Helix from Hell Christine Matta Originally published in Issue XIV of Vulgata, July 2004.

A new scientific revolution is unfolding with technologies so novel that they raise unprecedented questions about what it really means to be human created in God’s image.  Genetic engineering and nanotechnology, which present the possibility of customized offspring and physical immortality, could, if abused, shatter human comprehension and acceptance of God’s role as Creator and sole Source of eternal life.

Half a century ago, cytologists (biologists specializing in the study of cells) discovered a way to separate individual chromosomes from a cell’s genetic material, allowing them to identify, under a microscope, the characteristics of chromosomes that account for various genetic diseases.  What these cytologists discovered is that the type, order, and amount of proteins made by a cell’s DNA gives the cells their own and unique characteristics and functions, which in turn give entire beings their own unique characteristics and functions.

Gene sequences are passed on from generation to generation in reproduction, and are subject to copying errors while they are being copied.  These errors are what account for mutations.  Mutations that are not fatal continue to be passed on, leading to variations in populations.  Recent research has given rise to the ability to cause and control the mutation of specific genes.  Genes can now be taken from one species and inserted into the DNA of another species.  This is already being done extensively in agriculture in order to produce plants and animals that are healthier and require less resources.  However, manipulating the genes of these populations in a manner that aims for specific characteristics reduces the genetic diversity of the organisms therein.  This means that a plague that affects one of these organisms would necessarily wipe out the entire population.

It is indisputable that such genetic manipulation could, in the worst instances, lead to the creation of harmful substances and unexpected ecological disturbances.  Plainly put, this technology is still scientifically unsound.  That is not to say that research in this domain is to be halted altogether, but it most certainly should not be used on the scale it is currently being used at with such a crude understanding of it.  There exists, in all of creation, a humbling complexity that reminds us that God’s handiwork is His own; to assume we have complete, or even a great deal of comprehension of it is folly; and yet scientists falls victim to this fallacy time and again.

The scientific drawbacks of genetic manipulation notwithstanding, there is good reason to be concerned with the moral implications this technology will have.

Gene therapy is a method of correcting a genetic disease in an individual without the traditional use of medication and surgery. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, human gene therapy is the replacement of a person’s faulty genetic material with normal genetic material to treat or cure a disease or abnormal medical condition.  The terms gene transfer and genetic modification are also used to describe gene therapy.

Currently, there are two types of gene therapy: germline and somatic. Somatic gene therapy allows scientists to insert a vector (an agent that contains a modified gene) into a person’s body to correct a genetic abnormality. This type of therapy only changes the genetic composition of the person being treated – it has no affect on his or her future offspring because it only alters non-reproductive (somatic) cells. Somatic gene therapy usually targets one type of tissue within the body (blood cells, brain cells, etc.).

Somatic gene therapy can be performed in two ways: ex vivo (out of the body) and in vivo (in the body). Ex vivo somatic gene therapy, the first to be practiced, genetically alters the cells outside the patient’s body and then reintroduces them into the body. In vivo somatic gene therapy targets cells within the body to be genetically altered. It necessitates that the vectors are able to deliver the genes to the correct area of the body, deliver enough altered genetic material to the cells to ensure effectiveness, and remain otherwise undetected by the body’s immune system.

Germline gene therapy, also called inheritable genetic modification, alters the reproductive cells of a person’s body. Unlike somatic gene therapy, germline therapy alters genetic information in the person being treated, as well as in their future children.

The Church is not opposed to somatic gene therapy, but is opposed to germline “enhancing”.

The Catholic position on the use of biotechnology also embraces a belief not explicitly upheld in any other Christian denomination: the embryo should be [accorded] the dignity entitled to a human person from the moment of conception.  This implies that the embryo is never to be treated as a disposable object of experimentation or research.  Biotechnology acceptable to the Roman Catholic tradition would be therapeutic; it could not implicitly or directly threaten human intellect or will.  Furthermore, the procedure could not involve in vitro fertilization, the destruction of the embryo in the course of applying the therapy, or the externalization of the embryo during the application of the therapy.

Threat to Freewill

Many parties opposed to genetic manipulation express concerns that a desire to improve human heredity will lead to a form of eugenics, whereby a country would emulate the systematic and compulsory genetic “Aryanization” (or the like) of their Nazi nation. The advocates of germline technology go to great lengths to pronounce that germline technology is not geared towards, or likely to give rise to, eugenics at all. The real threat lies in the possible emergence of what is referred to as "soft eugenics"—future attempts by individuals to choose what they believe are desirable interventions to "perfect" their progeny by "correcting" their genes so as to conform better to existing social preferences.

Lee Silver, professor of genetics at Princeton University, points out, it is individuals and couples, not governments, who will seize control of these new technologies.  This is what makes the ability to opt for genetic manipulation so alarming: it’s framed as a free choice.  Truly in recent years North American governments have been scrambling to get out of the way of corporate and individual choice to the extent that they are hesitant to prohibit germline technology lest they be accused of being totalitarian.  The fact that this option is being framed using pro-choice language is the first red flag that human rights are being violated under the guise of freedom; after all, “pro-choice” is the term we use in reference to the philosophy that embraces a woman’s entitlement to abortion.

The word choice is a powerful rhetorical device, which is why it is crucial, right from the beginning, to stomp out the myth that these technologies are in any way pro-choice.

The anti-choice consequences of germline technology, if adopted on a wide scale, will be twofold: first, it will force parents to partake in it; then the consequences of that “choice” will be played out in every generation thereafter.  Consider Beverly Hills, where currently, among the most popular graduation gifts for parents to give their daughters are breast implants.  Imagine, then, when the first few wealthy couples there decide to spend some of their money fixing their progeny.  As soon as their actions gain media exposure, every other wealthy couple who reads about it will follow suit.  Eventually the cost of genetic modifications will fall and they will make their way into the mainstream market.  Parents who don’t follow suit risk the chance that their children will be uglier, dumber, than their genetically modified peers; they won’t make it to grad school, they won’t get married.  This is the “choice” parents of the nanotechno age will be endowed with.  Moreover, while parents will be forced to pick one side of a nasty ultimatum, the engineered human being is the one who has been stripped of choice entirely.
 

People shouldn’t be allowed to choose things this deep for their children, and for every generation thereafter.  That will involve limiting freedom, just as forbidding people to drive their cars the wrong way down a one-way street limits freedom.  The liberty of one generation, ours, would be in some small way constrained (though no more constrained than that of any other generation, which never had this choice) in order to protect the far more basic liberties of those yet to come.  To demand this right is to make a mockery of liberty.  It’s to choose, forever, against choice.

Rejection of Creation

The sort aforementioned potential uses of genetic modification perpetuate the human desire to secure ourselves against life’s anxieties and frailties of our biological existence.  Concluding that biotechnology will placate these anxieties by offering a higher degree of control over nature is a deep delusion.  Genetics research shows that even at the most basic level, the course of biological life depends on more than simply genetics.  Genes are only so influential when they function within subtle systems that regulate their consequences.  It is still uncertain what specifically controls this variability.  This is wholly rousing for anyone hoping to control biological outcomes to the greatest degree possible; the longing for genetic manipulation is based on angst rather than science.  The majority of people long for a world subdued under their control in order that they may eliminate even the risk of suffering.  Our yearnings demand that we create a technology that promises control over the fundamental biological processes that threaten our well-being, and so we seek more than any technology can deliver. We yearn for the power to control life itself, not merely the power to rearrange or to modify genes, but the power to modify and to control our lives. Therefore, we find ourselves locked into a globally competitive, rapid-fire cycle of investment, research, product development, profit, more research-always more research-and the drive to be first. The point is not that genetic engineering and biomedical research are some sort of hoax, or that they will never treat and relieve real human suffering. Yet, even if wildly successful in treating disease, biomedical technologies cannot treat the anxiety that causes us to fear disease in the first place. They will not give us life under control, life with complete security in respect to our biological natures, or life without biological risk. We are fragile and vulnerable, and shall remain so for as long as we are creatures.  These technologies become a dangerous obsession under which our anxieties flourish.  Precisely because this technology will, in time, be very good at treating previously untreatable diseases, precisely because stem-cell technology will make it possible for injured or damaged tissues to be regenerated in the body through the newly emerging field of regenerative medicine, and precisely because we will learn to treat nearly everything, we will be all the more anxious and resentful of what we cannot change. The untreatable and the untreated (including the poor) will stand out ever more starkly as reminders that we cannot control everything, and perhaps we will see them as failed projects of our technology.  We will, in time, learn to modify our genes to enhance ourselves, to improve upon what nature normally gives us. In a way, this is what we do with vaccines, not to mention orthodontics and most of what we call cosmetic surgery. A regenerated body is not quite enough, and we will find ways to improve things by modifying our genes, whether those in our bodies as adults or those in our offspring at conception.

At this point, it is entirely unclear how far we can go with the project of human improvement. Can we engineer resistance to cancer and other diseases? We are learning about genes that are linked to longevity. We can insert these genes into other species, and when we do, they live longer. Can we learn to do this with our own descendents? Why not enhance intelligence, height, or skin tone (to fit what is fashionable), or alter our mood? No one knows now what we will learn to do, but it is pretty clear what we want. We are anxious, competitive, offended by age and decline, unable to accept loss. These needs drive our technology, shape its agenda, and ultimately pervert its moral meaning. What begins as a technology to relieve human pain becomes a technology to relieve the pain of being human.

Rejection of the Creator

More than any prior age, ours has a kind of moral duty to fix nature. What should concern us is not so much about biotechnology per se, but biotechnology's worldview, according to which all of nature should finally be re-shaped in the ways that humans deem most desirable, all disease eliminated or at least countered. At least in part, we want genetics because we are discontent with nature as we find it. The grave danger we face is that our discontent with nature so easily turns to protest against the creator for having made us to be less than we think we should be. We find ourselves less healthy, less strong, less perfect than we think we have a right to be. We learn how to fix things, and we wonder about the goodness or power of a creator who made us this way in the first place.  Surely, if we desire genetic engineering in order to give us the tools to displace God, even if only in our technological illusions and in the pride of our imaginations, it is a dangerous pursuit.  Some argue that we should play human in the imago dei sense-that is, we should understand ourselves as created cocreators and press our scientific and technological creativity into the service of neighborly love, of beneficence.  We should note a shift here to the term "cocreation." What is meant by this term? On the whole, it has found far more acceptance among theologians than has "playing God." The underlying idea is simply that human beings are to cooperate with God in the work of creation. Human beings, evolved only late in time, are called by God to share this task of creation. Technology, in particular, allows human beings to act in the creation, unfolding its development in ways that were previously unavailable even to God. For this human role, Philip Hefner has suggested the phrase "created cocreator," and many theologians have picked this up in agreement.

The real reason "cocreation" is troubling is not our smallness or weakness but our selfishness. Do we human beings, in fact, move creation forward into the unfolding of new potentialities, new combinations, toward its true completion as God's creation? The issue here is not the degree of power or originality in our technology. Technology does, in fact, add to or alter life on earth, or at least we can readily foresee a time when that will be so; thus technology must be comprehended theologically at the level of the doctrine of creation. The issue is whether we have it within us to use our technology in subservience to the will of God shown to us in Christ and opened before us by the Holy Spirit. "Cocreation" is not so much a matter of doctrine as of obedience. Granted, technology should be cocreation. If we are honest about ourselves, however, we see how easily technology turns out to be just so much egocentric reordering of nature that becomes, in the end, our self-assertion against creation.

In Closing

In the Rules of St. Basil the Great, we find this answer given to the question about whether the Christian should rely on medicine:

"In as much as our body is susceptible to various hurts ... and since the body suffers affliction from both excess and deficiency, the medical art has been vouchsafed us by God, who directs our whole life, as a model for the cure of the soul, to guide us in the removal of what is superfluous and in the addition of what is lacking.... Consequently, we must take great care to employ this medical art, if it should be necessary, not as making it wholly accountable for our state of health or illness, but as redounding to the glory of God and as a parallel to the care given the Soul. "

The challenge before the Church is to help people think of biotechnology as mere support, nothing more, so that it fits within a life whose meaning is found in relationship to God. To do so, we must claim biotechnology, remove it from the context of meaning provided by people such as Lee Silver, and relocate it as suggested by Basil: The purpose of biotechnology is not that God may disappear but that God may be glorified.