Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
develop. Aside from the same concerns about potential harm to the
person or others, we must also consult our long-standing and nonnego-
tiable ethical ideals for humans—such as autonomy, freedom, and
responsibility—and see if the proposed manipulation does violence to
them. (The augmentation of intelligence, or certainly of rationality, if
doable, would seem prima facie to be a salubrious change in the human
telos.) With a few glaringly obvious exceptions, such as engineering sub-
servience, what we choose to engineer at the “ought” level should be
accomplished by a well-crafted ethical dialectic on a case-by-case basis.
This in turn means that we must have a far greater public under-
standing of what genetic engineering can in fact do. It is one thing to
cure a patent genetic defect like cystic fibrosis when we are confident that
such a modification will unequivocally effect a cure for pain, suffering,
and dysfunction without also creating untoward consequences. It is quite
another thing to attempt the modification of some highly complex phe-
notype trait like “violence” or “intelligence,” where we are not even sure
what these concepts mean, and are reasonably certain that they are the
products of both many genes and environmental factors.
Since genetic engineering is unquestionably the most powerful tool
ever discovered by humans, with the greatest potential for effecting
enormous and possibly irrevocable change in both our environment and
ourselves, we simply cannot be cavalier about its deployment. If we are
to make informed, democratic decisions about such technology, we must
understand it, or else we will end up making decisions nonrationally, by
appeal to half-truths (or less), fear, or hope. This in turn means that sci-
entists (or someone) must educate the public on emerging biotechnolog-
ical options.
All new technology creates a lacuna in social thought. If the void is
not filled by proper information and well-structured discussion of the
eventualities, it will instead be filled by the lurid and sensationalistic,
essentially aborting what little rational control we might have over our
destinies.
Notes
I am grateful to Dick Kitchener, Jane Kneller, Peter Markie, Mike McCulloch,
Linda Rollin, Mike Rollin, and Ron Williams for dialogues that helped this
chapter.
