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~ 92 ~ CHAPTER EIGHT BIOETHICS, BIOTECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE: A VOICE FROM THE MARGINS 9 10 [ A version of this chapter is published in Developing World Bioethics, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 125-138, December 2004] One of the most remarkable things about the world in which we all live, localized here on planet Earth, is its biodiversity (the enormous variety of its living forms). Another is its cultural diversity (the enormous variety of its different human cultures). Equally remarkable is the variety, the different forms, heights, and weights, shapes, sizes and complexions with which individual human beings, even within the same culture and locality, come from the hand of God/Nature. I perceive great positive value - if you would permit the emphatic tautology - in this differentiated diversity and variety. What all human beings have in common, in spite of their rather palpably striking differentiation and differences, is the fact that they are all human beings, equally liable to being, mutatis mutandis, rational, self-centered, sociable, fallible, altruistic, equally liable to experiencing sadness/joy, pleasure/pain, equally vulnerable and liable to suffering, equally mortal in the end, in spite of everything else, lifeprolonging technologies included. What all human cultures have in common is that they are all creations of human beings, reflecting, on the one hand, human capabilities, goodness, ingenuity, wisdom etc., and, on the other, human limitations, fallibility, frailty, perversity, foolishness etc. Morality, of which ethics, law, ethos, etc., can be considered as important sub-sets or derivatives, is an essential component of every culture, because no human being, no human society, is perfect, 9 The first draft of this paper was read at the opening session of the annual conference of the Canadian Bioethics Society, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, on October 28, 1999. 10 I would like to thank Dr. Ruth Landau of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and Dr. Virginia A. Sharpe of the Hastings Center, Garrison, New York, for their useful critical comments on an earlier draft of this paper. ~ 93 ~ although all are capable of striving towards perfection. No society, no matter how small, can survive and endure, let alone prosper, without morality, without pervasive perennial concern with matters of right and wrong in human conduct and behavior. No human society or culture, I believe, can completely disregard morality and survive for any length of time. The most palpable thing about cultures may be how different they are, each from the others, just as the most palpable thing about individual human beings, even within the same culture, may be how very different they are each from the others. But, just as the color of human blood is the same everywhere, in spite of human differences, it can be said that the identical blood of all human cultures is morality, understood in its simplest conception and function, without which any culture would be truly lifeless, dead. Pervasive perennial concern with morality has given rise to and is reflected in human customs and traditions, in mores, laws and taboos, in group ethos and general etiquette, even though some of these are liable to be equated or conflated and confused with morality proper. CULTURE AND MORALITY I am a cultural pluralist. I perceive great value in the remarkable diversity and variety of human cultures, which seems to me remarkably analogous to the biodiversity of the living world, in which I find equal value. I believe that God/Nature had good reasons for not cloning human beings so that each would be an identical copy of all the others, but rather made each according to a unique and unrepeatable formula. The prospect of a world of identical clones, created or manufactured according to any putative formula of perfection, which, at last, seems within the manipulative reach of human bio-technologists, appears to me a rather boring and undesirable one. I am apprehensive of monocultures: human, faunal, floral or agricultural. Let every culture flourish in its own right on its own terms. Every plant growing in the wild, every creature crawling the earth, flying above or swimming beneath it, may have its own inner ‘reasons’ for being there, its hidden teleological and ecological purposes, or a value in the overall scheme of nature, unknown to human beings. The same may be true of every human culture. [But] I am a moral Universalist. I believe in the absolute moral equality of all human beings, no matter their particularizing and individuating characteristics, no matter their situation or [3.15.190.144] Project MUSE (2024-04-24...

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