Human Genetic Transformation:
What Are the Biblical Limits?
Dennis M. Sullivan, MD, MA (Ethics)
Professor of Biology
Director, Center for Bioethics
Cedarville University
Center Web site:
www.cedarville.edu/bioethics
E-mail: [email protected]
Some Things are Just Inevitable. . .
[W]ho has been able, in the course
of near six thousand years, to evade the
execution of [the] sentence, passed on
Adam and all his posterity? Be men ever
so great masters of the art of healing, can
they prevent or heal the gradual decays of
nature? Can all their boasted skill heal old
age, or hinder dust from returning to dust?
(John Wesley, 1771)
Who’s Afraid of Genetics?
• Nancy Pearcey:
– What happens to human dignity when test-tube babies are
conceived in order to be tissue donors for other family members
– a practice already underway at the turn of the millennium?
– What happens to our definition of human nature when
researchers create human-animal hybrids – also underway in
2000? In one case, the nuclei of human cells were extracted and
inserted into a pig’s egg cells; the hybrids were allowed to grow
to 32-cell embryos before being destroyed.
– Researchers [look] forward to using such subhuman creatures
for research – even for use as living meat-lockers for growing
transplantable organs and tissues.
‘Perfecting’ Humanity
• The Transhumanist Movement:
– Human genetics
– Nanotechnology
– Neurotechnology
• Goal: Redesign of the Human Species
– To make man ‘better’
– Or just for fun
Gut Feelings and Guidance
• Leon Kass:
– Revulsion is not an argument; and some of
yesterday’s repugnances are today calmly
accepted – though one must add, not always
for the better. In crucial cases, however,
repugnance is the emotional expression of
deep wisdom, beyond reason’s power fully to
articulate it.
• True, but is there any other source to
guide us?
Creation and the Fall of Man
The Value of Man
• Psalm 8 - Two Themes:
– Awesome power of God
– High position of man
– 8:5 – “A little lower than the angels” = “A little lower
than God (Elohim)”
– 8:6 – Dominion over the earth (relates to Genesis)
– Genesis 1:24-31 – the imago Dei: “Image of God”
Image and Likeness:
• Man resembles God
– not in any physical or visible sense
– not so as to make man equal to God
• Man represents God
• God values His creation:
– Gen. 1:31
– “very good”
• God gives man control over creation
– Gen. 1:28
– “fill the earth and subdue it”
Enter Satan:
• Tempted Eve “to be like God, knowing
good and evil” (Gen. 3:5).
• What was Eve’s sin?
– Forbidden sexual knowledge?
– Unlikely, since God commanded Adam & Eve
• To be fruitful and to multiply (1:28)
• To become one flesh (2:24)
The Sin of Adam and Eve
• Knowing good and evil: having one’s own
moral authority
• Hamilton:
What is forbidden to man is the power to
decide for himself what is in his best interests
and what is not. This is a decision God has
not relegated to the earthling . . . When man
attempts to act autonomously he is indeed
attempting to be godlike.
The Resulting Curse
(Gen. 3:14-19)
• God predicted it: “In the day that you eat from it
you will surely die” (Gen. 1:17).
• Death arrives as part of the curse: “For you are
dust, and to dust you shall return” (3:19).
• Matthews:
– Being dust and destined for dust “always overcomes
the progress of medicine and the ingenuity of
cosmetology: every opened casket proves it so.”
The Death Penalty
• The New Testament makes frequent mention of death as
a penalty of the fall:
– “through one man sin entered into the world, and death through
sin, and so death spread to all men” (Rom. 5:12).
• Death is irrevocable and cannot be undone:
– Clear from God’s banishment of Adam from the garden and from
access to the tree of life
– Placed angels and a flaming sword at the entrance, lest man try
to return, since “he might stretch out his hand, and take also
from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever” (Gen. 3:22).
• Key for Bioethics: God does not intend for natural
(unglorified) bodily existence to extend forever.
Healing and the Fall of Man
The Concept of Shalom
• Since the fall, “the whole creation has been
groaning” (Rom. 8:22).
• In other words, shalom has been lost.
• Shalom (def.): “wholeness, completeness, wellbeing”
• “A harmonious sate of mind, both externally and
internally”
• Isaiah 26:3: “The steadfast of mind You will keep
in perfect peace (shalom), Because he trusts in
You.”
Shalom for Us Today
• More than physical health, though it includes it.
• Not accomplished by men; it is a gift from God.
• Wilkinson:
– “True shalom or well-being comes from God for only
in God do we find our true wholeness and complete
fulfillment. In God alone can we know the wholeness
of our being and the rightness of our relationships
which make up what the Old Testament means by
health.”
Shalom and the Role of the Healer
• Reverse the effects of the fall
• Imitate Christ in restoring shalom
• Jesus Christ as our model:
– He is the Great Physician
– He is the Prince of Shalom
Modern Medicine and Shalom
• Modern technologies seem consistent with
biblical model of shalom:
– Penicillin
– Surgery
– Physical therapy
– MRI scans
• This may also include genetic
interventions for specific diseases
Somatic Cell Gene Therapy
• Alteration of genes of a specific patient
– Uses viral vector to insert normal DNA
– Often organ specific
• Example: Cystic Fibrosis
– Genetic defect in cellular transport of chloride ion
across cell membranes
– Leads to thick mucous, with infections and obstruction
– Modified “cold” virus used to insert normal DNA into
lining epithelial cells of lungs
– Therapeutic trials Î some early success
Germ Line Gene Therapy
• More global alteration of somatic cells to
include germ cells (sperm and ova)
• Genetic changes may be transmissable to
future generations
• Ethically, no a priori reasons to exclude
• But many practical concerns
The Weismann Barrier
•
•
The principle that hereditary information moves only from genes to
body cells but never in reverse.
More precise: hereditary information moves only from germ line cells
to somatic cells.
Soma to germ line feedback is impossible.
•
If the Weismann barrier is permeable:
•
– Somatic cell treatments may lead to an inheritable change
– Would result in genetic engineering of the human species, not just a
change in one individual
– Not usually thought possible (but think of reverse transcriptase)
•
•
Balanced discussion of both sides Î UCLA Website: Human Genetic Engineering: Best Hope or
Worst Fear?
http://research.arc2.ucla.edu/pmts/germline/default.htm
Enhancement and the Fall of Man
Medicine & Enhancement
• Genetic Enhancement (Frankel):
– Improving human traits:
• that fall within the range of normal
• Improvement beyond what is needed to maintain
or restore good health
– Examples:
•
•
•
•
increasing height
improving intelligence
altering behavior
changing eye color
Arthur Caplan on Enhancement
• 2003:
– Is there a natural limit beyond which our
nature is clearly defiled by change? Surely
not. It is the essence of humanness to try to
improve the world and oneself.
• Is this a rhetorical question?
• Surely there is a natural limit.
Tampering with Human Nature
• Francis Fukiyama (Our Posthuman
Future):
– An evolutionist, and basically optimistic about
biotechnology.
– But deeply concerned about a possible loss of
human nature and human dignity
– “Denial of the concept of human dignity . . .
leads us down a very perilous path”
Tampering with Human Nature
(continued)
• Mortimer Adler:
– Denying human nature was one of the great
“philosophical mistakes” of the 20th Century
– Some reality to the concept of a human
nature for otherwise humans would not be
distinguishable from other animals
Human Enhancement is A Sinful Goal
• It would recreate original sin:
– Tempts man to “be like God, knowing good
and evil” (Gen. 3:5)
– Sin of radical moral autonomy
– A slap in the face of our holy God:
• God said: “It is very good.”
• We say: “No, I can be better.”
Is There a “Bright Line?”
• Obvious extremes:
– Genetic engineering for height or eye color
– Designer skin tones
– Transhumanism and the goal of immortality
• Not so obvious:
– Difference between Alzheimer’s and normal loss of
memory/concentration with age
– Changes in socially disadvantageous traits:
• Baldness
• Mild obesity
• Many other examples
An Obvious Scriptural Limit:
• Rom. 1:21-25:
– For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God
or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and
their foolish heart was darkened.
– Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the
glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of
corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and
crawling creatures.
– Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to
impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.
– For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and
served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed
forever. Amen.
The Hubris of Genetic
Enhancement
• The healing/enhancement distinction is critical.
• The ‘perfecting of humanity’ argument leads to
two excesses:
– Cloning and ‘designer babies’
– Raw materials for stem-cell therapy
• J. Wesley Smith:
– As history repeatedly has demonstrated, once we
accept the pernicious premise that some people are
‘superior’ to others – the core principle of eugenic
thinking – we open the door to great evils.
A Godly Form of Enhancement
• 1Cor. 15:51-52:
– We will not all sleep, but we will all be
changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an
eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will
sound, and the dead will be raised
imperishable, and we will be changed.
• Let God do the enhancing!
Human Genetic Transformation:
What Are the Biblical Limits?
Dennis M. Sullivan, MD, MA (Ethics)
Professor of Biology
Director, Center for Bioethics
Cedarville University
Center Web site:
www.cedarville.edu/bioethics
E-mail: [email protected]