California State University, Sacramento



Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering

Human Genome Project

• Video 1

• Video 2

Eugenics

• Video 1

A Glimpse of Things to Come, Lee Silver

2010

• Embryonic manipulation and selection

o Examples:

▪ Choosing sex

▪ Combining chromosomes of same sex couples

2050

• Genetic enhancement

2350

• Transhumanism

o Gattaca Argument

o Speciation based on social stratification.

o GenRich vs. Naturals

Huxley and Brave New World

Wikipedia: Brave New World, written in 1932, was first intended as a dystopian novel by Aldous Huxley. Set in London in the 26th century, the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology, eugenics and hypnopædia that combine to change society. The world it describes could in fact also be a utopia, albeit an ironic one: Humanity is carefree, healthy, and technologically advanced. Warfare and poverty have been eliminated, and everyone is permanently happy. The irony is, however, that all of these things have been achieved by eliminating many things — family, cultural diversity, art, literature, science, religion, and philosophy. It is also a hedonistic society, focused on deriving pleasure from promiscuous sex and drugs.

Silver’s Critique

• Huxley’s world is coming, but reproductive control will not be in the hands of government or corporations, but rather of individuals.

Preventing a Brave New World, Leon Kass

Objections to human cloning

The universal repugnance of cloning

• cf. incest, cannibalism

• Failure rate causes unnecessary deaths of embryos.

• Crises of individuality and identity

• Handmade humans won’t have same moral significance.

• The meaning of procreation

o giving up control

Kass call for a total ban on both

• embryonic human cloning

• reproductive human cloning

• Implications

o Cloned Kittens

The Case Against Perfection, Michael J. Sandel

NPR Interview

Science Friday: Engineering Better Humans

Varieties of Genetic Enhancements:

• Muscles

• Memory

• Height

In each of these cases significant advances in treatment of diseases also reveal the potential to enhance normal people.

• Sexual Selection

In vitro methods used to screen for genetic diseases can also be used to select the sex of a child.

Problems

The problem of agency

• Do/will we value the accomplishments of enhanced people less?

Eroding our appreciation of the “giftedness of life”

Silver argues that those who believe in genetic enhancement think it is unfair that some people are born with greater natural gifts than others, and they value effort over natural gifts.

However, according to Sandel, an “openness to the unbidden” is what drives our appreciation for natural gifts, and this quality is essential to the parent/child relation. If parents can design their children, they will have expectations of them that are appropriate to that relationship.

Other examples of the triumph of willfulness over giftedness

• Sports crazed parents.

• Over diagnosis of ADHD

• James Watson and the curing of stupidity.

• Egg and sperm

o California Cryobank

▪ Cryobank is market driven, but Sandel believes it is just as morally suspect as sperm banks with an explicit eugenics mission.

Will genetic enhancement erode sympathy for and solidarity with less-advantaged members of society.

o Genetic discrimination in insurance.

Trespass, Claire Hope Cummings

Cummings argues here that recombinant DNA technology is still very poorly understood, and that the time line for introducing it was drastically accelerated by scientists and agribusiness corporations agreeing to a propaganda campaign.

Genetically Modified Food: Panacea or Posion?

Main issues:

• Unpredictability of transgenic crops

• Accelerated rate of introduction

• Unhealthy relation between science and industry

Cummings notion of “trespass”

p. 298

“Genetic engineering is a trespass on the public commons. This is because of the way transgenics are designed and the way ‘the molecular vision’ has been pursued. This vision required that science be compromised to the point where it would overcome the complex boundary conditions that form the very foundation of life. It had to have the hubris to break the species barriers and place itself directly in the path of evolution, severing organisms from their hereditary lineage. And it requires the use of stealth and violence to invade the cell wall, and the implanting of transgenic life forms into an involuntary participant with organisms that are especially designed to overcome all resistance to this rude intrusion.”

Genetic Engineering and the Concept of the Natural, Mark Sagoff

The “natural” fetish

Consumers believe that products extracted directly from plants are somehow superior to those that are manufactured. In fact, however natural products are often

• chemically identical to synthetic products

• more contaminated than synthetic products

• do more damage to the environment to extract than synthetic products

The organic food business

Organic foods are no longer properly associated with small, locally grown products. The organic reformers of the 60’s are now running the organic food divisions of General Mills and Pillsbury.

New Yorker Review: “Paradise Sold”

Basic problem for marketers: How can GMO’s be marketed as natural products?

Basic strategy:

• Resist labeling of GMO’s.

• Stress that what we currently think of as natural foods is the product of thousands of years of selective breeding.

Four Concepts of the Natural

• Everything in the universe

o opposed to supernatural

• God’s creations

o sacred, opposed to profane or immoral

• Independent of human influence

o opposed to artificial

• Authentic or true to itself

o opposed to superficial or illusory

Sagoff Analysis:

The food industry markets it’s products as natural in the last three senses, but wishes to be regulated only in the first sense.

Example: Monsanto claims that it’s products are generated by “nature’s own methods.”

What is the craving for the natural all about?

• Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale

• William Burroughs Naked Lunch

• Sagoff argues that we do not want the food we eat to be so thoroughly known. The more control we have over nature, the less meaningful it becomes to us.

• This is a general problem with scientific knowledge.

Google Video on Food Production and Globalization: Fast Food World

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