Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
nourished the view, later turned against genetic engineering, that humans
share a common genetic heritage, which it would be wrong to modify.
In the 1960s, discussion of positive eugenics was prompted by devel-
opments in molecular biology, which made it appear that more precise
and direct genetic interventions were on the horizon. In 1965, Rollin
Hotchkiss's “Portents for a Genetic Engineering” warned of various
dangers and difficulties on the horizon, but also portrayed efforts to
improve humanity as both inevitable and, given both our physical and
mental imperfections, ultimately desirable.
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Four years later, Cal Tech
molecular biologist Robert Sinsheimer termed genetic engineering a
“new eugenics.” Like Hotchkiss, Sinsheimer emphasized that this eugen-
ics would be accomplished by individuals acting voluntarily in their own
interests. Although his prophecy was inspired by cutting-edge science,
it harked back in spirit to Haldane and the Muller of
Out of the Night
.
“The new eugenics,” Sinsheimer claimed, “would permit in principle the
conversion of all of the unfit to the highest genetic level. The old eugen-
ics was limited to a numerical enhancement of the best of our existing
gene pool. The horizons of the new eugenics are in principle boundless—
for we should have the potential to create new genes and new qualities
yet undreamed.”
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Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the morality of genetic engineering
was heatedly debated. (Indeed, it is hard not to feel that virtually every-
thing there is to say about the ethics of cloning and so forth was said
then.) In this period, the Methodist Paul Ramsey became the leading
critic of the new field of genetic engineering, and the Episcopalian Joseph
Fletcher one of its foremost champions. The two theologians disputed
the ethics of a wide variety of existing or potential genetic manipula-
tions, including cloning. In arguing against positive interventions,
Ramsey asserted that a Christian will find “elements in the nature of man
which . . . should be withheld from human handling or trespass.”
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But
in Fletcher's view, there was nothing sacrosanct about human nature.
“The accusation that the new biology is trying to create a 'master race'
is fair enough,” he wrote, “if it means that a people with fewer defects
and more control over the crippling accidents of 'nature' are better able
to master life's ups and downs. Most of us would want to belong to the
master race in that sense. Mastery in the sense of good health and inher-
itance is sanity.”
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