Abstract
Because of objections and worries related to genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the approval of GMO crops is a long and expensive process. Recently some researchers argued that a specific form of genetic modification, cisgenesis, would be safer and ethically more acceptable and therefore require a less stringent assessment. In this paper cisgenesis, as defined in recent literature, is ethically evaluated. After some general remarks on ethics in science and technology, two different basic attitudes towards reality are sketched as an evaluative framework for interventions in nature. Combined with general characteristics of biotechnology in agriculture and a view of the role of genetic information in organisms, that framework helps to formulate an ethical distinction between and evaluation of cisgenesis and transgenesis. It is argued that there is a significant ethical difference between transgenesis and cisgenesis, but that nevertheless any form of genetic modification should be integrated in a broader normative understanding of agriculture in order to work towards a more sustainable agriculture.
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Notes
Against this background the European Union has established a Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, Nice, 7 December 2000 (European Union 2000).
Changes over time in the genetic diversity of four major European crops—a report from the Gediflux Framework 5 project; http://www.cababstractsplus.org/google/abstract.asp?AcNo=20043169822. An important question here is whether the genetic diversity had not decreased significantly in the time before the investigated period.
In addition to food, agriculture produces fibre (e.g., cotton, hemp) mainly to provide for another basic need of people, clothing. More recently agricultural production is used to produce biofuels. One of the issues in that context is precisely to what extent that replaces food production leading to higher food prices and more hunger of poor people. This is not the place to explore this further.
This distinction was originally introduced in a general way in a Dutch book containing an ethical and political evaluation of biotechnology (Jochemsen 2000: 88). Later on it was defined more precisely and developed in the context of the practice of genetic modification by Schouten, Jacobsen and others.
Both terms refer to a structuring principle. The principle that ensures that, for example, an acorn becomes an oak tree and not, say, a lime tree, is referred to in the philosophy of foundational laws as the structuring principle of a particular individual organism (e.g., an acorn). The structuring principle assumes the character of a structural law for reality, like physical laws of nature.
By the notion of ‘Inwardness’ Portmann meant to say that living organisms are always centres of activity, autonomously acting beings that relate actively to their environment as a centre of activity that characterizes all living organisms.
The EU directive on the deliberate introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into the environment (Directive 90/220) is the first piece of legislation to implement the care principle subsequently adopted in international agreements on the greenhouse effect.
The Montreal conference of 29 January 2000 accepted the interpretation of the biosafety protocol which is part of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, whereby countries can reject genetically manipulated crops and their products out of concern for the biosafety of nature and their indigenous agriculture (Masood 2000).
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Acknowledgements
I thank Dr. H.J. Schouten and the anonymous referees for the critical comments on an earlier version of this manuscript and Mr. J. Visser for the help in collecting relevant literature.
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Jochemsen, H. An Ethical Assessment of Cisgenesis in Breeding Late Blight Resistant Potato. Potato Res. 51, 59–73 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11540-008-9090-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11540-008-9090-5