Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
genes. The child would be completely fabricated in the sense of being
made not born. Yet the random method would severely limit parental
control and thus preserve a substantial element of contingency or chance,
thereby assuaging objections that genetic technologies may undermine the
contingency that is part of the basis of commitment or love. Such a
random method, however, would, no less than deliberate selection, atten-
uate the connection between the new being and nature—for instance, the
child's genetic forebears. It is not clear that this loss of continuity entails
a loss of moral status.
Why should the insertion of genes into a human organism, moreover,
transform it into an artifact when the insertion of an artificial limb, hip,
or even heart does not? No one thinks that by putting a Dacron valve
in a patient's heart, a surgeon somehow transforms that individual from
a product of nature into a machine. The crucial issue might not lie in the
use of a particular technology but in the reason or purpose of its use,
and whether this is consistent with treating a person with dignity and
respect. In this case, genetic technology would not differ from any
other—though we have to build up the concepts, intuitions, and argu-
ments needed to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate uses of this, as
any, important new technology.
The Theological Literature: Humans as Cocreators
Many of the scholars who have explored the relationship of the genome
and nature have been theologians. Catholic theology, particularly that
represented in and after the Second Vatican Council, presents one
obvious starting point at which to examine the idea that there is a natural
order that limits human activity, especially with respect to reproduction.
Vatican II made no mention of genetic engineering other than to reiter-
ate the view that “sons of the Church may not undertake methods of
regulating which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority of
the Church in its unfolding of the divine law.”
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Catholic theologians,
including Karl Rahner, one of the leading theologians of the twentieth
century, and Bernard Haring, a leader of the reform movement in
Catholic moral theology, both of whom contributed to Vatican II, have
vigorously debated the prospects and permissibility of human genetic
