John Harris, the Sir David Alliance Professor of Bioethics at Manchester University, lays out a fascinating argument in his compelling book Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People.
Harris has a lot of liberal ideas, but one that he believes most
strongly is that as parents, as citizens, as scientists, we are morally
obliged to do what we can to make life better and longer for ourselves
and our children. Society currently devotes so much energy and
resources towards saving lives, which, in reality, is simply postponing
death.
If it is right to save life, Harris says, then it should also be
right to postpone death by stemming the flow of diseases that carry us
to the grave. And we should make any such technology available as soon
as we can, even if it means there will be some "haves" and "have-nots".
"Certainly, sometimes we want competitive advantage – but for the
enhancements I talk about, the competitive advantage is not the prime
motive. I didn't give my son (Jacob, to whom the book is dedicated) a
good diet in the hope that others eat a bad diet and die prematurely.
I'm happy if everyone has a good diet. The moral imperative should be
that enhancements are generally available because they are good for
everyone." The only other route to equality, he says, is to level down
so that everyone is as uneducated, unhealthy and unenhanced as the
lowest in society – which is unethical. Even though we can't offer a
liver transplant to all who need them, he says, we still carry them out
for the lucky few. Much better to try to raise the baseline, even if
some are left behind."
For Harris, having the ability to improve our species lot in life
but refusing to do so, makes little sense. He has a difficult time
understanding why some people are so insistent that we shouldn't try to
improve upon human evolution.
"Can you imagine our ape ancestors getting together and saying,
'This is pretty good, guys. Let's stop it right here!'. That's the
equivalent of what people say today."
But Leon Kass, the highly influential American philosopher who
persuaded President Bush to end public funding of research using human
embryos, abhors Harris's vision of a biotechnology-enhanced future.
Kass believes it will lead to parents who "design" their children
leading to a new generation "at risk of despotic rule" by the previous
generation. But Kass can't really articulate his main concern, which
has been referred to as the "yuk factor" that many feel about
scientific interference with the human body. Kass wrote a widely quoted
essay entitled The Wisdom of Repugnance, in which he argued,
"Repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason's
power fully to articulate it".
Personally, Harris doesn't find Kass' argument to be very
compelling, since repugnance does not actually signify wisdom nor a
lack of it. "The fact that people can't articulate the reasons for
their distaste or revulsion doesn't make it invalid," Harris says. "But
the fact that they feel revulsion doesn't make it valid, either.
"Human history is littered with examples of things that we recognize
now were inappropriate objects of revulsion…[such as] homosexuality and
working women, and other races. Nobody would say today that those
feelings were appropriate, even though they were powerfully felt by
very large numbers of people, sometimes whole societies. We ought to
have a rational caution about following the 'yuk factor' because we
know it has led us not only in the wrong direction but in a thoroughly
corrupt direction."
Harris doesn't find the Mother Nature argument to be very compelling
either. He points out that if we're going to leave it to Mother Nature
to decide, then why are we always resisting her?
"Medicine goes against nature – people naturally fall ill and
naturally die prematurely. If we believed in letting nature take its
course, we would not practice medicine. It's not that I despise nature;
there's no particular virtue in it. Sometimes it's great, sometimes
it's crap. The virtue of medicine is that it prevents harm and does
good. That, I believe, is the virtue of enhancement. Enhancement shares
exactly the same moral purpose as medicine and it's likely to be at
least, if not more, effective."
Posted by Rebecca Sato
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"Smart Mice" Created - A new mechanism of learning
"Mind Children": Transhumanism & the Search For Genetic Perfection
Link:
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article2622232.ece
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