recently, while underground work on in vitro fertilization (IVF) was going on in the late 1960s and the 1970s, the aboveground discussion was filled with similar talk about the unnatural...
...Since "is" is all there is, in this or any other world, where else can "oughts" be found...
...I had planned to end this column by talking about the present state of natural law theory...
...But the history of what has been called unnatural and repugnant in medicine has been erratic...
...One of them is this: If it is "natural" for people to age and die, then there should be no compulsion on the part of public policy to provide endless life-saving technologies for the old...
...For enthusiasts of genetic engineering, neither cloning, nor the improvement of human intelligence, nor giving parents the power to select the genetic characteristics of their children, nor developing more profitable agricultural products, is an occasion for repugnance...
...Just as my friend Leon R. Kass at the University of Chicago found practically no support—and mainly derision— when he tried to use repugnance as the take-off point for an argument against human cloning, I have had similar trouble when I have tried to use the "natural" as a point of departure for my moral arguments...
...That is a response congenial to liberal individualism, on the left, and to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, on the right...
...But when Baby Louise Brown was born in 1978, and the technique was quickly picked up to be used as a routine way of treating the infertile, repugnance turned to elation, the thrill of scientific progress quickly trumping any lingering repugnance...
...But then I suppose there is nothing more natural than debates about the foundations of morality or the nature of "nature...
...A common response to the announcement of the cloned sheep Dolly, opening the prospect of cloned human beings, was repugnance and recoil...
Vol. 126 • July 1999 • No. 13
