On Genetic Research by Fr. James

Linda Borg's Journal article (Oct. 16,2002) on the moral dilemmas arising out of genetic research raises at the very start the crucial point: "The real question is not what science can do but whether we ought to do it."

What science can or can't do is purely a matter of scientific knowledge and expertise. And scientific knowledge and expertise are by definition morally value-free - at least from a purely scientific perspective. A good physicist can surely design a highly efficient bomb. But the question of whether to use it is not a scientific matter at all, but an ethical and moral one.

In an earlier time this would not have been problematic. In fact after World War II, the Allied victors, and indeed the whole civilized world, had no difficulty in discerning that the atrocities perpetrated by Nazi scientists were just that - atrocities - not to be judged on their scientific or experimental value (what can be done), but by larger values (what should or may be done), values that transcend science and indeed civilization itself. These larger moral principles were then, as they must be, unquestioned. Indeed, even today, does any sane, civilized person question the moral legitimacy of the Allied condemnation of Nazi war criminals (including scientists)?

But there is a problem today, in that it is by no means clear that such a moral consensus would exist with regard to more contemporary events. Of course, one can always turn to the principle that "might makes right." Under this principle, to the victor go the spoils - and the right to judge the losers. But if you adopt this principle as a moral basis, then you have to concede that, had the Nazi's might won the war, then their moral judgement would have been the right one. Morality then becomes a matter of historical caprice.

Unless there are some moral principles that transcend nations, and parties and time periods, there are no grounds on which to judge atrocities or war criminals or Nazi scientists - or genetic research. And it's just here that our generation is most at danger. For unlike previous generations that readily acknowledged an over-arching moral law, the modern mind has settled for the shifting sands of subjective ethics: "What's right for me may not be right for you." Such a principle might apply harmlessly to some trivial matter, like the color of one's make-up or the style of one's car; but as a moral principle for larger issues it has no force whatsoever.

It is not merely coincidental that one thinks of Nazi atrocities when the subject of genetic research comes up. No serious person can doubt that Nazi scientists, if they had possessed the research and potential now available to genetic scientists, would have bent it to their own ends. And there is little reason to doubt that they would have succeeded and made it work - just as there is little doubt that modern scientists will succeed in making genetic science work.

But to what end? We know historically what end Nazi research aimed for, and the world, passing a moral judgement on them, found both the end and the means evil and condemned them. Without hesitation, the world acknowledged that the Nazis could do and did do research the world called "atrocities." And the world pronounced that these things should not have been done.

Without the confident assurance that they were acting under some moral imperative that transcended their own nations and civilization itself, the war tribunal judges at Nuremberg would have had no mandate to act as judges and to condemn Nazi criminals and scientists. Nor did they feel under such an imperative the need to solicit scientific opinion as to whether the experiments on living victims were conducted according to medical and scientific protocol. The matter was never a scientific issue at all, but a moral one, about which scientists, precisely as scientists, had no voice at all.

Regrettably, in our own day, the most strident voices in favor of genetic research are those of scientists and their supporters. The voices calling for moral judgement - lacking the glamour and drama so dear to the media -- are ignored or go unheard. (The Journal's article is a welcome exception to this.) An unheeding world, awed by the alluring prospects held out by genetic scientists, and having come untethered from the moral anchor that held an earlier generation to unshifting standards, welcomes the prospect of sailing forth into the brave new world that seems to be a-dawning. The danger lies in sailing that uncharted sea without a moral compass. Without such a guide, one is not only lost, but quite ignorant of being lost, and incapable --- unless by a gracious but improbable accident - of ever finding one's way home again.

In fact, moral homelessness - the modern sense that one is afloat on a sea of endless possibilities, each of equal moral value (i.e., none of them forbidden) - only makes one more vulnerable to the siren song of scientists equally adrift but equipped with glittering visions that can provide, for a time, the comforting illusion that one is not lost or adrift at all, or that being adrift is what life is about and that it is best to lay aside those pernicious hauntings of a moral home base. It is at this point that science ceases to be science and becomes scientism - a value-laden philosophy that arrogates to itself the moral authority it decries if exercised outside its own boundaries. And it is precisely at this point that science ceases to be science at all and becomes instead the new religion of the age, and its men in white coats the priests and prophets of the brave new world. And who in this brave new world will be able to challenge any of its works and pomps? For the only principle honored there is that if it can be done, it should be done. As Borg points out in her article, genetic research has even suborned "bioethicists...paid quite handsomely for their services...[who] say whatever you want." So much for over-arching moral principles that transcend nations and civilization itself!

Over fifty years ago C. S. Lewis wrote a brilliant and terrifying novel about the dangers of ordinary men and women handing over their moral authority to scientists. In That Hideous Strength, Lewis portrays an attempt to build a brave new world by seemingly scientific means. In the end the scientific program, unchecked by any moral authority external to itself, but operating only by its own scientific and social imperatives, becomes a murderous and totalitarian force. Much of its work is in genetic research. The novel was written over a half century ago, yet its vision of science transformed into scientism is as fresh and relevant as today's news.

In the mean time - however long or short it may be - the voices of unpaid moralists need to be heard, raising doubts about the new clothes the fashionable emperor of science has declared to be the wardrobe of the future.

V. Rev. James M. Deschene
Christ the Saviour Monastery

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