Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
animal can occur when, for example, we eliminate genetic disease or sus-
ceptibility to other diseases by genetic engineering, since disease entails
suffering. The foregoing maxim that does follow from the Maxim to
Respect Telos is what I call the Principle of Conservation of Well-Being.
This principle does, of course, exclude much of the genetic engineering
currently in progress, where the telos is changed to benefit humans (for
instance, by creating larger meat animals) without regard to its effect
on the animal. A major concern in this area, which I have discussed
elsewhere, is the creation of genetically engineered animals to “model”
human genetic disease.
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There is one final caveat about the genetic engineering of animals that
is indirectly related to the Maxim to Respect Telos and that has been
discussed, albeit in a different context, by biologists. Let us recall that a
telos is not only genetically based but environmentally expressed. Thus,
we can modify an animal's telos in such a way as to improve the animal's
telos and quality of life, but at the expense of other animals enmeshed
in the ecological/environmental web with the animal in question. For
example, suppose we could genetically engineer the members of a prey
species to be impervious to predators. While their telos would certainly
be improved, other animals would very likely be harmed. While these
animals would thrive, those who predate them could starve, and other
animals who compete with the modified species could be choked out. We
would, in essence, be robbing Peter to pay Paul. Furthermore, while the
animals in question would surely be better off in the short run, their
descendants may well not be—they might, for example, exceed the
available food supply and also starve, something that would not have
occurred but for the putatively beneficial change in the telos we under-
took. The price, therefore, of improving one telos of animals in nature
may well be to degrade the efficacy of others. In this consequential and
environmental sense, we would be wise to be extremely circumspect and
conservative in our genetic engineering of nondomestic animals, as the
environmental consequences of such modifications are too complex to
be even roughly predictable.
It is important, then, to clean up some possible questions and misun-
derstandings regarding my account of telos and the morality of chang-
ing telos. In the first place, the question arises as to whether the account
of telos and its modification I have given is true to the view of telos
