Genetic technology Does it mean rejecting religious principles?

Genetic technology Does it mean rejecting religious principles?

Kay Plowman looks in depth at the relationship between modern genetic technology and religious principles regarding human life

Kay Plowman

In the postmodern world it is a popular claim that religious beliefs no longer have a role to play in making medical decisions, and that human development can advance all the more if we are willing to ignore religious beliefs. Anti-religionists may argue that religious beliefs only frustrate medical advancement which depends on embryo research or making controversial decisions about when life begins and ends. However, it may equally be claimed that it is a mistake to ignore the role of religious beliefs, which provide vital boundaries and guidelines when making medical decisions — boundaries that are often intuitively moral to atheist, agnostic and believer.

The area of developing genetic technologies is one of the most exciting, promising and yet challenging in the field of medical advancement and the associated medical ethics. The twenty-first century has seen fiction become close to fact with saviour siblings, pre-genetic diagnosis, stem cell therapy and cord blood storage. All these can be brought under the broad umbrella of genetic engineering, the manipulation of genetic material in order to change its character, e.g. to ensure that the resulting embryo possesses particularly desirable characteristics, such as genetic compatibility with a pre-existing sibling, or to remove genetically undesirable traits such as inheritable diseases or predisposition to certain conditions such as alcoholism or cancer.

MODERN GENETIC TECHNOLOGIES DERIVE FROM HUMANITY’S ATTEMPTS TO SHAPE AND CONTROL NOT ONLY HUMAN FERTILITY BUT ITS ENVIRONMENT.

Challenging genetics

All of these developing technologies raise significant moral challenges, some of which may be characteristically religious, such as questions about the sanctity versus the quality of life and the status of the embryo. Others have wider implications, such as how far medical professionals, scientists and prospective parents should be able to impose on the autonomy of the individual. Positive issues also arise, such as how far such technologies may give humanity the opportunity to display altruism and to take advantage of the creative opportunities which God has given.

Modern genetic technologies derive from humanity’s attempts to shape and control not only human fertility but its environment. This raises concerns among both religious believers and secular thinkers but it is easy to think that religious beliefs are no longer relevant and should be ignored. However, I believe that this would be a mistake. I have focused my investigation on ‘designer babies’ and saviour siblings, and it is clear that religious beliefs have had an influence on how the value of these technologies has been understood.

Eugenics

Plato promoted the view that human reproduction should be monitored and controlled by the state. He proposed that partners would be chosen by a marriage number which represented their genetic hierarchy, and only those with a high number would be allowed to reproduce with other citizens with high numbers. In Sparta, the city elders decided the fate of infants with tests that ensured that only the strongest survived and procreated, thus creating a genetically strong civilisation, while the fourth of the 12 tables of Roman law stated that deformed children must be put to death.

Sir Francis Galton was the first person to organise these ideas in accordance with evolutionary theory, while Charles Davenport in the USA established a biological experiment at Cold Spring Harbour in 1904 which helped provide the scientific basis for later eugenic policies, such as enforced sterilisation. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, laws were passed to prevent mentally ill people being married. This was to prevent the passing on of mental illness and as a direct consequence a total of 60,000 Americans were sterilised. In 1907 Indiana became the first US state to legalise compulsory sterilisation, and 30 other states followed suit.

America’s eugenics programme had an influence on Nazi Germany, and during the Nazi regime the German state sterilised an estimated 400,000 people who were deemed mentally and physically unfit. The scale of Nazi eugenics prompted American eugenicists to seek expansion of their own programmes.

Jesus and the outcast

It seems clear to us today that no mainstream religious beliefs could support such practices. For example, Jesus is presented as welcoming those who were on the margins of society and offering wholeness and healing to those who were excluded on grounds of disability, mental illness and physical sickness. However, exclusion and discrimination have characterised religious extremist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, which directed its message to appeal to white Protestants. We feel, reasonably perhaps, that such hard-line beliefs should be ignored in the interests of greater social welfare and both believer and non-believer are happy to unite in their rejection of forced sterilisation and the marginalisation of the mentally ill.

However, should religious beliefs regarding modern genetic technologies also be ignored? The principle of the sanctity of life is seen as underpinning religious approaches to developing technologies that have led to so-called ‘designer babies’ and saviour siblings, and may be thought to frustrate the great advantages which could be realised by these developments.

‘Designer babies’

A ‘designer baby’ derives from an embryo that has been genetically modified and selected for particular traits, which can range from a lowered risk of disease (usually genetically inherited or predisposed conditions, such as sickle cell anaemia or cancer) to gender selection. In other words, the baby’s genetic make-up has been preselected in order to eradicate a perceived defect (negative eugenics) or to ensure that a particular gene is present (positive eugenics). The term refers to babies selected through preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), which involves the screening of embryos to evaluate their genes in order to identify the most desirable embryo for implantation.

The term ‘designer babies’ is pejorative because it implies that children are commodities deriving from a set of requirements imposed on them by their parents. Furthermore, by the selection of the most desirable embryo, other embryos will be rejected and destroyed and this is a fundamental problem for those who defend the interests of the embryo as at least a potential person, if not an actual life. While PGD leads to the disposal of certain samples, this could be because the embryo is shown to be compromised in terms of health and may naturally miscarry or be terminated through selective abortion.

In 2002 the Journal of Medical Ethics reported that a deaf couple made use of PGD to conceive a deaf child on the principle that deafness was not a disability but a cultural identity, and that they would be better equipped to bring up a deaf child who would participate in their shared culture.

Despite the apparent benefits in terms of removal of defective genes, religious beliefs continue to have an influence on the application of genetic technology to ‘design’ babies through PGD. Given the potential benefits of PGD, should these views be ignored?

Biblical principles

All forms of PGD depend on creating more embryos than will be used and this is a significant problem for religious believers. The conservative religious view deems that the embryo is to be considered a human life from conception, hence the law which permits embryos to only be used for testing for up to 14 days does not go far enough. The Psalmist writes: ‘You knit me together in my mother’s womb… I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made’ (Psalm 139:13–14a), while Jeremiah speaks of his antenatal calling to be a prophet: ‘Before you were formed in the body of your mother I had knowledge of you, and before your birth I made you holy; I have given you the work of being a prophet to the nations’ (Jeremiah 1:5). For the conservative religious believer, verses such as these are interpreted unambiguously — the embryo is chosen and designed by God and given a purpose and significance far beyond that which humanity can decide. Any embryo, whether created in vitro or in the womb, is created by God and has absolute value and sanctity — it is set apart for God’s purposes.

Peter Saunders of the Christian Medical Fellowship is clear about the issues. To create embryos for the express purpose of experimentation or which may be rejected as inadequate candidates for implantation is to create a ‘class of persons who are created only to be destroyed’. Because they receive no legal protection under 14 days, he suggests that this represents a form of ageism: discriminated against because they are less than 14 days old.

The religious objections to use of embryos can have a significant effect on medical technology since it would preclude all embryonic stem cell research as well as PGD. Religious beliefs about human life place emphasis on the intrinsic value of life, rather than on its instrumental value.

Instrumental value is derived from what can be achieved, purposed or accomplished. Intrinsic value is not dependent on any of these factors, but reflects that which is good in and of itself. At the heart of a theistic understanding of humanity is the intrinsically special relationship between human life and God’s creative and purposeful activity which needs no further justification. If this relationship extends to the moment of conception, then humans act without authority when they impose life and death decisions on the embryo.

THE TERM ‘DESIGNER BABIES’ IS PEJORATIVE BECAUSE IT IMPLIES THAT CHILDREN ARE COMMODITIES DERIVING FROM A SET OF REQUIREMENTS IMPOSED ON THEM BY THEIR PARENTS.

Stem cells

How important are these beliefs and should they be ignored or acknowledged in the interests of medical progress? Although stem cell researchers are optimistic about the potential of embryonic stem cells (taken from embryos created in the laboratory) to be used to form any organ of the body, no cures have yet been developed that utilise them. In contrast, adult stem cells are not only free from the moral problems which surround use of the embryo, but have already demonstrated their effectiveness in providing treatment in the form of bone marrow transplants, cord blood, and potentially groundbreaking treatment for spinal cord injury.

As Josephine Quintavalle observes, adult stem cells provide bespoke treatments by which the patient’s own cells are used as a means of healing. However, in a highly competitive and commercial world, they have little economic value to the pharmaceutical industry since they could not be marketed to a wider catchment. Yet, money for embryonic stem cell research continues to be invested with an eye to potential rather than actual benefits, and arguably, this increases the moral problems all the more. For the religious believer, to advance financial gain over and above the value of life — at whatever stage — will always be a challenge to be met head on.

The world of Gattaca

But it is not just issues regarding the embryo that promote concern. PGD may be used for conceivably positive purposes — removing inherited diseases, for example — but it may also be used to remove characteristics which are subjectively disadvantageous, such as baldness or myopia, or to determine trivial characteristics such as eye or hair colour. Furthermore, some characteristics such as athletic, musical or academic ability could be imposed on the embryo, while a tendency to aggression or addictiveness may be removed.

The vision of a society in which genetic engineering of this type has become the norm is developed accessibly in the 1997 film Gattaca, directed by Andrew Niccol and starring Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman. The film opens with a biblical verse running across the screen:

‘Consider God’s handiwork. Who can straighten what he has made crooked?’ (Ecclesiastes 7:13). While it is a futuristic film, it is set in a ‘not too distant future’, in which responsible parents do not leave it to God to determine the future of their offspring. Instead, prospective parents leave it to their local geneticist to engineer a ‘perfect’ embryo: ‘Ten fingers and ten toes — that’s all that used to matter. Not now.’ The hero of the film, Vincent, was not genetically engineered. Ironically, he is described negatively as a ‘faith birth’ or ‘God child’, and as such he is destined to be an ‘in-valid’ with a life expectancy of 30 years, suffering from myopia and a heart defect. To be a child of God is no blessing in the world of Gattaca. Vincent’s genetic CV determines every choice he has to make and those with imperfect profiles are destined to a life of the genetically determined underclass, drifting from one menial job to another: ‘My real résumé was in my cells… We now have discrimination down to a science.’

The theme of Gattaca is to show, in the words of the film’s subtitle, that ‘there is no gene for the human spirit’. The genetic characteristics measured minutes after Vincent’s birth which are intended to define his life are put to the test, and although we do not know if Vincent survives his mission to Titan, we are expected to believe that he does.

Already we live in a society in which what it is perceived that people can and cannot do threatens to determine their lives. A primary example is that of Alison Lapper, a British artist born without arms and with shortened legs as a result of a medical condition called phocomelia (Lapper 2005). The first 19 years of her life were spent in residential institutions for people with impairments, but her determination and commitment to live a fully active life have made her an icon for disability awareness.

Saviour siblings

But could there be benefits gained by genetic technologies which do not violate and ignore religious beliefs? Perhaps saviour siblings are a case in point. A saviour sibling is conceived in vitro for the specific purpose of providing cord blood, bone marrow or even organs for an existing sibling who suffers from a terminal or chronic condition. The genetic match is specific so that the risk of rejection is effectively eliminated. Ideally, a cord blood transfusion immediately after birth is sufficient in itself, although bone marrow transplants later are still possible. Organ transplants have limited viability without causing significant harm to the donor, but some, such as kidney transplants or liver grafts, may be considered in extreme cases.

Procedures to conceive a saviour sibling are now legal in the UK, and have significant advantages in terms of quality of life for the recipients and their parents, although a conservative religious believer is likely to argue that it is against God’s will to prolong the life of a child who has been destined by him to spend only a short time on Earth. More practically, it may be argued that it’s unethical since a foetus or even an older baby cannot give consent and to treat a person with respect means to let it live for its own self, not as a means to an end for others. There will be a massive pressure on the child from a very young age with no absolute guarantee of a successful outcome and it should be considered whether the transfusions and operations are likely to prevent both children from living a ‘normal’ life.

Finding a balance

As this technology develops, we may become inhumane in the interests of medical advancement and ethics may become blurred. However, religion can keep humanity rooted, approaching medical ethics from many different angles, which would allow us to make ethical decisions, gathering many different opinions.

It would be foolish not to consider the issues religion raises any more than it would be foolish to embrace them unthinkingly. Clearly genetic technology has a tremendous amount to offer to future generations, but religion is still a strong force in society, for the individual and for the group, and while some religious views may be a hindrance to development of beneficial technologies, these should be weighed up against those which act as a reminder of the special value of human life. While seeking to save some, we should not undermine others, and while seeking to instrumentally advance humanity, we should not disregard those values which are intrinsically good. In the postmodern world, a balance should still be possible.

COULD THERE BE BENEFITS GAINED BY GENETIC TECHNOLOGIES WHICH DO NOT VIOLATE AND IGNORE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS?

Kay Plowman is an experienced writer and teacher.