Ethics of splicing life
Emanuel, Ezekiel J.
The nuclear weapons debate reminds us once again of how well-intentioned scientific advances may grant human beings such vast powers that they endanger our fundamental political and...
...Putting such powers in the possession of human beings changes the ethical issue...
...For a philosopher who has contemplated as drastic a step as abolishing the family to achieve this end, genetic engineering might provide a simple and foolproof method for regulating the distribution of natural assets...
...Control of such life forms by any individual or group poses a potential threat to all humanity...
...They asked, "Who shall determine how human good is best served when new life forms are being engineered...
...Therefore, "uncertainty about possible shifts in some of people's most basic concepts brings with it evaluative and ethical uncertainty...
...We are entranced by the prospect of saving hundreds of thousands of people who, the World Health Organization estimates, die from hemoglobin diseases each year...
...A few arguments are offered delineating the risks, countered by arguments that place the risk in perspective and minimize its significance...
...But the "increased ability to act for the well-being of the child would come [as] an expansion of parental responsibility...
...the advantages of persons with greater natural endowments are to be limited to those that further the good of the poorer sector of society...
...There is also the prospect of a new national bioethics commission...
...These attributes define individuals in their uniqueness—they are constitutive of persons...
...Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C...
...it is like any number of creative activities of God in which humans may ethically partake because they are made in His image...
...We now are expending tens of billions of dollars and millions of work hours precisely to cultivate and improve these talents...
...At the end of the chapter on social and ethical issues the Commission tallies up all the uncertain risks and benefits, finding "the occurrence of specific desirable or undesirable consequences impossible to predict...
...entranced by the profits to be gained from commercialization of this genetic technology, and by the sheer awesomeness of such a technical achievement...
...How much more capable our children would be if they had the capacity for higher intelligence, greater mathematical ability, and finer musical skills before they entered school...
...fertilize the egg in vitro...
...The nuclear weapons debate reminds us once again of how well-intentioned scientific advances may grant human beings such vast powers that they endanger our fundamental political and social values...
...5) create conflicts between commercial interests and academic research projects...
...A household with an annual income of $10,000 or less gains $20 in tax cuts, but it loses $250 in cash benefits and $160 in noncash benefits (Food Stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, housing subsidies), for a total loss of $390...
...In considering the risk of destroying parental responsibility, the Commission notes that "if genetic engineering makes use of reproductive technologies such as artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization, it will increase the strains on...
...Altering genes would equalize this lottery itself, making the consequent distribution of income and wealth less arbitrary and more just...
...That same evening, in his press conference on April 4, President Reagan derided the study as false and misleading...
...distributive shares are decided by the outcome of the natural lottery...
...And since the alteration is encoded in the individual's genes and influences development before birth, it can never be consented to, reversed, or somehow modified...
...IN THE FACE OF SUCH ATTRACTIONS, the Commission seems to think we cannot control ourselves...
...However, "here too there may be as much uncertainty about whether such changes would be beneficial or harmful...
...In a front-page story on April 4, the New York Times reported that: The Congressional Budget Office, analyzing the cumulative effect of budget and tax changes adopted since 1981 [finds] that low-income families had lost the most money and high-income families had gained the most...
...3) change people's sense of being human beings and the way they think of themselves...
...Any ordinary intelligence can see what's wrong with that "equation" but, then, our president, you might say, has an extraordinary intelligence...
...No matter how noble the intentions or good the consequences, using such power deprives men and women of their autonomy and freedom...
...To assess properly the social and ethical implications of this technology, we must conduct a thought experiment, imagining how the ultimate capabilities of this technology will affect individual lives, social relations, and political affairs...
...It is impossible in practice to secure equal chances of achievement and culture for those similarly endowed, and therefore we may want to adopt a principle which recognizes this fact and also mitigates the arbitrary effects of the natural lottery itself...
...Altering the brain-wiring is altering the person...
...THE COMMISSION EXAMINES many potentially danger ous consequences of this technology, including whether genetic engineering will — (1) interfere harmfully with evolution...
...In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls elaborates this position...
...and this outcome is arbitrary from a moral perspective...
...Each new power won by man is power over man as well...
...The household with an income of $80,000 or more gains $8,390 in tax cuts, loses $90 in cash benefits and $40 in noncash benefits, for a total gain of $8,260...
...What would it mean that humans had free will...
...The power for genetic engineering of human beings is not commensurable with the use of psychotropic drugs or any other medical therapy that might alter people's personalities...
...To expect humanity to turn its back on what may be one of the greatest technological revolutions may itself betray a failure to recognize the limits of individual and social self-restraint...
...Or selfdetermination...
...But can we be confident that our liberal values are so entrenched as to preclude these manipulations of individuals...
...While we worry about the dangers, discuss the ethics, appoint committees to explore the risks of genetic splicing technology, we zealously go on researching and planning for its use...
...Indeed, altering the brain-wiring of people to increase, say, their mathematical talents changes their thought processes, understanding, and insights...
...Splicing Life: The Social and Ethical Issues of Genetic Engineering with Human Beings is the Commission's published report.* The Commission begins that report by denying the often-made claim that genetic engineering is immoral because it would grant humans godlike powers...
...The Commission's chair was Morris Abram, its executive director Alexander Capron...
...If some people could exercise this power over others' genes, all liberal principles would become vacuous...
...To alter them, no matter how noble the intended goal, is still to engineer humans genetically to an end that they themselves have not chosen...
...For example...
...This could greatly improve the results of our educational system...
...Wouldn't genetic splicing technology be a godsend if it could grant us a scientifically precise method for endowing each individual with genes that would raise the "range of potential" for these valuable attributes...
...Similar experiments have been successful with both fruit flies and mice...
...All very simple: Them as has, gets...
...Genetic splicing might provide a way to equalize the natural endowments of members of a society, and thus create a more moral society...
...The great, overriding "interests" tangibly measured in new knowledge and in cures for human diseases, and the billions of dollars involved, overwhelm any ethical dangers and objections...
...Quoting directly from the CBO study, "The combined impact of the tax and benefit changes since 1981 is a net loss in income for those in the lowest category, and an increase for the other four groups...
...insert any gene into the egg...
...2) destroy parents' rights and sense of responsibility to their children...
...What will be the effect...
...Ultimately, "the use of genetic splicing technology is not claimed to be wrong as such but wrong because of its potential consequences...
...Given the great scientific, medical, and commercial interest in this technology, it is doubtful that efforts to foreclose important lines of investigation would succeed...
...LET US IMAGINE that scientists will be able to harvest human eggs...
...Indeed, not long after the release of Splicing Life Bernard Davis, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, predicted in Science magazine that "cure by implantation of genes into somatic cells now seems only a few years off...
...Then, with a twist of logic that denies the very uncertainty we have been so persistently reminded of, the next sentence continues: The Commission could find no ground for concluding that any current or planned forms of genetic engineering, whether using human or nonhuman material, are intrinsically wrong or irreligious per se...
...The analysis of each potential danger follows a pattern of responsible, skeptical inquiry...
...The social and ethical dangers are not a result of potentially dangerous consequences but inherent in the very use of the technology...
...In the final paragraphs of the chapter on social and ethical issues, the Commission reveals why it believes genetic engineering will not and cannot be halted, even if it carries with it significant dangers: At this point in the development of genetic engineering no reasons have been found for abandoning the entire enterprise—indeed, it would probably be naive to assume that it could be...
...Let us further imagine that scientists could insert into the egg any gene or gene combination in the human genome, from those genes that regulate muscle development and skin color to those that bear on the development of the higher human powers, such as intelligence, mathematical ability, and musical skill...
...households with annual incomes of $10,000 have lost, on the average, $90 a year...
...How does it work out...
...Indeed, that such a prestigious Commission never specifies what type of future uses of genetic engineering technology might be unethical or socially harmful, and never defines what reasons might be "found for abandoning the entire enterprise," reemphasizes the very shallowness of our commitment to ethics and liberal principles...
...Everything fair and square...
...The specter of such power has haunted the development of recombinant DNA research since its inception in the early 1970s...
...For human engineering will change a person before that individual has demonstrated a problem, fault, defect, or disability...
...4) permit misuses by people with evil intentions...
...Indeed, we would not need any elaborate system of social institutions to "mitigate the arbitrary effects of the natural lottery," or to insure that the use of natural talents properly benefits the poor...
...Because the Commission was so intent on using a utilitarian calculus of benefits and risks, it ignored or overlooked the fundamental danger of recombinant genetic technology, a danger that was raised by the General Secretariats of the three main religious councils of America in a letter to President Carter in the summer of 1980...
...Yet, there is still some time, maybe ten years, before we possess the full technical power to manipulate any gene in the human genome...
...This may give us the time and the forum in which to realize and define the dangers of genetic engineering and, one hopes, discover some social self-control...
...There is no more reason to permit the distribution of income and wealth to be settled by the distribution of natural assets than by historical and social fortune...
...Gene splicing could easily be used to increase the average intellectual or mathematical capacity, or to make children more musically skillful...
...Finally, let us imagine that this technological wizardry is used only with the noblest of intentions, the good of humanity...
...Other noble uses can be imagined for recombinant genetic technology, such as the creation of a more just and moral society...
...Or were responsible for their own persons...
...By denying that recombinant genetic technology is wrong or unethical, and by finding the development of this technology safe, the Commission has insured that gene-splicing in humans will occur...
...Further, the Times describes the Congressional Budget Office as a "nonpartisan agency respected on Capitol Hill for its independence and technical expertise...
...Households with incomes of $40,000 to $80,000 have gained an average of $2,900 a year and families with more than $80,000 of income have gained, on the average, $8,270 a year...
...According to influential liberal philosophers, the arbitrary distribution of natural talents that determines the distribution of goods in our society is, if not unjust, then less moral than it might ideally be...
...On the one hand, "the manipulation of genes . . . that contribute significantly to personality or intelligence—if it ever becomes possible —could have considerable impact on the way people think of themselves...
...The deliberations conclude with a reminder of how uncertain all such evaluations are...
...If, for example, the United States were to attempt such a step, researchers and investment capital would probably shift to other countries where such prohibitions did not exist...
...There neither is nor can be any simple increase of power on man's side...
...On the other hand, we cannot forget that "people can already be changed profoundly through psychosurgery, behavior modification, or the therapeutic use of psychoactive drugs...
...WE CANNOT DISCOVER whether genetic engineering is right or wrong by a calculus of its potential consequences...
...1:1 And the Rich Get...
...But not respected everywhere...
...reimplant the egg into the mother to develop into a full-term baby with the artificially inserted gene fully functional...
...But a family that saves $1,500 in taxes still has to pay a high tax...
...Will not possessing the power to change a person in ways we consider good erode our commitment to such values, or distort the fundamental conceptions that inform them...
...The Commission does not see in the rapid development of gene splicing [a] "fundamental danger" to world safety or to human values...
...traditional views of family and kinship...
...All science, the Commission contends, grants the "scientist vast powers of action," which make "human beings, in some sense, co-creators with the Supreme Creator...
...The report was published in November 1982 by the U.S...
...G. q 269...
...Maybe C. S. Lewis summarized the issue best in The Abolition of Man: Man's conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men...
...Look, he said, a family that has to pay $20 in taxes saves $5, and pays only $15...
...The Times report adds that "Families that pay little or nothing in taxes . . . get little or no benefit...
...Wouldn't it be immoral not to use this technology, when we have it, to mitigate "the arbitrary effects of the natural lottery...
...The Commission argues that "the best safeguards against such abuses are a continued support of democratic institutions and a commitment to individual rights...
...The Commission repeats this formula in discussing the potential effects of genetic engineering on personal identity...
...Genetic engineering may be godlike, but it is not uniquely so...
...Aware of this danger, President Carter set up the Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research...
...And the result of our haphazard primary and secondary education is a very modest success at best and, according to many, a dismal failure...
...To begin altering the genes that influence such attributes as intelligence, musical ability, or even physical prowess, even just to "enhance" the range of potentials, is to manipulate persons...
...Same percentage...
...But we cannot ignore the fact that using the powers of genetic engineering to these noble ends would mean some people exercising great power over other people...
...These fatalistic and frightening words seem to imply that whatever the morality—or immorality —of genetic engineering in humans, it will proceed anyway...
Vol. 31 • July 1984 • No. 3
