Abstract
Drawing upon a concept of ‘critical bioethics’ [7] this paper takes a species-broad approach to the social and ethical aspects of enhancement. Critical Bioethics aims to foreground interdisciplinarity, socio-political dimensions, as well as reflexivity to what becomes bioethical subject matter. This paper focuses upon the latter component and uses the example of animal enhancement as a way to think about both enhancement generally, and bioethics. It constructs several arguments for including animal enhancement as a part of enhancement debates, and considers some connections between human and animal enhancement. The paper concludes in a plea for an ‘enhancement’ to our critical abilities to examine some of the underlying social, moral and ethical assumptions bound up in varied anticipated ‘enhanced’ futures.
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Notes
There is a mistake in this type of dichotomous comparison in that it assumes that medical or genetic enhancements would be somehow asocial, and so neglects the social construction of such technologies at present or in the future.
The phrase ‘philosophical bioethics’ is used by Hedgecoe. I would prefer to avoid it since it carries a risk of collapsing differences between all varieties of bioethics which might see themselves as philosophical.
Thanks to Adam Hedgecoe for his framing of the difference between our two concepts of ‘critical bioethics’ (personal communication, March 2005).
The addition of the word ‘critical’ has recently prefixed other disciplines. What Fox and Prilleltensky say of their ‘critical psychology’ also, I would suggest, holds true for my construction of critical bioethics, “Psychology is not, and cannot be, a neutral endeavour conducted by scientists and practitioners detached from social and political circumstances. It is a human and social endeavour. Psychologists live in specific social contexts. They are influenced by differing interests and complex power dynamics” Fox and Prilleltensky [8]. It is not heavily informed by the writers associated with critical theory. However it does share with them a critical reflection to epistemologies of rationality but in the case of bioethics more of a focus on the valorisation of rationality as dispassionate, masculine and exclusionary of nature.
As I have argued such a narrowing is in contradistinction to the wider view of bioethics, as envisaged by VR Potter who originally coined the term ‘bioethics’ in the early 1970s. See Twine [7].
This was the XXIInd EACME (European Association of Centres of Medical Ethics) Conference and (jointly) the XIXth European Conference on Philosophy of Medicine and Health Care, Barcelona, Spain, August 24th–27th 2005. An earlier version of this paper was presented at this conference.
Philosopher Val Plumwood employs the concept of ‘backgrounding’ to refer to the denial of the material contribution of devalued identities and is applicable historically and contemporaneously in terms of the backgrounding of nature, women, animals, the colonised, and so on. See Plumwood [10]. In this vein, I would argue that plant/crop enhancement should also be part of the broader debate.
It should be pointed out that this decision was also related to concerns over the potential impact upon the horse racing industry and not merely because of the relatively high moral value attributed to horses in British cultural life.
Harris [12] is a good location for some interesting arguments for Human Reproductive Cloning.
Genetics, Savings and Clone was the best known company producing cloned companion animals. A clone of your cat was available for $32,000 before the company folded in 2007.
Viagen, the livestock cloning company, recently denied that there were any issues over morbidity and premature mortality in animal cloning (at BIO 2006, Chicago). It is worth noting the promissory pressures biotech companies are under when it comes to securing investment and articulating their vision.
There is a repeated trend in both scientific and media representations of animal modifications to use humour inspiring language. I have not found any research on these phenomena as yet but would assume the psychological theory of cognitive dissonance to be cited as part of any future explanation.
See Hutson [17], available online http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8337.html (last accessed 17th October 2007).
The examples I give I have heard put forward at conferences and workshops.
There is a realisation of this context in a recent future scoping document written by leading European farm animal scientists: FABRE [19]. The document however argues that research on this area should continue in order to maintain the European research base and future competitiveness. See http://www.fabretp.org (accessed 17th October 2007).
That one might neatly direct an enhancement toward a body rather than environment seems stuck within an atomistic view that dis-embeds bodies from their socio-natural environments. Knowledge of phenomena such as epigenetics only renders this assumption less credible.
I base this assertion on my own empirical research currently underway which involves talking to UK animal scientists about the ethical and social aspects of their work. The most important point in this respect is to not homogenise and stereotype animal scientists.
See, for example, the current controversy in the US regarding pesticide testing on vulnerable groups, [22] http://www.organicconsumers.org/school/loophole091605.cfm (accessed 17th October 2007).
Convergence is something of a buzzword at the moment in the especially transhumanist imaginary where so-called NBIC convergence—hat between nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science—is assumed to lead to the enhancement of the human (see [23]). It is too early to say whether or what the relation might be between NBIC convergence and the convergence between medicine and agriculture I discuss here. But I would argue that this latter convergence is one being promoted in the main by biotechnology and genomics at this point in time.
See [26], http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4441564.stm (accessed 17th October 2007).
Professor Daniel Pomp of the University of North Carolina, part of the research team, spoke in 2005 at the British Society for Animal Science Conference (April, York) and the Ark Genomics European Farm Animal Functional Genomics Conference (September, Edinburgh) to agricultural animal science audiences about the agricultural applications of their work.
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Acknowledgements
The support of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is gratefully acknowledged. The work was part of the programme of the ESRC Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics (CESAGen).
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Twine, R. Thinking across species—a critical bioethics approach to enhancement. Theor Med Bioeth 28, 509–523 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-007-9057-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-007-9057-6