Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
against genetic engineering is the diminishment of human freedom itself,
either for an individual, a class of individuals, or future generations. But
this minimal limit on genetic engineering, while no doubt necessary,
seems insufficient.
Finally, the human characteristics approach seems to aim at a defini-
tion of “inviolable” human nature that can clearly, decisively, and per-
suasively rule out certain kinds of genetic intervention as off-limits in
virtually all conceivable cases. Again, many of us feel almost instinc-
tively—or on the basis of cumulative moral experience that we find hard
to put into the form of a logical argument—that some genetic engineer-
ing should be off-limits. Yet the route to that conclusion that goes by
way of a definition of the inherent and required characteristics of human
nature never seems quite adequate to its objective. Thus, not only do we
have a problem in understanding human nature and the respect we owe
it, we also have a problem in understanding moral reasoning—in
knowing what counts as evidence, what must go to make up a persua-
sive argument, and how any given evidence and arguments can be intro-
duced into philosophical or public debate in a way that goes beyond
mere assertion.
I do not have answers to these problems and questions. But I want to
propose another, somewhat different way of going about the task of
ethically analyzing genetic engineering, especially in light of justice con-
cerns. I hope this approach will not only reinforce our understanding
of human nature as social but also help to locate our ethical analysis of
genetic engineering within a more social and historical model of moral
reasoning.
In the words of the philosopher and legal scholar Margaret Jane
Radin, “There aren't any lock-down logical arguments that compel
people to recognize,” for instance, that there are some values whose
worth cannot be reduced to a monetary equivalent, or that some prac-
tices tend to commodify human persons and undermine human society.
Sometimes a more pragmatic, inductive approach to ethics and per-
suasion is required; just like human persons, practical reason is for
Radin “irreducibly social” by nature. It does not belong to individ-
uals but to social groups, and is carried out only within the relations
of “connectedness” that make the social and the political “possible
for us.”
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