In Defense of the Moral Relevance of Species Boundaries

Public Opinion and Biotechnology

Jason Scott Robert and Françoise Baylis (2003) hypothesize that what explains public worries about human-to- animal embryonic chimeras (henceforth, "chimeras") is the concern that "the existence of such beings would introduce inexorable moral confusion in our existing relationships with nonhuman animals and in our future relationships with part-human hybrids and chimaeras." Thus, what worries people is a consequentialist concern, namely, that the creation of chimeras will undermine the usefulness of perceived, even if fictitious, boundaries.

Robert and Baylis offer no empirical evidence to support this claim, and there is substantial evidence against it. The U.S. Office of Technology Assessment's (OTA) report on public perceptions of biotechnology, which remains the most comprehensive study of its kind, found that consequentialist concerns were cited by only a meager 1% (for environmental concerns) to 8% (for unforeseen consequences) of the respondents who believed that creating cross-species plants or animals was morally wrong (OTA 1987). Concerns about playing God and tampering with nature were much more prevalent, and the concern Robert and Baylis hypothesize apparently didn't even merit reporting by the OTA.

At any rate, it would be both surprising and disappointing if oversight bodies gave weight to the concern about moral confusion that Robert and Baylis say is at the heart of the public controversy. To prevent scientific research on the grounds that it would force people to reexamine a particular moral view by demonstrating the falsity of its underlying factual assumptions would be to prevent not only scientific progress but moral progress as well.

Crossing Species Boundaries

Public opinion aside, what about Robert and Baylis's substantive criticisms of the argument that creating chimeras is wrong because it involves crossing species boundaries? Their first criticism arises from their claim that there are intractable disagreements surrounding how to define "the species Homo sapiens." Their second criticism arises from their claim that species boundaries are fluid, not fixed.

Conceding both claims, if only for the sake of argument, it still remains that Robert and Baylis provide little explanation as to how those claims provide reasons against the idea that crossing species boundaries is morally problematic. Indeed, I doubt that these claims actually do provide any such reasons.

There are, after all, intractable disagreements about how to delineate many key concepts relevant to ethics: killing and letting die, life and death, consciousness, rationality, equality, respect, rights, goodness. This does not imply that these concepts are morally irrelevant. The presence of those intractable disagreements will tempt some to moral relativism, but my view, which I won't argue for here, is the opposite: intractable disagreement typically means that there is an objective fact of the matter (Streiffer 2003).

Nor does the moral relevance of species boundaries require "the erection of fixed boundaries" between species. It is clear, for example, that the groups constituting one's family and one's fellow citizens change over time (and, it might be added, are subject to numerous indeterminacies and controversies), and yet the boundaries of those groups retain robust moral significance. Thus, fixed boundaries are not necessary for moral relevance.

Robert and Baylis make a third criticism: "Indeed, why should there be any ethical debate about the prospect of crossing species boundaries between human and nonhuman animals? After all, hybrids occur naturally, and there is a significant amount of gene flow between species in nature" (emphasis in original). The unstated assumption is that if something happens in nature, then there is nothing wrong with our doing it. Clearly this is false.

Perhaps the following is a more charitable interpretation of their remarks: Some people object to crossing species boundaries on the grounds that it is unnatural. But given that horizontal gene flow between species occurs in nature, it isn't unnatural.

But naturalness is relative to the agent who is performing the action. It can be natural for fish to live underwater without...