Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
engineering poses. Since such an understanding requires an act of imag-
ination concerning our future, Zaner turns to a recent novel, Simon
Mawer's
Mendel's Dwarf
, and the story of Ben, a geneticist and descen-
dant of Gregor Mendel who happens to be a dwarf and the father
(through in vitro fertilization) of eight embryos, four of which he deter-
mines to be protodwarfs. Ben is faced with the decision of whether to
remove the “dwarf gene” from the four “mutants” (in effect denying his
own selfhood) or to buck the reigning social yardstick of normalcy and
affirm his own embodiment as central to who he is. At issue here is the
philosophical concern with self-identity and whatever role the body plays
in resolving this question.
As Zaner rightly observes, because traditional medicine has almost
always recognized restoration as an inherent limit, it therefore cannot
judge Ben to be defective and in need of improvement. And yet, at
the same time, Ben himself knows that he is different and suffers his
otherness acutely, for he now exists in a world where the boundaries of
restorative medicine have been stretched by the mapping of the human
genome to include genetic enhancement as measured against socially
defined norms and ideals. Thus have molecular biology and the tech-
nique of cloning already brought into question the meaning of health
and disease, not to mention medicine itself, precisely through a blurring
of the formerly unassailable distinction between culture and nature.
Indeed, in the world of post-Mendelian genetics, nothing is unthinkable,
and everything now seems possible, if not desirable. The venerable
adage “Do no harm” increasingly fails to measure up to the brave
new reality we find ourselves in, as evidenced, for example, by the dis-
turbing need for patient consent in most scientific experimentation on
human subjects. The result, Zaner fears, is a situation where we now
deem the handicapped to be certifiable freaks and hence, not being
fully human, in need of a medical fix. And lurking in the background,
if this were not troubling enough, is the very real possibility of a tech-
nocratic elite who, under the cloak of treating disease, will in fact be
tempted to institute a political agenda through a eugenics aimed at
redirecting nothing less than human evolution itself. As a philosopher,
Zaner wants to direct our attention to the heart of this scandal, namely,
the paucity of wisdom so characteristic of the technocratic mind, an
appalling ignorance, moreover, which is the direct result of the natural-
