Discussion Group Report

Societies have always been tempted to apply their knowledge of heredity to eugenics, the genetic improvement of the human species. In Nazi Germany, eugenic theories aimed at purifying the national pedigree were dramatically put in motion. In 1934, 56,000 citizens characterized as "genetically unfit" were sterilized by the German government. Among them were victims of various mental diseases and persons identified--on the basis of sexual orientation, for example--as "social deviants." Millions of healthy Jews, gypsies and other ethnic and religious minorities were systematically murdered. Even in the United States, 20,000 people, categorized as feebleminded, alcoholic, epileptic, sexually deviant and mentally ill, had been forcibly sterilized by January 1935.

David Suzuki and Peter Knudtson, in Genetics: The Clash Between the New Genetics and Human Values, say, "as we approach undreamed-of powers to manipulate the very blueprint of life, we must remember the lessons from the history of science and technology. With all of the best intentions, we still encounter unexpected costs in engineering life." Results are in many cases a mixed bag with unexpected undesirable costs accompanying beneficial results. For example, geneticists have discovered that sickle cell anemia arises from error in a single gene and is transmitted from parent to offspring as a recessive characteristic. However, this gene also increases people's chances of surviving malaria.

Ronald Dworkin of Oxford University, author of Life's Dominion: An Argument About Abortion, Euthanasia and Individual Freedom, opines that parents may be tempted to use abortion as a technique for choosing the kind of children they wish to have. If a mother is told that her fetus is carrying a gene that will doom it to an early death from cancer it is understandable if she decides to have an abortion; but what of parents who want children of a particular sex? or blond children? And what about producing children in order to harvest their organs for transplants, something we have already seen in one case? What about women producing babies for sale?

People around the world seem to value the sanctity of life intrinsically. Dworkin suggests that this value is true. He disagrees with the postmodernist belief that morality is subjective and relativistic, that the individual conscience is the legislative tribunal that creates right and wrong. "On the contrary, exercising individual conscience wouldn't even be an issue if everyone had his own truth. What would it matter how one acted in the world? Conscience is measured against truth; it is not its own truth."

Once the battle was religious collectivism vs. the individual, then political collectivism vs. the individual. Now we are entering a time when the biggest social and political issues are again religious. "It seems we left behind our concern with the religious imagination when we entered modernity, only to find it again on the other side of that issue."