WORKBOOK: Genetic Engineering

 In this section we apply the ethical principles of Natural law, Kantian and Utilitarian Ethics to four case studies (GM crops, Designer babies, therapeutic gene therapy and cloning). First, here are some terms to define.

• Genetically modified foods.

• Designer babies

• Recombinant DNA technology

• Therapeutic gene therapy

• Cloning

Activity: viewpoints.

You will be given a role card. (Parent, doctor, farmer, politician, religious believer, seed maufacturer etc) A seed company has produced a strain of genetically modified wheat which doubles the estimated yield per seed, and costs one third more.

Ø Assess the likely ethical position of someone in your role.

Ø  Does our ethical position always depend on our role in society?

Ø  You can now take an ethical viewpoint card. Assess your position from that ethical viewpoint.

Genetic Modification is a special technology that alters the genetic makeup of animals, plants, or bacteria. Combining genes from different organisms is known as recombinant DNA technology, and the resulting organism is said to be “genetically modified,” “genetically engineered,” or “transgenic.” GM products include medicines and vaccines, foods, food ingredients, and seeds.

Locating genes for important traits—such as those conferring insect resistance —is one of the most challenging steps in the process. However, genome sequencing is making it easier to produce detailed gene maps.

Issue 1: GM crops

In 2006, 252 million acres of GM crops were planted in 22 countries by 10.3 million farmers. The majority of these crops were herbicide- and insect-resistant soybeans, corn, cotton, canola, and alfalfa. Other crops grown commercially or field-tested are a sweet potato resistant to a virus that could decimate most of the African harvest, rice with increased iron and vitamins that may alleviate chronic malnutrition in Asian countries, and a variety of plants able to survive weather extremes.

It may be possible to create bananas that produce human vaccines against infectious diseases such as hepatitis B; fish that mature more quickly; cows that are resistant to mad cow disease; fruit and nut trees that yield years earlier, and plants that produce new plastics with unique properties.

In 2006, countries that grew 97% of the global GM crops were the United States (53%), Argentina (17%), Brazil (11%), Canada (6%), India (4%), China (3%), Paraguay (2%) and South Africa (1%). Although growth is expected to plateau in industrialized nations, it is increasing in developing countries. Technologies for genetically modifying foods may be able to meet some of the 21st Century’s greatest challenges.

Recent allegations have emerged against Monsanto, the GM seed manufacturer. Before looking at their story in detail, the supposed benefits and costs of GM seed and other products are listed below.

GM Products: Costs and Benefits

Activity: make up your own list, with five of your greatest concerns and five elements you judge to be of greatest benefit.

Benefits of GM crops	Concerns with GM crops

Now number them according to moral importance.

 Ethical principles to consider in evaluating GM crops

 Means to an end (Kantian ethics) 

Are human beings used as a guinea pig to further productivity or profit goals?

Are there health risks?

Are there proper safeguards on human health?

Are countries being used as a means to corporate profit?

Is the concept of charity being used cynically to expand markets?

Are local farmers being exploited by higher prices?

Is the result an impoverishment of farmers and high suicide rates?

Utilitarian factors (Mill and Singer)

 Are there large benefits in terms of food productivity in the face of population growth?

Do benefits outweigh risks?

Is the consequence of not using GM seed a likelihood of world famine?

Natural law factors (Aquinas)

 Do GM seeds upset the natural order and balance of nature?

Should we play God by manipulating genes?

Is GM responsible stewarding of the earth’s resources?

Others?

Key terms: genetically modified, yields, biodiversity, intrinsic value, prudential progress

Case Study: Monsanto

Monsanto has a long history of manufacturing chemicals. Their products have included chemical warfare agents (Agent Orange), industrial materials (PCBs), food additives (NutraSweet), agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals. Monsanto was the first major agrochemical and pharmaceutical company to pursue the ‘life sciences’ concept. During the 1990s it shed many of its chemical concerns and invested in biotechnology research, spending nearly $10 billion world wide acquiring seed companies. Below is its ethical statement of company values.

Integrity

Integrity is the foundation for all that we do. Integrity includes honesty, decency, consistency, and courage. Building on those values, we are committed to:

Dialogue

We will listen carefully to diverse points of view and engage in thoughtful dialogue. We will broaden our understanding of issues in order to better address the needs and concerns of society and each other.

Transparency

We will ensure that information is available, accessible, and understandable.

Sharing

We will share knowledge and technology to advance scientific understanding, to improve agriculture and the environment, to improve crops, and to help farmers in developing countries.

Benefits

We will use sound and innovative science and thoughtful and effective stewardship to deliver high-quality products that are beneficial to our customers and to the environment.

             http://www.monsanto.com/who_we_are/our_pledge/monsanto_pledge.asp

Exercise: read the Daily Mail article below and evaluate Monsanto’s claim to ethical business practice.

 Shankara’s crop had failed – twice. Of course, famine and pestilence are part of India’s ancient story.But the death of this respected farmer has been blamed on something far more modern and sinister: genetically modified crops.

Shankara, like millions of other Indian farmers, had been promised previously unheard of harvests and income if he switched from farming with traditional seeds to planting GM seeds instead. Distressed: Prince Charles has set up charity Bhumi Vardaan Foundation to address the plight of suicide farmers.

Beguiled by the promise of future riches, he borrowed money in order to buy the GM seeds. But when the harvests failed, he was left with spiralling debts – and no income. So Shankara became one of an estimated 125,000 farmers to take their own life as a result of the ruthless drive to use India as a testing ground for genetically modified crops.

The crisis, branded the ‘GM Genocide’ by campaigners, was highlighted recently when Prince Charles claimed that the issue of GM had become a ‘global moral question’ – and the time had come to end its unstoppable march. Ranged against the Prince are powerful GM lobbyists and prominent politicians, who claim that genetically modified crops have transformed Indian agriculture, providing greater yields than ever before. The rest of the world, they insist, should embrace ‘the future’ and follow suit.

So who is telling the truth? To find out, I travelled to the ‘suicide belt’ in Maharashtra state. What I found was deeply disturbing – and has profound implications for countries, including Britain, debating whether to allow the planting of seeds manipulated by scientists to circumvent the laws of nature.

For official figures from the Indian Ministry of Agriculture do indeed confirm that in a huge humanitarian crisis, more than 1,000 farmers kill themselves here each month. Simple, rural people, they are dying slow, agonising deaths. Most swallow insecticide – a pricey substance they were promised they would not need when they were coerced into growing expensive GM crops.

It seems that many are massively in debt to local money-lenders, having over-borrowed to purchase GM seed. Pro-GM experts claim that it is rural poverty, alcoholism, drought and ‘agrarian distress’ that is the real reason for the horrific toll.

But, as I discovered during a four-day journey through the epicentre of the disaster, that is not the full story. Village after village, families told how they had fallen into debt after being persuaded to buy GM seeds instead of traditional cotton seeds. The price difference is staggering: £10 for 100 grams of GM seed, compared with less than £10 for 1,000 times more traditional seeds. But GM salesmen and government officials had promised farmers that these were ‘magic seeds’ – with better crops that would be free from parasites and insects. Indeed, in a bid to promote the uptake of GM seeds, traditional varieties were banned from many government seed banks.

Though areas of India planted with GM seeds have doubled in two years – up to 17 million acres – many famers have found there is a terrible price to be paid. Far from being ‘magic seeds’, GM pest-proof ‘breeds’ of cotton have been devastated by bollworms, a voracious parasite. Nor were the farmers told that these seeds require double the amount of water. This has proved a matter of life and death.

With rains failing for the past two years, many GM crops have simply withered and died, leaving the farmers with crippling debts and no means of paying them off. Having taken loans from traditional money lenders at extortionate rates, hundreds of thousands of small farmers have faced losing their land as the expensive seeds fail, while those who could struggle on faced a fresh crisis.

When crops failed in the past, farmers could still save seeds and replant them the following year. But with GM seeds they cannot do this. That’s because GM seeds contain so- called ‘terminator technology’, meaning that they have been genetically modified so that the resulting crops do not produce viable seeds of their own.

As a result, farmers have to buy new seeds each year at the same punitive prices. For some, that means the difference between life and death.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-Thousands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.html#ixzz0YMKyTDNU

What ethical issues are raised by the Daily Mail article?

Research: what recent articles can you find on Monsanto on the online newspapers?

Issue 2: Designer Babies

Mapping the Genome

 “What should Christians say about the mapping of the genome? First, we can and should experience astonishment at the elegance and beauty of the genome. Second, we must study the genome if we believe in the mandate to heal.” Francis Collins[7]

“Interventions which are not directly curative, the purpose of which is ‘the production of human beings selected according to sex or other predetermined qualities,’ which change the genotype of the individual and of the human species, ‘are contrary to the personal dignity of the human being, to his integrity and to his identity.”[8]

Activity: design a baby. As individuals you are each going to be given a “design a baby” sheet (see sheet at end of handout) to choose certain characteristics. Do this anonymously and then hand your sheet back.

 In 2001 the human genome was finally mapped as a sequence of 30,000 genes. The arguments continue of the human benefits of reading this map, and producing an individual reading for each of us. The use of genetic information and experiment is controlled by the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority (HFEA), set up in 1990.

A number of ethical issues arise from the ability to design the genetic makeup of a baby.

• Should a parent be able to choose the sex of a child? The Masterson family wanted to replace a daughter who died with another girl. What are the likely consequences of such a choice? Evaluate this from a utilitarian perspective
• Should a parent be able to design a baby with intention of saving the life of an existing child? In a case in 2003 the Hashmis were eventually permitted by the HFEA to design such a child to save their daughter with a rare blood disease. Evaluate this view from a Kantian perspective.
• Should a parent be able to design a baby with intention of saving the life of an existing child? In a case in 2003 the Hashmis were eventually permitted by the HFEA to design such a child to save their daughter with a rare blood disease. Evaluate this view from a Kantian perspective.Should we be allowed to screen embryos for genetic defects or predispositions to disease? Evaluate this from a natural law perspective.
• Simon Fischel, the doctor who treated the Hashmis, argued that: ‘From the public’s point of view they should have no fear because cases such as the Hashmis and the procedures they involve will remain highly regulated….and strict conditions will apply to all couples seeking treatment.’ But should it be regulated at all?

• “In some circumstances, for example to avoid serious diseases, so-called designer babies are acceptable. In other circumstances though, for example to enhance the intelligence or capabilities of the child, they are not.” Discuss

Film clip: Gattaca

Extract 1: The case for designer babies

A designer baby today

Philippa Handyside’s son Ruiaridh is a genetically selected baby. Some might call him a designer baby. But Philippa wasn’t aiming to create a perfect child and there is nothing unusual about her child’s genes. Genetic technology seemed the only way she could have a baby at all.

Philippa had a problem with her DNA. It didn’t affect her health, but it meant that most of her eggs didn’t carry all the genes needed for a baby to grow healthily. The result was that each time she became pregnant, she miscarried.

Doctors suggested that Philippa try a technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Using PGD scientists can screen embryos outside the womb, long before they develop into babies. They can select just those embryos that carry healthy genes. This ensures the baby is free from genetic abnormalities.

Ruiaridh might have grown from a specially selected embryo, but he’s not really a designer baby at all. The embryo was created from one of Philippa’s eggs and her husband’s sperm, just as in IVF. His genes have not been altered, or enhanced in any way. The doctors simply chose an embryo that didn’t carry Philippa’s genetic disorder.

It would actually be very difficult to make a true designer baby using PGD. Today, it can only be used to look at one or two genes at a time. On the other hand, most character traits we might want to choose – anything from height to intelligence – are influenced by a whole range of genes.

What’s more, there is no way of altering the genes inside an embryo using PGD. If you don’t carry the genes to be intelligent, sporty or good-looking, then there’s no way any of your embryos will either. To have a real designer baby, we’d need to be able to choose any genes we wanted and insert them into our children.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/babies_prog_summary.shtml

Extract 2: Revd Dr Arthur Peacock argues against designer babies

We have to ask the question: what are they trying to produce? Somebody who has none of the defects they themselves have? Do they not want them to be a human being and learn to grow up and face life and develop and respond to life in a creative way?

I can see that they may want to prevent them from having crippling diseases and if that’s due to a genetic defect I can see that would be right. But what is the point of trying to determine what kind of baby you’re going to have? In any case, even when you’ve done this you’re only then trying to produce a kind of mirror image of yourself which you think you ideally are and that’s probably highly misleading anyway. Ask your friends what you really are and see what they think is the sort of baby you ought to have. Or even better ask your enemies to say what sort of baby you ought to have.

http://www.open2.net/healtheducation/health_socialcare/dramaticscience_religion_gentics_p.html

Extract 3: Professor Wolpert

But are there any important ethical issues with respect to designer babies to which we have to address ourselves? If there are, it is hard to see what they are. What possible argument from ethics could be used against prenatal diagnosis of an embryo obtained by IVF, if the diagnosis prevents the implantation of embryos with defective genes? I know that some people object, but there is no evidence that the early embryo is a person. This idea is a relatively recent one, with religious underpinning but with neither argument nor evidence. The Magisterium of the Catholic Church demands that the embryo be respected from the first instance. But what has to be considered in every case is the child and its future wellbeing, and not to do so is totally lacking in respect. Who, for example, is being harmed in all the recent fuss about choosing an embryo with the right genes to help a sibling? Both children will certainly be very well cared for. And it is care of the child that matters.

There are fears that those who have designer babies – choosing children with particular genes that code for hair colour or height, perhaps – will be part of a superclass and increase the inequalities in our society. But will it really make more difference than currently exists between the rich and poor, the former giving their children all sorts of advantages? Emphasising the ethics of designer babies is a way of avoiding the very real problem that about one in 10 of all children suffers some sort of abuse, and thousands are registered as requiring special care because of their dangerous parents. Lewis Wolpert is Professor of Biology as applied to medicine at University College, London Independent 23 October 2003

• Why might a Christian have objections to designer babies?

• “Kantian ethics is best placed to judge on designer babies.” Discuss

Extract 5: Institute of Science and Society Report 2001

There are hundreds of variants in each of the 30 000 genes in the genome. Craig Venter’s Celera has identified over 4 million single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs – variants of genes that differ by a single base. Each person is genetically unique, except for identical twins at the beginning of development, before they can accumulate genetic mutations independently. It is impossible, in principle, to give the prognosis for any disease for an individual, let alone predict his or her lifestyle based on the person’s genetic makeup.

More than a decade of somatic ‘gene therapy’ has met with no success. On the contrary, there have been deaths and numerous adverse events, the causes of which remain largely unknown. Many hazards are already evident from existing scientific findings. These include immune reactions to GM constructs and creation of new viruses due to recombination between artificial gene therapy vectors and dormant viruses in the genome.

Nevertheless, arch genetic determinists and other prominent scientists as well as ‘bioethicists’ are advocating human germline gene therapy and human cloning. They see the creation of a gene-rich class of human beings to be inevitable due to the free reign of the global marketplace. The rich will pay to genetically enhance their offspring, in the same way that they will pay for expensive private education. Consequently, there will be a genetic underclass – children of the poor – that will eventually become a separate, inferior species. Social inequity can thereby be translated into genetic inequity and vice versa. Fortunately, this genetic determinist fantasy will never come to pass. Unfortunately, it is fuelling the resurgence of eugenics and genetic discrimination, giving rein to the worst prejudices of our society.

The cloning of Dolly the sheep first raised the possibility that the same procedure could be used to create a human being. This met with universal opposition from citizens and governments all over the world. However, human cloning came back on the agenda as companies and their scientists pushed for approval of ‘therapeutic’ human cloning, the creation of human embryos for the purpose of providing cells and tissues for transplant.

All the developments in and around human genomics stem from the mechanistic paradigm that still dominates western science and the global society at large. Mary Shelley´s brilliant novel, Frankenstein, was not just a parable of the arrogant scientist playing God, it is also about mechanistic science out of control today, in pursuit of corporate profit.

The irony is that contemporary western science across the disciplines is rediscovering how nature is organic, dynamic and interconnected. There are no linear causal chains linking genes and the characteristics of organisms, let alone the human condition. The discredited paradigm is perpetrated by a scientific establishment consciously or unconsciously serving the corporate agenda, and making even the most unethical applications seem compelling.

It is high time scientists across the world free themselves from the corporate agenda, to work in partnership with the organic uprising from the grassroots, to recover and revitalize the holistic perspectives of traditional knowledge systems, to secure food and health for all.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/HumangenTWN-pr.php

• Summarise the argument in the article above.

• Are there moral dangers in the profit which may come from gene manipulation?

Key terms: genetic enhancement, eugenics, slippery slope, genome

Documentary: Panorama Gene Genie

Issue 2: Therapeutic Gene Therapy

In 1976 George Wald, Nobel Prize winning biologist and Harvard professor, wrote:

“Genetic engineering faces our society with problems unprecedented not only in the history of science, but of life on the Earth. It places in human hands the capacity to redesign living organisms, the products of some three billion years of evolution…. It presents probably the largest ethical problem that science has ever had to face. Our morality up to now has been to go ahead without restriction to learn all that we can about nature. Restructuring nature was not part of the bargain…. For going ahead in this direction may be not only unwise but dangerous. Potentially, it could breed new animal and plant diseases, new sources of cancer, novel epidemics.”

• Summarise George Wald’s view.
• Is this the greatest ethical challenge science will ever face?

Professor Kay Davies – Professor of Human Anatomy and Genetics at the University of Oxford. Professor Davies is researching the genetics of muscular dystrophy and is developing solutions for gene therapy in this area.

How is knowledge of the human genome relevant to disease?

What you can do is use the genetic information to look at the disease process, because it gives you the tools and the information to ask the question ‘what is the difference between the genes here in a particular diseased cell versus a normal cell?’. And that tells you where to target treatment, because it tells you what the important differences are, and what the destructive differences are for a particular disorder.

What do you think the overall impact of the human genome project will be?

The impact of the human genome project in medicine is really going to be diagnosis, prediction and treatment. The first thing is diagnosis – for example, you go into your GP surgery and you have a lump in your breast and the first thing for the diagnosis is to be able to take a sample of that tumour and identify exactly what sub-type it is of breast cancer. That will determine what sort of treatment you will have, what chemotherapy you might be put on or, more likely, which gene therapy protocol you will be exposed to: if your particular gene profile for your tumour is over-expression of gene A, they will try and down-regulate – make your cancer produce less of that – to make the tumour regress; if it’s B, it will be a different gene therapy. The other thing that you could do within the clinic is determine whether you already have a predisposition to the disease. There are people in the population that are more susceptible to breast cancer than others, and that is partly genetic.

So you could do a genetic screen to determine which particular individuals had a susceptible allele – a marker in their genes – which made them more susceptible to an environmental insult. If you have a genetic predisposition then you can have continual screening. Now, that won’t be an absolute answer, it will be 70%, 80% risk, but it gives you the opportunity of modifying your lifestyle, your diet, the way you live or being given drugs which might modify the clinical port. If you don’t have a genetic predisposition, then you don’t have to do that. This testing is particularly important for things like colon cancer – already there are individuals in families which have susceptibility to colon cancer that previously have had to go back to the clinic on a biannual basis and have an invasive investigation. Now they can have a gene test and half of those people can be told they’re not at risk and therefore don’t have to go through that process. That not only is good news for the family, it’s good news for the NHS, because those resources can be used for something else.

Evaluate the view that therapeutic gene therapy has real human benefits.http://www.open2.net/sciencetechnologynature/worldaroundus/two_genome3.html

• From a Natural Law perspective, what criticisms might be made of gene therapy?

Research: President George Bush restricted public funds available for genetic research. What has President Obama done?

Issue 3: Stem cell research

Types and sources of stem cells

• There are three types of stem cells:
• Multipotent, able to produce many specialised cell types; most adult stem cells are multipotent;
• Pluripotent, able to give rise of all cell types except extra-embryonic tissue; obtained from embryonic stem cells;
• Totipotent, able to produce entire organisms; obtained from blastomeres.
• Human embryonic stem cells have been obtained from 5-8 week old foetuses aborted for therapeutic reasons. Stem cells could be from parthogenetically-derived oocytes, ie there is no paternal contribution.

• Human embryonic stem cells can be derived from human embryos donated as surplus to human fertility treatment.

Relevant legislation

• Under terms of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, research using human embryos can only be carried out under license from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). Research may only be allowed if deemed necessary and desirable, and for strictly defined purposes. Whole embryos may not be grown in vitro beyond 14 days although stem cells derived from embryos disaggregated before this time may. Parthenogenetically created blastocysts are not embryos under the terms of the Act, as they are not derived from fertilisation.
• Information important to the HFEA in its decision making about granting a licence includes: the source and disposal of the embryos; how audit and consent procedures are managed; distribution of embryos between research and treatment; whether the centre is adhering to the scope of the project originally granted.

• The report from the House of Lords Select Committee, published in March 2000, amongst many recommendations, approved the ethical derivation of stem cell lines from human embryos, and recommended that further research should be carried out. It recommended that embryos should not be created specifically for research unless there was exceptional need that could not be met by the use of surplus embryos. Cell Nuclear Replacement was permitted (but not for reproductive cloning) and should be regulated by HFEA, and consideration should be given to the setting up an UK stem cell bank.

Practical considerations

• The following requirements should be met:-
• Those obtaining stem cells for research should be separate from those using them;
• Fully informed consent should be obtained for the use of embryos and eventual use of stem cells;
• Considerations of possible therapeutic use should be realistic;
• Stem cells created for therapy will need to conform to Tissue Banking Regulations, (2004 Human Tissue Act) unlike those created for research

The technique of cell nuclear replacement is considered by some to raise large ethical issues as it involves generating an embryo for research/treatment purposes only and also predetermines an embryo’s genetic identity. Some feel that such considerations do not apply to surplus embryos as these do not have the prospect of becoming humans, and therefore their use would not violate the notion of human dignity.

• How important is the “notion of human dignity” in the ethics of stem cell   research?

Extract: Colin Blakemore: The Case for Stem Cell Research    Times April 2008

The part of the Bill that has provoked most concern from some (but not all) religious leaders covers the combination of human and animal material. It is claimed that such research is of “Frankenstein proportion”, touching “on the sacredness of human life, its meaning and purpose” and (from an Anglican Bishop) plays “games with… humanity”.

The image conjured up is of fully formed, half-human, half-animal monsters. Yet the Bill forbids any attempt to make such things. A key technique acknowledged in the Bill, already permitted under existing law, is the formation of “cytoplasmic hybrids”, involving the insertion of the nucleus of a single human cell into the empty egg of, say, a rabbit. The resulting cell, although it does not result from fertilisation and its genetic material is almost entirely derived from the adult donor, has the characteristics of an embryo. It divides and, most significantly, stem cells can be collected from it for research. The Bill would prevent such “human admixed embryos” from being maintained for more than 14 days, when they would be a tiny ball of a few hundred cells no bigger than a pin point. And they could not, of course, be implanted.

One of the advantages is that this technique allows the production of stem cells for research without the use of human eggs or normal human embryos. The study of stem cells that are known to carry disease genes is likely to give valuable insight into terrible diseases, and may be useful in the production and testing of potential new treatments.

Transgenic mice that carry human genes are another form of human-animal combination (although not covered by this Bill). Such animals, carrying genes that produce such conditions as Huntington’s disease and Down’s syndrome, are already playing a vital role in research. I don’t think that most people would see such strains of mice, whose cells carry a fragment of human DNA, as offensive monsters.

What should not be forgotten is that many people see a strong moral argument for this area of science, and the dedication and motivation of the British stem-cell researchers that I know is beyond question. There can be no guarantees, but stem-cell research does offer a radical new approach to the understanding of dreadful, currently incurable diseases, such as diabetes, Parkinson’s, and motor neurone disease.

Colin Blakemore is a professor of neuroscience and a former chief executive of the Medical Research Council. This article first appeared in The Tablet, the Catholic weekly.

• Summarise the main points of Colin Blakemore’s defence of stem cell research.

 

Key terms: gene therapy, stem cells, sanctity of life, cell nuclear replacement (CNR), in vitro

Research: find the HFEA website and find out something about recent developmentsCloning

Issue 4: Cloning

Extract: My perfect Dolly

In 1997, Wilmut and Campbell created Dolly, the first sheep with a human gene in every cell of its body, meanwhile President Bill Clinton banned the use of federal funds for cloning research for five years. Since then scientists have successfully cloned a host of animals, including mice, cattle, goats, and pigs.

In 2001, Britain’s House of Lords effectively legalised the creation of cloned human embryos for stem cell research purposes, with the prerequisite that the cloned embryos are destroyed within 14 days. Later in 2001, a Massachusetts research company, Advanced Cloning Technology (ACT), reported that it had cloned the first human embryo, a development it said was aimed at producing genetically matched replacement cells for patients with a wide range of diseases. The success of this was limited, however, while only one of the embryos reached the six-cell stage, all of the company’s cloned embryos stopped developing after only a few hours.

On 27th February 2002 with the House of Lords’ announced that stem cell research is now legal. This is for therapeutic cloning only, so reproductive cloning is still banned. However, this move still brings fears that it could be the start of a ‘slippery slope’ towards reproductive cloning with identical copies of human beings, being created.

http://www.open2.net/sciencetechnologynature/worldaroundus/nbt_cloning.html

 

• Does cloning represent a slippery slope? Ending where?

 

• What are the human benefits of cloning technology?

 

• How might a Kantian respond to the idea that human embryos are being used as a means to an end?

The Ethics of Genetic Engineering (Prof Ruth Chadwick)

From a utilitarian point of view, the individual agent is regarded as a utility maximizer – he or she will, if rational, act to promote their interests. Individual autonomy, on this perspective, consists in choosing what one sees as good, on the basis of what one wants. Each individual agent is helped in maximising his or her own utility by having the relevant information to take into account, e.g. about their future health risks, or predisposition to side effects from particular drugs, and this also arguably facilitates the utility of the larger group. It is in general in the best interests of society that individuals should make informed decisions about their own future good. So facilitating individual choice by making information available can be defended on the grounds that it tends to lead to the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

From a Kantian point of view, on the other hand, the individual is to be understood as a rational agent. Individual autonomy does not consist in pursuing one’s interests as defined by one’s desires or one’s individual conception of the good. On the contrary, it consists in choosing as a rational moral agent, in such a way that the maxims of one’s choice can be universalised for all rational moral agents. It could be argued that there is a duty to be well-informed as a Kantian agent in order to fulfil one’s duty to oneself and others. It is not that having the information will maximise one’s utility: the question is whether a choice not to know a piece of genetic information could be consistently universalised.

Consider the option to know whether I had a genetic predisposition which made me much more likely to suffer from lung cancer if I smoked. Could a choice not to know this be supported on the Kantian picture of the rational agent?

On the utilitarian version of autonomy, different utility maximisers might take different views about this, according to their own preferences and attitudes to risk. It is a common that people differ in this respect. We make a distinction between those we call ‘risk lovers’ and those we call ‘risk averse’.

For the Kantian moral agent, a person’s individual preferences regarding taking risks are irrelevant. In Kant’s argument on suicide he suggests that the rational moral agent cannot consistently will the shortening of his life. It might appear, therefore, that Kant’s rational moral agent, if acting autonomously, could not choose to remain in ignorance of information that was potentially life-saving. And life-saving is what genetic information is now being claimed to be.

Let us look at an example. There has been considerable debate over the question of whether there is a ‘homosexuality gene’. Would that be something a Kantian moral agent would have reason to know? Kant’s position on homosexuality was severe, holding as he did that “Every form of sexual indulgence, except in marriage, is a misuse of sexuality”. He argues that the purpose of sexuality is to preserve the species without debasing the person.

Although this argument is now of course widely challenged, in so far as it is Kant’s argument, it is not clear that it would be relevant for the Kantian moral agent to know whether they had a genetic predisposition to homosexuality, because whatever their predisposition they ought to act from the motive of duty and avoid it.

Today we recognise the important role that sexuality can play in an individual’s identity. Establishing and protecting one’s identity as an individual human is a wider if not a richer notion than the notion of moral agent, whether understood as utility maximiser or Kantian rational agent.

• Summarise the important distinctions between a utilitarian and Kantian approach to genetic engineering.

 

Key terms: deontological, teleological, Kant’s principle of ends, natural law

Activity: complete the table below

Genetic engineering	Pros	Cons
GM crops
Designer babies
Gene therapies
Cloning

Summarise and evaluate: your verdict on these four issues, with clear reasons.

Activity: design a baby

Sex (choose one)	Male
	Female
Characteristics (choose three)	Intellectual (maths)
	Sporty
	Intellectual (literary)
	Artistic
	Altruistic (kind)
	Romantic
Appearance: hair (choose one)	Blonde
	Black
	Brown
	Red
Appearance: eyes (choose one)	Brown
	Blue
	Green
Appearance: skin (choose one)	Dark
	Black
	Fair
	Pale
Height	Over six foot
	Five foot eight
	Five foot six
	Five foot three
	Five foot
Resistant to disease (choose two)	Cancer
	Asthma
	Influenza
	Heart disease
	Stroke

 

[1] . Paul Ramsey,   Ethics at the Edges of Life. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), pp. 146-148.

[2] . Paul Ramsey, The Patient as Person. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), p. 153.

 

[3] . Lesch-Nyhan disease is a genetic defect which is passed only to male children. Its victims are unable to walk or sit up unassisted; they suffer uncontrollable spasms and metal retardation, compulsive self-mutilation, and early death. See Paul Ramsey, Ethics at the Edges of Life. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), p. 215;   Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, Fourth Edition. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 217.

[4] In addition, Immanuel Kant wrote in 1785, “To annihilate the subject of morality in one’s person is to root out the existence of morality itself from the world as far as one can, even though morality is an end in itself. Consequently, disposing of oneself as a mere means to some discretionary end is debasing humanity in one’s person.”

[5] Summa Theologica II Q64 A5

[6] http://www.carenotkilling.org.uk/?show=149

[7] Francis Collins is director of the Genome Project

[8] Catholic Charter for Health Care Workers