Reductio ad Absurdum

By Britt Bailey

If we are going to talk about God, then this God of "thou shalt not play God" doesn't wash.  Getting human is "playing God." But "play" knows that it plays: it respects its own limits not by setting rigid boundaries, but by transgressing creatively, lightly, knowingly. - Catherine Keller

The capacity to engineer genes generally and the success of biotechnology in particular, is  forcing scholars to confront vexing philosophical concepts. For the first time, we have had to take a hard look at the basis of life itself and ask just how and if the alteration of genetic material poses novel ethical or moral problems.  Is "life" held within the confines of a genetic sequence?  Or do genes merely provide the building blocks of living entities which are then formed and framed by their interaction with nature?

Although biotechnology is often the focus of blanket opposition "on principle," such an attack ignores the core question of whether or not molecular biology is strictly a neutral science.  While a simple answer is difficult, no one would deny that by the time molecular biology as a science becomes molecular technology, ethical analysis becomes imperative because of scope and scale of its potential impact.

Opposition to biotechnology is often couched in phrases such as  "we should not be playing God." If molecular biology is critiqued by likening it to divine intervention, then all of biotechnology would be "off limits."  Under this rubric,  transgene movement should be reserved for realms far from the clumsy hands of humans. Some religions such as Christianity have advanced the notion that we are made in the image of God, and as such are entitled to reshape our natural world.  Others, like Jainism or Buddhism have admonished humans not to interfere with the natural world.  Whichever polar view one holds, humans have undeniably put themselves in god-like roles throughout their evolution.  "Playing God" is not the right question.  Humans have selected plants and animals for domestication for thousands of years.  In so doing, admittedly we have changed their genetic makeup.   Advocates in Life Science companies believe biotechnology simply serves as an extension of traditional crop breeding, and have asserted that any engineered crop is equivalent to any conventional variety.

The admonition not "To Play God" is also used to serve as a traditional moral ends, such as Christian opposition to low-tech medical interventions like abortion and euthanasia.  Applying the phrase in response to biotechnology diverts attention from the real issues surrounding this science.  Instead of providing enlightenment, such pronouncements may only  supplant more profound arguments.  By invoking the "playing God" card, debaters set absolute limits which omit the more deeply rooted complexity of  how humans should interact and participate with the world.  More useful analyses which might allow us to accept or reject of certain bioengineered developments are too easily obscured by the theological premise. Real philosophical discussion occurs behind the spurious walls of God’s realm.

New Technologies
Implicit in the notion of divine intervention is the recognition that biotechnology introduces new ways to manipulate the world.  How we do this manipulation is at the core of the controversy.  Technologies operating on the scope and scale of genetic engineering in modern agricultural biotechnology, have the ability to radically alter and reshape public health and the ecosystem itself.  Truly effective global technologies reshape society. Applications in the burgeoning field of agricultural biotechnology have the ability to re-shape soil and sub-soil biodiversity,  food composition, and the agricultural system.

Perhaps a better question than "Are we playing God" is, "Should agricultural biotechnology be asked to contribute any differently to the common good than has any other technology?"  If we follow important ethical and economic precepts, then the answer is, "perhaps, it should."  While many technologies are not imposed upon society at large, biotechnology generally, and agbiotechnology particularly, do.  At a minimum, technologies which can manipulate basic liberties, in this case, access to adequate sustenance, should contribute to the public good, and should do so optimally.

Contributions to the common good fall under the ethical principle of beneficence. The concept normally applies to "doing good" or acting to improve well-being.  But beneficence in the context of agricultural biotechnology instead calls for a circumstance  where risks and benefits associated with world-wide developments are balanced to assure "harm" is minimized and benefits are maximized.

Economic Parallels
Because economic and ultimately public benefits are cited by the Life Science industry as the main argument for developing and marketing bioengineered crops, it would be meaningful to draw a parallel between ethics and economics. The principle of beneficence has much in common with the economic, business-oriented theorem, the "Pareto Optimum," named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto.

According to this theory, private goods achieve a Pareto optimum when most individuals can be made better off without making others worse off.  A new technology  like bioengineering must then be evaluated for its contribution to the overall social welfare by assessing the degree to which it approaches this optimum.  Does the introduction of biotechnology meet this test?  More particularly, does agricultural biotechnology support the common good and the social system as a whole in accordance with the Pareto optimum? To date, no ethical baseline exists to evaluate the contribution of biotechnology to the common good.  Should any corporation currently putting 98.6 million acres of genetically engineered food and animal grade crops under the plow have to prove it is contributing to the well being of society?

One can only hope an ethical analysis takes place before the biotechnological sweep across the global landscape goes too far to be recalled.  Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, society has grappled with  lacing together science and technology with some sense of ethics.  While science furnishes new powers to humanity, what we do with its advances often sheds light on our most basic instincts and moral boundaries.  In 1949, Winston Churchill properly stated, "Our codes of honour, morals and manners, the passionate convictions…are far more precious to us than anything which scientific discoveries could bestow.  Those whose minds are attracted or compelled to rigid and symmetrical systems of government should remember that logic, like science, must be the servant and not the master of man."