Eugenic Danger or Genetic Promise: A Revolution for the Millennium

How does loving one's neighbor and respecting the dignity of every person speak to the new biotechnologies?

It was Hippocrates who said, "Declare the Past, Diagnose the Present, Foretell the Future." That is in a sense what I intend to do in sharing with you some observations about my interest in human genetics. In declaring the past I shall summarize my involvement in the field of biomedical ethics and the present excitement as well as anxiety about the Human Genome Project. In diagnosing the present I shall outline some of the key issues as we consider what some ethicists perceive as eugenic dangers and also promises for genetic therapies. In foretelling the future I shall merely confirm what we already know: we are at the dawn of a revolution in medicine and genetic therapies that will dramatically alter how we understand the meaning of health and disease. What can we expect from research efforts in the next several years, and how should communities of faith and the larger society respond to these new discoveries?

Declaring the Past

My interest in medical ethics began in the early 1970s when I became a member of the Institutional Review Board at Women and Infants Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. As a community representative I was to help apply newly approved federal regulations governing research involving human subjects. The areas of informed consent and research in neonatology commanded a significant portion of time and energy. I was also serving on a committee in the newly established Brown University Medical School to discuss the feasibility of beginning a program inhuman values and ethics in medical education. In 1980 I was asked by the Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts to serve on a biotechnology study group to address issues that the Church should be aware of in the emerging field of medical ethics and new developments in biology. The new biology was upon us. Scientists, ethicists and theologians had to learn to communicate with each other. A new language was needed, and adult education programs were in demand.

After eighteen months of meetings with the biotechnology study group and three years of formal study and writing, my colleague the Rev. Colin Gracey, D. Min. and I published in 1984 a group study guide. We titled it, "Good Genes?: Emerging Values for Science, Religion and Society." The study guide was a case-study approach to the cutting edge issues of the new biology. We included a context for ethical decisions, a review of recent history, and some directions for using the material. The sections of the guide were headed: "Cells on the Move," "Surgery before Birth," "Fertility Problems and Birth Defects: Opportunities and Dilemmas," "The Business of Biology," and "Theological Viewpoints."

In a section about a perspective on life and knowledge I wrote: "Science and religion perhaps have more in common than many practitioners in either area realize. They are separate realities with separate languages and separate methodologies. Yet, they need each other for they are both engaged in the quest for knowledge and truth, and the quest for meaning and purpose." I then quoted the microbiologist Charles Birch and the theologian John Cobb: "Life is purposeful. Indeed, it is defined by its purpose.... Life aims at the realisation of value, that is rich experience or aliveness....Life is not only purposeful in itself, but it is the source of all the derivative purposes in living things. Purpose involves a distinction between what is and what might be and an appetition for some form of what might be. It is Life that introduces into the...physical world the attractive vision of unrealized possibility" (The Liberation of Life, Cambridge University Press, 1981, 197).

I concluded: "In this sense we need to understand science and religion in their proper relationship to each other; and how each may or may not contribute to the richness of experience, the realization of value, and the purpose of Life."

The clash between science and religion may be a result of the ideas of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, which continue to dominate the scientific and academic worlds, and which led us toward an objectification of life. The Enlightenment was a "philosophical movement characterized by a belief in the power of human reason, and by innovations in political, religious, and educational doctrine" (The Random House College Dictionary, 1984, 439). It was a period of serious division between religion and science, one that eventually drove a wedge between rational discourse and observation of reality, and the interpretation of the meaning of human life in philosophical and faith traditions. Some philosophers of science believed that they could prove the origin of life and therefore articulate its meaning and purpose without recourse to any theology or ethical consideration. (I admit this may be an exaggeration, but I make it to drive home a point.) However, through the insights of many scientists, both natu ral and physical, we learned that scientific experiments and technological discoveries did not provide answers to the deepest human questions about meaning. Questions about identity, purpose and meaning are questions of worldview and thus of philosophy and faith. We are in an era of greater collaboration and a common quest by philosophers of science and religious ethicists about both the potential and the limits of human identity and understanding. This is profoundly a renewed exploration of human nature and destiny. Science, through the advances being made in human genetics and genetic manipulation, is challenging Christian ethicists to clarify the value of human life at every stage of existence from conception and embryonic cell division to old age compromised by chronic or debilitating disease. Scientists and ethicists now need to be in constant dialogue to assure that discoveries and applications of new knowledge and technology will be used for ethical purposes in furthering human well-being and ecological sustainablilty.