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Dis/integrating animals: ethical dimensions of the genetic engineering of animals for human consumption

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Abstract

Research at the intersections of feminism, biology and philosophy provides dynamic starting grounds for this discussion of genetic technologies and animals. With a focus on animal bodies, I will examine moral implications of the genetic engineering of “domesticated” animals—primarily pigs and chickens—for the purposes of human consumption. Concepts of natural and artificial, contamination and purity, integrity and fragmentation and mind and body will feature in the discussion. In this respect, Margaret Atwood’s novel, Oryx and Crake, serves as a cogent medium for exploring these highly contentious practices and ideas as it provides hypothetical narratives of possibility. Moreover, it is used to highlight contemporary hegemonic assumptions and values in ways that make them visible. Particular attention is paid to issues of growing human organs in pigs for xenotransplantation (resulting, for Atwood, in “pigoons”) and the ultimate end of the intensive factory farming of chickens through the genetic engineering of ‘mindless’ chicken tumours (or, as Atwood calls them, “ChickieNobs”). Integral to these philosophical considerations is the provocative question of the genetic modification of animal bodies as a means to end the suffering of domestic food animals. The ultimate implications of this question include an ongoing sensory and moral deprivation of human experience, potentially resulting in a future mechanomophosis, the extreme manifestation of an existing mechanomorphism.

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Notes

  1. Quoted from an essay by Margaret Atwood about the writing process of the book on the Oryx and Crake website at http://www.randomhouse.com/features/atwood/essay.html

  2. For an accessible scientific explanation of genetic engineering and the processes of producing transgenic organisms, please see Susan Aldridge’s (1996). The Thread of Life: The Story of Genes and Genetic Engineering. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

  3. In her foundation course on Environment and Culture: Nature, Technology and Society, Leesa Fawcett, an associate professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, has lectured extensively on complex social and biological issues raised by genetic technologies, including: the dangers of genetic discrimination and the oppression of differently abled people arising from ‘designer babies’; the diverse cultural and religious attitudes towards xenotransplantation; and, the implications of phenomena such as zoonoses (transfer of disease across species) which challenge ‘pure’ boundaries assumed by hierarchical dualisms and their corresponding ethical perspectives, like anthropocentrism.

  4. For cogent explanations of the patriarchal (male hierarchy) basis of modern, Western sciences, please see Val Plumwood’s (1993) Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. Routledge, London and her Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason, Routledge, London (Val Plumwood 2002); also see Donna Haraway’s (1989) Primate Visions. Routledge, London.

  5. For a thorough argument against the use of animals in experimentation and in favour of animal rights using dominant Western philosophical perspectives, such as utilitarianism and deontological ethics, see Raymond Wacks’ ‘Sacrificed for Science: Are Animal Experiments Morally Defensible?’, in Becker and Buchanan (eds) (1996) Changing Nature’s Course: The Ethical Challenge of Biotechnology. Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong.

  6. “Most advisory reports in the UK and the European Union on the ‘ethical implications’ of biotechnology have thus taken the utilitarian view that there is nothing inherently wrong with the genetic manipulation of animals, but scientists involved in such practices must demonstrate that there are tangible human benefits to be gained from their work” (Bowring 2003, p 127).

  7. Michael Fox provides a dramatic view of this when he states: “Genetic engineering makes it possible to breach the genetic boundaries that normally separate the genetic material of totally unrelated species. This means that the telos, or inherent nature, of animals can be so drastically modified (for example by inserting elephant growth hormone genes into cattle) as to radically change the entire direction of evolution, and primarily towards human ends at that” (1990, p 32).

  8. In a paper she recently presented at the American Association of Geographers conference, Emma Roe, of Cardiff University, explores similar notions of integrity and cow flesh in the beef industry stating that: initially, the living cow has integrity, wholeness; then, it is dis-integrated through the butchering process into fleshy parts; and, finally, the flesh is virtually re-integrated through the marketing of the meat product, through the product history information and common image of a cow on the package label (“Growing beef: The ‘branded’ non-human(s) and the retail distribution of the bovine body part(s)”, presented at the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Conference in Denver, Colorado, 5–9 April 2005).

  9. In support of this claim, Holland cites Charles Darwin’s work regarding “naturally occurring” animals and those that have been modified through selective breeding, stressing that “nearly all of the distinctions which Darwin observes between natural and artificial forms of life...reduce to a difference of degree rather than of kind” (1990, p 169).

  10. Employing cannibalism as a theme, Stuart Newman (1995) discusses the historical and particularly religious bases of boundaries between species in Carnal Boundaries: The Commingling of Flesh in Theory and Practice, in Birke and Hubbard (eds) (1995) Reinventing Biology: Respect for Life and the Creation of Knowledge. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis.

  11. Take OncoMouse for example. Designed to develop various forms of cancer under the total control of the genetic technician, OncoMouse is the “first patented animal in the world” (Haraway 1997, p 79). According to an advertisement by Du Pont, the corporation which actually holds the patent, “Each OncoMouse carries the ras oncogene in all germ and somatic cells. This transgenic model, available commercially for the first time, predictably undergoes carcinogenesis” (Haraway 1997, p 81). So named, OncoMouse is an artefact, a trade-marked commodity, and no longer considered a mouse.

  12. The pigs are named after the town of Beltsville in Maryland, USA, where they were ‘produced’ in a US Department of Agriculture laboratory. The failure was very widely publicized and considered a “public relations disaster” for genetic engineering (Murphy 1990, p 15; for more information also see http://www.bbc.co. uk/science/genes/gene_safari/wild_west/bigger_and_better.shtml).

  13. It is worth noting here that genetic scientists are also developing a strategy for “deleting the porcine gene that codes for an enzyme (called α-1,3-galactosyltransferase) which makes the sugar that, recognized as a foreign antigen by the primate immune system, causes hyperacute rejection in humans” (Bowring 2003, p 121).

  14. Beyond such aesthetic revulsion, there is a definite and well-grounded fear that disease and its vectors will also transgress the species barrier in dangerous and unpredictable ways. Bowring warns of the “widespread concerns amongst ecologists and medical researchers that xenotransplantation will allow new and unknown microorganisms, harmless to their natural hosts, to cross the species barrier, causing infectious disease, spreading cancer-causing retroviruses, and potentially creating mutant viruses as deadly as HIV, Ebola, or BSE. Pigs are already known to harbour endogenous retroviruses which have been found to infect human cells in vitro” (2003, pp 303–304). Bowring further notes that “the Ebola and Marburg monkey viruses have caused large disease outbreaks in humans, and HIV is widely believed to have derived from a monkey retrovirus, and millions of people in the 1950s were infected with the non-virulent monkey virus SV40 after vaccines were contaminated by the monkey kidney cells in which they were produced” (2003, pp 303–304).

  15. The practical extensions of such human ideals into animal breeding is cited by Lynda Birke: “Even the breeding of pet animals have moved from Victorian ‘fancies’ into the technological society of the twentieth century. At the time of writing, a doggie sperm bank had recently started in California. Reminiscent of the human sperm bank set up in the 1970s to provide sperm from men with high IQs, the canine version (the Canine Cryobank and Animal Fertility Clinic) offers sperm from ‘blue blood dogs and cats’ (such as particular sled dogs) and abortions offered (at $350 each) in the event of fertilization from ‘substandard sperm’ (1994).

  16. In this respect, Bernard Rollin points out the similar warning made by Michael Crichton in his speculative/science fiction novel Jurassic Park: “Crichton’s fictional vehicle for making his point is the prospect of re-creating dinosaurs by genetic engineering for a dinosaur wildlife park. Although scientists build into both the animals and the park various clever mechanisms to prevent the animals from reproducing or ever leaving the confines of the preserve, things do not go as planned. The conceptual point underlying Crichton’s story is drawn from the relatively new branch of mathematics known as chaos theory, which postulates that the sorts of intrinsically predictable systems beloved by Newtonians, determinists and introductory philosophy professors... are few and far between, and, in any case, are essentially irrelevant to complex new technologies like genetic engineering” (1995, p 72). The bottom line is that biological systems are too complex and chaotic to make thorough predictions about, something unanticipated can and likely will occur.

  17. Arguing against biological determinism, both Birke (1994, p 84) and Haraway (2004, p 65) refer to Simone de Beauvoir’s well-known assertion that ‘women are made, not born,’ an assertion often repeated by feminists in opposition to the biological determinism of gender.

  18. Wheale and McNally (1990) devote an entire section to the discussion of ‘Genetically Engineered Bovine Somatotropin (BST)’, with essay contributions from four additional authors in their book The Bio-Revolution: Cornucopia or Pandora’s Box? Pluto Press, London. Also see my discussion of the ethical and practical implications of the cow as milk machine metaphor in Warkentin (2002). It is not just what you say, but how you say it: an exploration of the moral dimensions of metaphor and the phenomenology of narrative, Canadian Journal of Environmental Education 7:241–255.

  19. Also see Rollin (1998). On telos and genetic engineering. In: Holland and Johnson (eds) Animal Biotechnology and Ethics. Chapman and Hall, London.

  20. The reference to Ridley that Roberts makes in this quotation is curiously impossible to find. All of my attempts so far have been unsuccessful, but I encourage anyone interested to try (Ridley 1988).

  21. Unless, of course, we accept the answer of “42”, given in Douglas Adams’ very popular work of science fiction, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

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Acknowledgements

I thank Leesa Fawcett for her boundless intellectual, editorial, and personal generosity toward revising this paper and well beyond. I thank Carol Gigliotti for her tireless efforts and good humour in putting together this special issue.

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  1. Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, 109 HNES, 4700 Keele St, Toronto, Canada, M3J 1P3

    Traci Warkentin

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Warkentin, T. Dis/integrating animals: ethical dimensions of the genetic engineering of animals for human consumption. AI & Soc 20, 82–102 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-005-0009-2

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