Genetic Engineering and Eugenics: The Uses of History - Is Human Nature Obsolete? - page 149

51. Paul Ramsey, Fabricated Man: The Ethics of Genetic Control (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1970), 31-32. It is interesting that Ramsey favored
negative eugenics, which was then much less controversial, noting that in the
Christian tradition, having children was never regarded as a selfish prerogative,
and suggesting that we needed to develop an ethics of “genetic duty” (ibid.,
56-59). For a more detailed discussion of the argument between Ramsey
and Fletcher, see Paul, “From Reproductive Responsibility to Reproductive
Autonomy.”
52. Joseph Fletcher, The Ethics of Genetic Control: Ending Reproductive
Roulette (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1974), 13.
53. Jeremy Rifkin, Who Should Play God ? (New York: Dell Publishing Co.
1977), See also Ted Peters, Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human
Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1997), 186-187, n. 27.
54. Jeremy Rifkin, Algeny (New York: Viking, 1983), 252.
55. Peters, Playing God ? 117.
56. Leon Kass, “Making Babies: The New Biology and the 'Old' Morality,”
Public Interest (Winter 1972): 53. A brief aside on an interesting paradox: To
worry about genetically changing human nature is necessarily to assume that it
is malleable—that we have or at least someday may have the capacity to genet-
ically alter “essential” human characteristics. Thus, as recently observed in From
Chance to Choice , once we make this assumption, we can no longer assess genetic
interventions by their conformity with our (fixed) nature. Questions about
whether it is morally permissible or even required to genetically intervene to
change our nature cannot be settled by appealing to human nature since “con-
sonance with a fixed human nature cannot be the touchstone for what is just or
moral if there is no such thing” (Allen Buchanan, Dan W. Brock, Norman
Daniels, and Daniel Wikler, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000], 87, 93). For a similar point,
made in relation to Haldane's scientific utopianism, see Yaron Ezrahi, “Haldane
between Daedalus and Icarus,” in Haldane's Daedalus Revisited , ed. Krishna R.
Dronamragu (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) 76.
57. Ted Howard, cited in Kimbrell, The Human Body Shop , 225.
58. See Peters, Playing God ? 12-13, 117.
59. Clare Randall, Bernard Mandelbaum, and Thomas Kelly, “Letter from Three
General Secretaries,” in Splicing Life: A Report on the Social and Ethical Issues
of Genetic Engineering with Human Beings , President's Commission for the
Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research
(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983), 96. See also Robert
B. Kaiser, “Three Clerics Urge President and Congress to Set Up Controls on
Genetic Engineers,” New York Times , July 15, 1980, A16.
60. Jeremy Rifkin, “The Theological Letter concerning Moral Arguments
against Genetic Engineering of the Human Germline Cells” (Washington, DC:
Foundation on Economic Trends, 1983).