Reproductive Perspectives: A Review of Some Recent Books on the Ethics of Manipulating Human Genes

Abstract

Genethics: Moral Issues in the Creation of People Heyd, David Berkeley: University of California Press. 1992 In Genethics: Moral Issues in the Creation of Life, David Heyd claims that Theoretical interest in genesis problems has emerged only after being forced on us by the new dilemmas of demography, genetic manipulation, `wrongful life' cases, and self-imposed threats to the very future of the human race. Do we have an obligation to bring new people into the world? Do we have a duty to have children? to avoid having miserable children? Is there a right to be born, or a right not to be born, or a right to be born healthy? Can moral principles guide us in artificial genetic molding of humans? Is a world with n happy persons morally better than a world with no persons at all? than a world with 1/2 n equally happy persons? than a world with 2n persons who are only mildly happy? Is there a value in the existence (and perpetuation) of the human species as such, regardless of the quality of life of its members? These are some of the questions involved in genesis situations, or at least implied (or presupposed) by This book is an excellent introduction to the philosophical questions facing eugenics and genetic engineering, but like any book based on philosophical questions it can raise more questions than it answers and it too often assumes people have attitudes and wishes that may not be universal, a tendency of most philosophical works. That is, without asking or surveying human attitudes, it just assumes people feel a certain way, a fault I find in many of the existential works dealing with the human dilemma of secularization and the loss of meaning in life. For me, an interest in eugenics cuts to the very core of why I exist and what life means. As a member of society I have a right or an interest in reproductive products, specifically the quality of the gene pool as carried by future generations. And that interest for the present can be focused in just two areas, the average intelligence of the population, and in eliminating genetic defects that lead to misery or disease. Heyd seems, on the other hand, throughout his work, to disengage the existing population from any future populations in a way that is intellectually stimulating and yet dismisses continuity as Dawkins describes it in The Selfish Gene. Eugenics is fundamentally a movement that recognizes the futility in hanging onto human religious dogma to thwart our fear of death, and that is for a secular religion that celebrates the overcoming of our human dependence on our selfish genes by taking command of them. It replaces false hope with an embracing of our human potential and our individual vulnerabilities, recognizing that our fear of nonexistence is only one mechanism that our selfish genes have used to perpetuate themselves. Nature equips all animals with both pain avoidance and with mechanisms to hang onto life by all means, even in the face of great pain and suffering. Humans can now face that contradiction and strive for more meaning in personal life, saying when necessary to the selfish genes, NO! I have my own purposes now that don't include you. The genes are now our slaves, not us theirs. Heyd finds cloning to be especially repugnant, based on a belief that parents want their children to be somewhat different from them while at the same time being very much like them. I find this an odd position to take, especially since identical twins seem to be quite normal with mirror images of themselves. But aside from assuming what parents want in their offspring, cloning has tremendous potential and benefits for society. Humans with very unique abilities (emergent traits) could be cloned because the odds are extremely rare for such individuals to occur naturally, and their contribution to society is so great. That is, some of the most brilliant scientists and intellectuals are so valuable to all of us that it is to the benefit of society to duplicate as many of them as we can to benefit from their rare intelligence. …