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In “Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Perfection” (2003), Leon Kass addresses bio-technology’s seductive promise to provide us blissful immortality through their forthcoming technological advances. Although meant primarily for therapeutic applications, these developments may be misused as well for unnecessary modifications of our bodies and minds, which could dehumanize us and diminish the fullness of our lives.
The Marvels of Bio-Technology. We already make therapeutic use of simpler forms of these technologies, as for example, mechanical organ replacements. However, certain human tendencies and market pressures will surely bring about their widespread non-therapeutic applications, the most likely among which being ones promoting bodily vitality and happiness of the soul.
The Problem of Terminology. To better initiate his investigation into these new techniques, Kass critiques the common distinction made between therapy, taken to mean the treatment of existing diseases, and enhancement, the alteration of a healthy body and mind’s normal functioning. The line dividing the two seems unclear, because there is no way to determine a fixed universal standard for health. The more important issue, rather, is the goodness or unworthiness of our uses of bio-technologies, a point that both this critique and three others fail to address:
Three Obvious Objections. 1) The first is the claim that these new technologies are unsafe; for, our body’s stability depends on a balance of organically interacting systems; and, modifications to one threaten the proper functioning of the others. Yet, this objection misses the larger question of whether or not these technologies are used for the right reasons.
2) The second common objection is that users of these technologies have an unfair advantage. However, their equitable distribution still would not remedy the fact that they also strip the meaning from our non-competitive human activities; for example, we would think less of someone’s love for us if it were drug-induced.
3) The third complaint is that these technologies will be used despotically to control subversives and succeeding generations. And, people will be compelled to use these technologies if merely to keep-pace with the others already benefiting from them. This pressure to conform would lead on the wider scale to the homogenization of a society that also has become too contented to strive for excellence. However, even without these consequences, we still would be disturbed by non-therapeutic uses bio-technologies. Although our repugnance may not qualify as sophisticated rational critique, it nonetheless alerts us to threats upon our human nature and dignity.
Kass will critique three features of self-modification technologies – their attitude of mastery and control, the unfitness of their means, and the unworthiness of their ends – by holding them to the standard of three human goods: humility about our powers, the meaningfulness of our natural human life-cycle, and the flourishing we obtain through our proper human activities.
The Attitude of Mastery. Some criticize the attitude of mastery for its hubris in playing God. Environmentalists, however, warn that such efforts for mastery disrupt the natural balance within and around us. For Kass, those who consider themselves masters of nature lack a consistent and worthy purpose for their mastery; without the goodness of their ends in mind, they are motivated by their transient impulses, and are thus instead mastered by their nature. Kass also offers Michael Sandel’s portrayal of our hubris as resulting from neglect of the world’s giftedness. Yet, among Kass’ objections is that we need to look beyond the giftedness of nature in general and attend specifically to the unique gifts of humanity; we must determine the traits responsible for our goodness and dignity before we may know the ends we should attain and the means appropriate for their achievement.
“Unnatural” Means. By swallowing or injecting agents modifying our bodies and minds, we sacrifice our own role as the agents of our self-improvement, and thus also the natural sense of fulfillment resulting when our active efforts serve as means bound-fast to their achieved ends, as when we overcome a fear by facing it directly. In contrast, by taking anti-anxiety medicines for the same purpose, we become passive recipients of their effects, and here the connection between the means and its ends bears no human significance. Certainly, the lifting of our mood brought about by a loved one’s arrival has a certain deep human meaningfulness not found when we swallow a pill to obtain the same effect. We achieve real happiness only when we ourselves are active agents involved in accomplishing ends appropriate to our human nature.
Dubious Ends. We would be doing ourselves a disservice, then, by using bio-technologies to keep our bodies perpetually young, because some goods result from our aging process. For example, growing older helps us deal with our impending deaths, because as our bodies decline, we become less attached to them. Also, we experience our life-spans as being made up of successive stages, each of which having its own meaning and purpose.
And the contentment that psycho-pharmaceutical medications provide is likewise not a worthy end, because we need negative emotions to contend with our troubles in a healthy way. The essence of human flourishing is not happiness obtained through drugs but rather through feeling good about ourselves, our accomplishments, and our non-competitive activities. Thus, for Kass, there is a connection between our human flourishing and our imperfect bodies & minds, because we need our limits to instill our aspirations and to provide meaning for the entire duration our lives.
Leon Kass explains that his article, “The Wisdom of Repugnance” (1997) is written during a critical time for bioethical policy, triggered by the announcement of Dolly, a cloned lamb.
Taking cloning seriously, then and now. Kass himself has been a vocal opponent of human cloning since it first came to public attention in 1966. Since then people have become familiar with the reproductive technologies developed in the meantime, and hence are now more open to the idea of cloning.
Our complacency about these technologies can be blamed partly on bio-ethicists who merely react to these advances rather than take a clear moral position in advance. Because many bio-ethicists advising policy must conform to the utilitarian ethics of their colleagues, they often end up defending bio-technologies rather than opposing them. Yet, the nature of humanity is at stake in these policy decisions, because the way we procreate, and thus the future of our species, might be significantly altered by these reproductive technologies.
The State of the Art. In cloning, Kass explains, a cell nucleus – that is removed from the tissue of a living donor – replaces an unfertilized egg nucleus. By this means, scientists might produce an unlimited set of clones for any one animal of some species.
The Wisdom of Repugnance. Even though proponents of cloning suggest many positive uses for it, most people are unsettled when considering them. And even if their repugnance is not yet a fully developed argument, it still can be trusted in these matters of morality, as is the case with our revulsion for incest and rape. We are repelled by such violations of our dearly-held values; and in this age when everything is permitted, our repugnance may be the only “voice” left to defend our human worth, meaning, and dignity.
These goods that our repugnance serves to protect are overlooked in the three conventional defenses of cloning: In the technological context, cloning is an extension of existing reproductive technologies, and it is morally neutral; there are only good and bad uses of it. For the libertarian, cloning frees us to have the child we want, and without the usual reproductive prerequisites, such as male genes. Meliorists believe that cloning will improve the human being and produce optimal babies. However, we sacrifice the wondrous mystery of reproduction when we look upon it so scientifically, and we lose its social dimension by emphasizing individual rights.
The Profundity of Sex. These approaches all miss the deeper anthropological dimensions unique to our natural mode of procreation. The offspring of sexual reproduction bear kinship to both parents all while being genetically unique; in fact, we obtain not merely our individual identities this way but also the relationships held between the many different sorts of family members. The asexual reproduction in cloning, however, does not create such family relationships as mother and daughter, and it threatens the individual identity of offspring.
Human beings and other advanced mammals could only have come about through sexual reproduction, which creates rich dimensions of interaction with the world and with other members of the species. In asexual reproduction, the organism perseveres by self-dividing into copies that remain alive; however, sexually-reproductive creatures are soon replaced by their progeny, and thus our procreation is tacitly connected with our deaths. And as consciously aware of our reproductive impulses, we may sublimate them, so to transform lust into love, and to obtain our drive to achieve higher human ends. Thus, sex’s importance to human nature runs so deep that we should object to cloning’s dehumanizing removal of it from procreation.
The Perversities of Cloning. More common objections to cloning focus on the ways it risks the health, status, and identity of the child. Cloning is an unethical experiment which may kill or deform the clone. Also we cannot obtain the child’s consent before it is cloned, and by making it the product of our designs, we have stripped it of the independence it would need to first be able to give such consent. As well, the clone will have identity confusions, for she will be the twin of her “father” or “mother.” We cannot know the psychic burden this evokes, especially if she feels compelled to live-up to their accomplishments. Humans need genetic distinctiveness from their parents in order to live worthy and dignified lives. And cloning could create confusions in family relations, for example, a clone might likewise desire her twin-“mother’s” husband, who is supposedly also her father. One’s clone is also one’s twin, which resembles an incestuous relation in which one is parent to one’s sibling. And, cloning is a manufacturing process that may lead to the commercialization of procreation and the commodification of reproductive cells and tissues.
Meeting Some Objections. Some defend cloning by evoking our “right to reproduce” by any available artificial means. However, it is not clear if we have the right to completely design our children. Kass would (reluctantly) allow for prenatal genetic therapies to treat children already conceived, but not to predetermine their genetic makeup. Producing perfect babies requires that human conception and gestation be submitted fully to laboratory procedures. And even though proponents want us to focus on such single cases as infertile couples, we will still be disturbed when considering the technology implemented on the wider scale for all such couples. Even if there is a continuum spanning between cloning and our current assisted reproduction techniques, Kass nonetheless draws the line with cloning, for all the reasons he has already offered.
Ban the Cloning of Humans. Hence, Kass advocates an international ban on human cloning. Research on embryonic human clones should also be banned altogether, but if it must be permitted, then at least placing an embryo into a uterus should be strictly prohibited. American naïve optimism believes that all technological progress should be embraced and that its unwanted ill effects can be resolved by further scientific advances. Yet, cloning could lead to irreversible changes in human nature, so we must prevent such problems rather than hope they may be later remedied. Kass urges us, then, to have the courage and foresight to refuse all human cloning technologies.
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