Gordon Graham is a philosopher at
the University of Aberdeen
with a wide range of interests, including aesthetics, Christian ethics, and the
philosophy of history. This cogent little book exemplifies his wide-ranging
intellect by looking at current controversies over genetic technologies in the
broader context of genetic and evolutionary science and the role of technology
in post-Enlightenment society. The book is targeted to a broad audience, who I
think will find it appealing. Furthermore, it presents a couple of arguments
that deserve wider appreciation in the general public. Like many books
interested in the big picture, however, its presentation of the details is
often inaccurate, misleading, or oversimplified.

The public has been presented
recently with a barrage of new medical technologies, all involving genetics or
reproduction in some vaguely troubling way. The headlines are full of talk of
stem cell research, cloning, gene therapy, and genetic engineering. Often these
technologies blur into each other into a vision of a coming brave, but somewhat
vague, new world. Graham does not attempt to survey this confluence of
technologies. Instead he focuses on one central concept in this confluence, the
gene, and attempts to put it in its proper historical and social context. To
some extent, his target is simply genetic reductionism, the false belief that
genes completely determine a person’s fate. This is an important target, but
one that has already been thoroughly discussed by biologists and philosophers
like Richard Lewinton, Ruth Hubbard, and Evelyn Fox
Keller. Graham’s work is broader than any of these thinkers. He begins by
discussing the role of science in modern society, contemplating the images of
Einstein and Frankenstein, and reminding us that technology cannot simply be
viewed as applied modern science. His second chapter discusses genetic
explanation and attempts to refute the reductionist
ideas he sees in Richard Dawkins and his allies. Dawkins’s program, as Graham
sees it, is a totalizing Darwinism, which assumes that all traits, including
human mental traits, admit of evolutionary explanation and hence are under
genetic control. (This is a huge oversimplification of Dawkins, but not perhaps
of some of his followers.) Graham’s goal in challenging Dawkins is not just to
deflate some of the hype around genes and genetic technology. He wants to
restrict the authority of science to provide some rhetorical space for his
ethical ideas.

Once Graham has done this, he
outlines his stance on particular genetic technologies. He turns out to be
surprisingly tolerant, if somewhat vague. He sees no threat in giving insurance
companies access to genetic information, for instance. This will not create an
under class of the genetically uninsurable in part because "if there is no
risk to the insured, there in no motivation to take out insurance policies,
with the result that there is no profit in selling insurance of this sort"
(107). When it comes to widespread genetic screening, he writes "the real
issues lie with concrete proposals in concrete circumstances and the proper
examination of these issues will have to deal with matters of fact and
probability that cannot be ascertained in the abstract" (102-103).

The major test for any work of
popular philosophy is not how reviewers with Ph.D.s receive it, but whether a
lay audience finds it accessible and informative. While I have not conducted
any kind of broad marketing survey, I can report the reactions of a few lay
people. Last semester I assigned this book to my 1000 (introductory) level
medical ethics class at a large state university in the southern U.S.
After we had finished reading the book, I asked my students to write short
reviews of it. I told them that I would use their reviews as material in my own
review, and suggested a few questions they should address. Although the results
of this assignment can hardly be considered a formal survey, they do indicate that
students were satisfied with the book. Of the 47 students responding, 81% said
they learned from the book. (They said things like, "I find that I did
leave with more knowledge than I came in with.") Fifty-nine percent said
the book presented the background for genetic technologies clearly. ("This
is a very easy reading book.") Interestingly, though, the students who
specifically mentioned the writing, as opposed to the general
presentation of the facts, have a different view. The majority of them (52%) found
the book unclear. ("Graham writes in a manner that becomes somewhat boring
and hard to follow after a little while.") On the whole, however, I think
the book can reach a popular audience.

I’m glad a popular audience can
appreciate this book, because it presents at least two ideas that should be
heard by a popular audience. The first is Graham’s account of what it means to "play
God." Nearly any new technology, especially medical technologies, can be
challenged by saying it amounts to "playing God." This charge is even
leveled by people who aren’t otherwise particularly religious. The problem is
that no one can figure out what this accusation really means, unless it is
simply a general admonition against hubris. Graham examines several possible
interpretations, both religious and secular, and then offers his own reading. "Playing
God," according to Graham, happens when one judges from an outside
perspective that someone’s life is not worth living. For instance, many
fertility clinics engage in a practice called preimplantation genetic diagnosis
(PGD), in which a large number of embryos are fertilized in vitro, and only
those with desirable genetic characteristics are implanted. This could be
viewed as playing God by Graham’s definition: if one discards embryos that
carry the genes for Huntington‘s,
for instance, one is saying from an outside perspective that the life of
someone with Huntington‘s would not
be worth living. This is a useful understanding of playing God, because it
captures a lot of the intuitions surrounding playing God, leads to clear
judgments in particular circumstances, and can be used in a secular context. My
students certainly found it appealing: without prompting, 40% of them mentioned
Graham’s definition of playing God as a highlight of the book. Only one student
disliked the definition.

The other idea that I think
deserves a broader hearing is an argument against granting an unimplanted human embryo sitting in a Petrie dish
significant moral status. The argument is not original to Graham, but he does
give it more of the publicity it deserves. Essentially what the argument says
is that one of the most popular reasons for granting moral status to unborn
fetuses doesn’t protect unimplanted embryos. By this
argument, the magic line in the development of a human between creatures with
moral status and creatures without is not conception, but implantation. There
are two major reasons for granting a fetus the same moral status we grant
persons like your or me. The first, embraced by the Catholic Church in the
papal encyclical Evangelium Vitae, is
based on what the fetus actually is right now: a living member of the human
species. The second argument, which is more often heard from Protestants, is
based not on what the fetus is, but what it could be: an adult with all the
properties of adults we find morally significant.  For the second argument, what matters about
the fetus is not its current state, but its potential.
The potentiality account has its appeal–the contrasting argument based on species
membership looks a lot like granting moral status on the basis of race or
nationality–but it quickly leads to some tricky metaphysics. The problem is
that the fetus not only needs to have the potential to become an adult, it must
have the potential to become an adult who is the same person as the fetus. The
fetus must possess what Jim Stone, a supporter of the potentiality account of
moral status, calls "strong potentiality," the potential to change
without loosing fundamental identity.

Now it is possible to develop a
consistent account of personal identity that grants moral status to the fetus,
but it breaks down when it comes to embryos that have not implanted in the side
of a woman’s uterus, an event that takes place 5 to 14 days after conception.
Prior to implantation, the embryo is not fully individuated: it can split into
twins, and twins can merge into a single individual. In fact, every cell of the
very early embryo is totipotent: each can on its own
become an adult human being. This means that an eight cell embryo is not a
potential adult–it is eight potential adults. This alone makes the moral
status issue difficult. How can we grant moral status to all eight of these
potential adults? Are we obligated to split them all off to give each adult a
chance to come into being? What happens when the cells we split off divide? The
issue becomes worse when we think about personal identity. If an early embryo
splits into two embryos, and twins are born, are either of these twin babies
organisms that once were the embryo? If one of the twins is the same individual
as the embryo, then the other must be as well. But that means that the twins
are the same individual, and that makes no sense. The only alternative is to
say that strong potentiality, the kind of potentiality that might bring moral status, begins at implantation, not conception.

I don’t think this argument about
strong potentiality will ever catch on. Pro-life groups have so much political
and emotional capital invested in the conception line that moving it forward
even a few days is unthinkable. Pro-choice groups, on the other hand, have no
desire to acknowledge any moral status in the embryo prior to viability, if not
birth itself, so they have little desire to press the argument on the pro-life
camp. It is nearly inconceivable that a piece of tricky metaphysics could ever
sway public opinion on an issue so bound up in religion, the place of women in
society, and sex. Nevertheless, Graham spends time pushing this argument, and
kudos to him for trying.

Graham’s stance on unimplanted embryos matches law in the UK,
which allows experimentation with human embryos prior to the fourteenth day of
development. In this, and many other ways, Graham’s perspective is distinctly
European. One of the things that seemed to perplex my students was the fact
that Graham even bothered to talk about the genetic engineering of food. Having
not experienced firsthand the effects of bovine spongiform encephalopathy and
Foot and Mouth disease, few are sensitized to dangers to the food supply. In
fact, they don’t seem to think that the genetic engineering of nonhumans
belongs to the same category as the genetic engineering of humans. The
difference in attitude between Graham and my students is broader than that,
though. Graham assumes that the zeitgeist is built around ever increasing
mechanization and dominance of a reductionist
scientific worldview. His chief goal is to provide some sort of bulwark against
this encroaching scientism–if not a religious bulwark, at least a humanist
one. But the zeitgeist here in America
is hardly one of reductionist scientism. According to
the Gallup organization 41% of
Americans describe themselves as "born again" Christians. Sixty-eight
percent of Americans believe in the devil. (Here in the South that number goes
up to 79%). According to a Newsweek poll, 40% believe that the world
will end in a battle between Jesus and the Antichrist at a place called
Armageddon. By contrast, according to Gallup,
only about half of Americans believe in evolution. In a world focused on sin
and salvation, there is little room for the idea that humans are survival
machines for genes to get a foothold. Graham was simply talking right past a
number of my students.

The major problem with Graham’s
book, and the thing that keeps me from recommending it wholeheartedly, is his
poor grasp of the details of genetic and evolutionary science. The book
contains one major gaffe. One page 126 he refers to the contrast between "germ
line" and "stem cell" modifications, and claims that while the
former can be passed on to future generations, the latter cannot. The
distinction he is thinking of is not between germ cells and stem cells,
but germ cells and somatic cells. A germs cell is a sperm or egg or any
tissue that will create a sperm or egg. These cells form the continuity between
generations. A somatic cell is any non-germ cell. A somatic cell is different
than a stem cell. A stem cell is a cell that is endlessly self-renewing and
capable of giving rise to many other kinds of cells. Some stem cells, including
embryonic stem cells, are actually germ cells, because they can differentiate
into sperm or eggs. It may have been an editing error that replaced "somatic
cell" with "stem cell," but still, someone should have caught this.

There are other, more significant
problems, however. His account of genetic screening does not clearly
distinguish between genetic screening and genetic alternation. He begins his
section on genetic screening by describing an example of genetic alteration. He
then defines genetic screening as the testing of an individual’s genes, and
returns to talking about genetic alteration, as if the only purpose for testing
an individual’s genes is to alter them. There are also problems with his use of
nonscientific and nonmedical language. He identifies
creationism with a particular subset of creationist beliefs, the so-called "young
Earth" creationists who believe that the Earth is only around 10,000 years
old. This is misleading, at least from a historical perspective. According to
historian Ron Numbers, until the early 1960s, the only creationists who denied
the true age of the Earth were confined to the Seventh day Adventist movement.
Furthermore, the current leaders of the creationist movement–Philip Johnson,
Bill Dembski, Michael Behe,
etc.–all accept the age of the Earth. Now going by the label "intelligent
design," their program only asserts that some supernatural force must have
had a hand in shaping the human species. This belief is still unscientific and
unfounded, but one should know the content of beliefs one is denying.

Graham’s odd treatment of
creationism parallels an odd treatment of Darwinism. Although he criticizes the
totalizing Darwinism associated with Richard Dawkins, he seems unaware of the
alternative visions of Darwinism associated with Stephen J. Gould, Niles
Eldridge, and others. Instead, his example of an alternative to Dawkins is the
creationist Michael Behe. Behe
is not presented as a creationist, on the grounds that he is not a young Earth
creationist. Instead Graham portrays Behe as the main
alternative to Dawkins’ vision of Darwinism, although Graham does admit that Behe "overstates his case" (65). In general,
there is something odd about spending a chapter criticizing one of our era’s
most eminent Darwinians (Dawkins), while barely mentioning his equally eminent
rival (Gould).

I will probably assign portions of
this book again, specifically the chapter on playing God. I won’t assign the
whole thing, however, largely because of the lack of clear and accurate detail.
Similarly, I cautiously recommend this book to lay readers, largely on the
strength of the chapter on playing God. On the whole, Genes: A Philosophical Inquiry is a useful addition to the
ever-growing debate over the meaning of the human genome.

© 2003 Rob Loftis

Rob Loftis,
Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, Auburn University

Categories: Genetics, Philosophical