Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
genetic products) in the profoundly mechanistic and permanent way of
altering their genetic makeup, I turn them into my limited, finite projec-
tions, stripping them of their complexity, their otherness, and their capac-
ity to surprise. Certainly, as a parent, my goals and aspirations for my
children are a part of their being and their future. But as noted above,
the more power I assume for myself to engineer my children to accom-
plish my goals for them, the more completely I substitute the part for
the whole, and in so doing alter their very being.
In the conclusion to
Frankenstein
, Mary Shelley summarizes Franken-
stein's reaction to the monster as disgust at both his appearance and the
malevolence of his actions. But obviously my analysis suggests that the
problem is on a more profound level: the scientist's ambition to create
life, rooted in the new technologies of science, blinded him to what life
really is. Frankenstein assumed the monster would live the life the sci-
entist anticipated, which is what he expected on the basis of cultural
assumptions and blinkered thought, and he was unprepared for the
monster's own course and own desires. Frankenstein forgot the very
serendipity that is central to human life. He succeeded beyond his wildest
dreams, but his dreams, however ambitious, were those limited dreams
of a modern scientist, dreams of a technology of life, and thus were
inadequate to the real issue. The problem was not that his techniques
were crude; it was that his assumptions about personhood were deeply
flawed.
This chapter began with some comments about the ability of ethics to
affect basic decisions about what we, particularly those of us involved
with research into genetic engineering, will do. The comments were pes-
simistic. To worry about the subsequent impact of genetic alteration is
a real and serious concern, but a type of concern that again and again
has been ignored by human risk taking and ambition. The argument of
this chapter has been that the certainty and assertiveness inherent to
genetic engineering is opposed to and subversive of the reality of human
nature. Indeed, so compelling is the promise of the development of
genetic engineering that most of this argument has been focused on iden-
tifying a way of talking about the more fragile and tentative discovering
of a human being, recognizing its embodiment and yet revealing more.
We are much more likely to grasp the engineered future than we are to
commit ourselves to the uncertain progress of individuals buffeted by
