Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Nonetheless, Zaner urges caution and vigilance regarding cloning,
and argues that the asymmetrical power now placed in the hands of the
medical establishment ought to transform the definition of medical
wisdom into one of judicious restraint. Such humility, he believes, can
be fostered primarily by serious reflection on the fact of being born and
borne by woman, and the relevance of that to our humanness. Seen in
this light, one's world—that is to say, the culture into which one is born—
is also gifted in the form of an existence unconditionally bequeathed to
one by one's mother. To preserve, then, both the idea and the reality of
the gift and givenness is in the end to save the mystery of being born at
this time, in this place, to this particular mother, family, society, and so
on. By inscribing our self-identity in embodiment, Zaner seeks to delimit
the human condition precisely in our being subject to chance and an
inability to find a “firmer footing” in existence. In doing so, he throws
up a metaphysical and perhaps even religious challenge to the current
technological impetus toward control and the elimination of randomness
and indeterminacy. More positively, he argues for a recognition of fini-
tude as the first step in the affirmation of embodiment as the essential
link to others—a link that with all its imperfection and uncertainty, is
ignored at the expense of our selfhood and whatever meaning the human
condition might have in a world where traditional metaphysical answers
no longer pack the force they once had before the advent of the tech-
nological imperative.
Harold Baillie's chapter “Aristotle and Genetic Engineering: The
Uncertainty of Excellence” raises the question of uncertainty in discus-
sions of both genetic engineering and human nature. He begins by noting
that ethics is in a sense tragic, as it reflects on past events with only a
slight ability to anticipate or predict. Particularly with genetic engineer-
ing, the pace of change and the newness of the results threaten to leave
ethics, at least in the sense developed by Lisa Sowle Cahill and LeRoy
Walters later in this volume, reflecting on a series of fait accompli. Given
this implicit criticism of social theory and utilitarianism as approaches
to the evaluation of genetic engineering, Baillie turns to the traditional
distinction between genetic therapy and genetic enhancement, which he
suggests is inadequate to establish any clear understanding of, much less
limits to, the possibilities of genetic engineering. The slippery slope he
sees linking therapy and enhancement can only be avoided by a refo-
