Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
was once labeled a “crisis pregnancy.” HMOs are now standardizing
prenatal testing and genetic screening procedures that were once called
on only when couples had a history of difficulties. The point of all this
is to initiate a process—should a sign even be hinted at—“of cajoling
and pressuring that terminates in an abortion.”
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Jeannie Hannemann, a
family life minister, “sees a culture shift taking place moving away from
supporting families with special-needs children toward resenting such
families as creating a 'burden' on society. [She] has heard of HMOs refus-
ing treatment to special needs children, arguing their mental or physical
problem represented a 'preexisting condition' because their parents
elected not to abort them after prenatal screening indicated a problem.”
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The heart of the matter lies in a loss of appreciation for the complex
nature of human embodiment. The social imaginary—which the domi-
nant scientific voices in the area of genetic engineering, technology, and
“enhancement” shape—declares the body to be a construction, some-
thing we can invent. We are loath to grant the status of givenness to any
aspect of ourselves, despite the fact that human babies are wriggling,
complex, little bodies preprogrammed with all sorts of delicately cali-
brated reactions to the human relationships that “nature” presumes will
be the matrix of child nurture. If we think of bodies concretely in this
way, we are propelled to ask ourselves questions about the world little
human bodies enter: is it welcoming, warm, responsive? But if we tilt in
the biotech constructivist direction, one in which the body is so much
raw material to be worked upon and worked over, the surroundings in
which bodies are situated fades as the body gets enshrined as a kind of
messianic project.
In this latter scenario, the body we currently inhabit becomes the
imperfect body subject to chance and the vagaries of life, including illness
and aging. This body is our foe. The future perfect body extolled in man-
ifestos, promised by enthusiasts, embraced by many ordinary citizens is
a gleaming fabrication. For soon, we are promised, we will have found
a way around the fact that what our forebears took for granted—that
the body must weaken and falter, and one day pass from life to death—
will soon be a relic of a bygone era. The future perfect body will not be
permitted to falter. Yes, the body may grow older in a strictly chrono-
logical sense, but why should we age? So we devise multiple strategies
to fend off aging even as we represent aging bodies as those of teenagers
