Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
has a limited obligation of justice to redress this unfairness. It is a small
jump from this position to one that suggests that society has an obliga-
tion to redress the unfairness of illness and deformity, and genetic
enhancement presents itself as a superb means to do this most efficiently.
This argument, however, is flawed because it ignores a larger concern
with the effect that genetic enhancement has on our ability to act in our
full human capacity. That nature is indeed unfair is certainly an impor-
tant point, and where possible and appropriate, it is one that calls on us
for redress. In part, this a justification for medical practice itself, and in
particular, it has been cited as a justification for somatic and germ line
therapy. But redressing inequities can level the playing field by reducing
life to its least common denominators or its recognizable short-term
gains. The “promise” of genetic enhancement is that we can alter and
augment known and recognized human abilities. The meaning of
“known and recognized” human abilities is the issue. We will (quite logi-
cally) engineer those enhancements that we understand to be beneficial
to current success in society. But what we understand at any given time
to be beneficial is subject to constraints established by the limits of our
knowledge and the current expectations of our society. We are likely to
engineer for the present we understand and not the future we do not.
But there is more to this issue than the dangers of the consequences
of not knowing quite what we are doing. As Hans Jonas and others have
argued, it is certainly important to wonder about and analyze the ethical
implications of the very real consequences of genetic engineering on
future generations.
25
But this approach is incomplete. The true impact of
genetic modifications is in their ability to mask from us our own nature—
that is, deny our personhood. We discover ourselves only through his-
torical experience, the activity of the soul in completing the body (to
return to Aristotle's phrasing). In that sense, we are not something made
(poiesis) in which the end is generally foreseen by the artisan in com-
mencing production. Rather, we are an activity (energeia) that opens up
to an end (telos); we have within us an end discoverable only in the hard
work of living what we are. If we try to make ourselves, we deny the
activity of our soul by replacing it with the activity of our reason; we
substitute the part for the whole.
This is the modern criticism of traditional ethics turned on modern
aspirations. While it may be true that Aristotle fell victim to his culture's
