Designing Our Descendants: The Promises and Perils of Genetic Modifications

12 Human Limits: Theological Perspectives on Germ-Line Modification

c h a p t e r t w e l v e Human Limits Theological Perspectives on Germ-Line Modification Ronald Cole-Turner, Ph.D. The prospect of technologies of human self-modification evokes intense religious responses. Religious convictions, even if poorly articulated or conflicted, form the deep ground of popular sentiment from which explicit policy options emerge. Anyone engaged in serious analysis of science policy will be helped by a greater understanding of these religious convictions and the assumptions on which they depend. In this chapter I try to uncover some of the most important religious convictions that bear on these technologies. I see this as a contribution of theology to a broader public discussion. Theology contributes best, I believe, when it recognizes the pluralistic and secular nature of our society, and therefore not when it offers answers, much less insists that its answers become law,but when it invites citizens of every perspective and persuasion to reflect on the nature and meaning of human life in its many relationships and possibilities. Religious institutions contribute most when they create an open space in society for serious, critical, and sustained attention to such issues. Indeed, it is precisely the lack of deep reflection that religion wants most to challenge and correct. From a religious perspective it is worrisome that we human beings may soon cross such an important threshold into an era of germ-line or inheritable genetic modifications without deep pause, that we might do so in private clinics acting without public review, or that we might do so inadvertently. By sharing its worries, theology invites us all to push back for a moment from the immediate practicalities of gene modification or disease pathways to the deeper questions of cultural and spiritual modification and human evolutionary pathways. Despite its reputation theology is not esoteric. Its questions are often ordinary questions taken one step further than usual. The central question for our consideration is whether human inheritable genetic modification would violate a fundamental human limit. Theology takes the question to its ultimate level, asking whether such technological intervention violates our creaturely limits by somehow offending against our relationship with our creator. But we encounter this question of limits at many points before this ultimate stage. For instance, among human limits are the obvious limits of human knowledge.We may not now understand a certain process, or we may be limited by our lack of knowledge of a natural system in its full complexity, which is certainly the case now when we contemplate the genetic and cellular complexity of our own brains. Theologians of various traditions, especially Christianity, have stressed the need for great modesty about human knowledge. Perhaps more important, they (together with philosophers as far back as Plato) have stressed the importance of self-knowledge and its limits. Do we really know ourselves? Do we deceive ourselves, thinking we are morally or intellectually better than we really are, or that we are less self-transparent than we like to think? Are we each not in fact a conflicted set of motivations and aspirations , wanting this and that, wanting good and selfish ends, wanting to be good but only partly wanting it, all the while deluding ourselves about the purity or coherence of our purposes, and thus limited in respect to our clarity of purpose? We are also confronted by technical limits. Of course, technology advances, and so the tight squeeze of today’s technical limitations is pushed back again and again, and each time our moral analysis must take account of our new circumstance . Current limitations in somatic cell modification, vectors, and the ability to act early in developmental processes all affect our analysis of what is morally permissible. For example, some religious people might argue that a therapeutic abortion is permissible in a situation of a serious disease as long as we cannot effectively treat the disease. As technology changes, duties and morally permissible options change. If successful, techniques of human germTheological Perspectives on Germ-Line Modification 189 line modification would push back significant limits on our ability to treat certain conditions. On the other hand, in thinking about technical limitations, we must distinguish between the technical ability to change a causal element (such as a DNA sequence) and the ability to control an outcome.As...