Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
engineering. The debate in Catholic theology addresses many of the
major philosophical and moral issues that surround the question of the
givenness of the genome and its relation to human nature.
According to Rahner, human freedom consists in our accepting the
human genome from nature or God as given, for otherwise we surren-
der essential aspects of our freedom to those (including the state) who
would regulate genetic technology. Rahner has written that “genetic tech-
nology is the embodiment of the fear of oneself, the fear of accepting
one's self as the unknown quantity it is.” He extended the argument to
all of nature or creation: “The world can never be 'worked over' to such
an extent that man is eventually dealing only with material
he
has chosen
and created.”
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For Rahner as for many environmentalists concerned
with the protection of the so-called wilderness or other biological rem-
nants of a disappearing past, the sheer givenness of nature—what biol-
ogists like Stephen Jay Gould may refer to as its contingency—is what
makes it valuable and morally itself.
Rahner argued, then, that to protect what is given and therefore
part of our human nature, we “must cultivate a sober and critical resist-
ance to the fascination of novel possibilities.”
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On the other hand, as
Ted Peters has argued, Rahner did not rule out all genetic manipula-
tion and remained open to the technological future. According to
Peters, Rahner recognized that human history is an “active alteration
of this material world itself,” and that human nature “is open and
undetermined.”
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Bernard Haring took this openness to the future further. He agreed
that human beings are bound by a respect for nature, a recognition of
the “gratuity of all creation,” as a free gift by God, without which “our
exploitation of the world becomes depletion and alienation.” Haring
argued, however, that humans are cocreators with God; he acknowl-
edged that humanity had to its advantage greatly altered the natural
world. He maintained that our ability to improve and perfect nature
should in principle extend to the genome. Yet Haring cautioned that we
must bear in mind not our own instrumental goals but the vision of
God's purposes for humankind: “The divine mandate to subdue the earth
and to fill it includes man's mission to transform life according to his
finest vision of humankind's future.” Haring employed the notion of
