Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
an ethical norm that has guided humanity, for better or worse, down
through the ages. When opponents of genetic engineering point to the
danger of obscuring, if not obliterating, human nature, they are appeal-
ing, Sagoff says, to the distinction between a child that is born and one
that is “made.” In the former case, the child remains part of a natural
lineage that connects it to family and the heritage of the species. A fab-
ricated human, on the other hand, is severed from its history and natural
lineage, and so is reduced to a mere means lacking in the dignity of a
full-fledged person. Theologians like Karl Rahner argue in this fashion,
presupposing that the givenness of nature and the human genome forbids
the kind of self-determination that results in the manufacture of humans.
Here we see quite clearly the moral status of the natural lying precisely
in its independence from ultimate human control and intervention. From
this it follows that human nature is also a given that while it might admit
of minor alterations, should never, for any reason, be tampered with in
its essentials. But there are other Christian theologians, Sagoff informs
us, who maintain that as cocreators with God, we are entitled to trans-
form our genome as long as our purposes for doing so are in accord with
God's. And Jewish theologians are even more open to such activity
because, unlike their Christian counterparts, they are not indebted to
Aristotelian form and function as essential and unchangeable. If there is
an argument against genetic engineering to made here, it will point to
the potential arrogance of modern technology and not to the harm it
might inflict on nature and the human gene pool.
Sagoff concludes by considering two senses of nature delineated by
John Stuart Mill in the nineteenth century. One specifically applies in
modern science and encompasses everything that exists. In this view of
nature, everything humans do is natural, including technology. The
second sense is narrower and includes only what is not made by human
hands. Such a notion is of course nonsensical to a scientist, but it pro-
vides a basis for normative questions concerning the fabrication and use
of technology. This is the nature that until recently has provided humans
with a discernible set of limits, and hence an ethical basis for reining in
certain kinds of manufacture and bioengineering. But once technology
has invaded the processes of life itself, such a notion becomes question-
able at best and outdated at worst, as does the very notion of human
nature. Clearly, then, since the moral worth of the larger natural world
