4. Biotechnology, Ethics, and the Arc of Life
Steve Talbott
You could wish that every
government-funded study were written in the lucid, informative style of the
latest report from the President's Council on Bioethics. Neither bureaucratic
nor academic in tone, the report (in its own words) "aspires to thoughtful
reflection" with the goal of stimulating broad public discussion. I can
hardly imagine any document that would fulfill these aims more worthily than
the one at hand.
The report is
entitled "Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness".
Calling this "arguably the most neglected topic in public bioethics",
the Council goes on to remark that "compared with more immediate topics in
bioethics, the questions raised by efforts to 'improve on human nature' seem
abstract, remote, and overly philosophical, unfit for public policy; indeed,
many bioethicists and intellectuals believe either that there is no such thing
as 'human nature' or that altering it is not ethically problematic".� But, in any case, there is no doubting the
seriousness of the decisions being forced upon us:
What's
at issue is not the crude old power to kill the creature made in God's image
but the attractive, science-based power to remake ourselves after images of our
own devising. As a result it gives unexpected practical urgency to ancient
philosophical questions:� What is a good
life?� What is a good community?
The Council, very
wisely, chose to approach bioethics first of all through this consideration of
human ends, rather than by trying to fix categorical labels to particular
technologies. I say "wisely" because ultimately our bioethical
choices must rest upon two foundations:�
first, a knowledge of our own character and potentials as human beings;
and second, a knowledge of the implications of each technology for the whole
person, the whole community, the whole biosphere.
If there is one
thing I would like to have seen emphasized more in the report, it is the degree
to which our own understanding of the various biotechnologies falls short of
this second requirement.� If we really
knew the full import of, say, a genetic alteration for the entire organism it
was applied to, the ethical questions would in many cases almost answer
themselves.� But not only do we lack
this understanding (and lack it even for some current treatments the Council
seems to find unproblematic); we have largely denied ourselves the very prerequisites
for any holistic grasp of effects upon organisms.� This grasp would have to be qualitative, since only qualities can
suffuse and characterize a whole.� But
our science has been less interested in understanding the qualities of things
than in ignoring them.
On the other
front, the Council's report is unsurpassed in its effort to clarify human ends
and desires.� For example, if there is
one thing nearly every biotech enthusiast seems to agree on, it is that pushing
back the threshold of death would be a good thing, properly desired by all sane
persons.� But, the report notes, this is
not at all so obvious when you begin to think about it.� Here an extended quotation seems justified:
What if
everybody lived life to the hilt, even as they approached an ever-receding age
of death in a body that looked and functioned -- let's not be too greedy --
like that of a thirty-year-old?� Would
it be good if each and all of us lived like light bulbs, burning as brightly
from beginning to end, then popping off without warning, leaving those around
us suddenly in the dark?� Or is it
perhaps better that there be a shape to life, everything in its due season, the
same also written, as it were, into the wrinkles of our bodies that live it --
provided, of course, that we do not suffer years of painful or degraded old age
and that we do not lose our wits?� What
would the relations between the generations be like if there never came a point
at which a son surpassed his father in strength or vigor?� What incentive would there be for the old to
make way for the young, if the old slowed down little and had no reason to
think of retiring -- if Michael could play basketball until he were not forty
but eighty?� Might not even a moderate
prolongation of lifespan with vigor lead to a prolongation in the young of
functional immaturity -- of the sort that has arguably already accompanied the
great increases in average life expectancy experienced in the past century?
Going
against both common intuition and native human desire, some commentators have
argued that living with full awareness and�
acceptance of our finitude may be the condition of many of the best
things in human life: engagement, seriousness, a taste for beauty, the
possibility of virtue, the ties born of procreation, the quest for meaning ....
The pursuit of perfect bodies and further life-extension might deflect us from
realizing more fully the aspirations to which our lives naturally point, from
living well rather than merely staying alive. A concern with one's own
improving agelessness might finally be incompatible with accepting the need for
procreation and human renewal.
Personally, I find
the hope for some kind of earthly immortality or radically extended life almost
incomprehensible. I must have at least as many fears of death and illness as
the next person, but those fears seem, at some profound place beneath their
terror, to be my friends -- my guides�
in moving toward a healthier self and a healthier future.
Carl Jung
describes the trajectory of the individual human life as a broad, sun-like
arc.� During the first half we are on
the ascendant, surveying an ever-widening field of action, coming into the full
strength of our powers, and finally reaching a peak of our life energies.� But at the noon zenith we begin a long
descent in which many of our values and interests go through a kind of reversal
-- need to do so -- in order to reckon with the decline in our physical
vigor.� So, the two oppositely directed
halves of a human life take on profoundly differing qualities.
But in one sense
the descent applies only to our "external", biological life. As our
bodies begin to slow down and show their frailty, our inner resourcefulness,
our wisdom, our capacity for selflessness may continue along a rising
trajectory -- may, in fact, be encouraged in this ascent precisely *because* of
our failing outer capacities.
The
nineteenth-century novelist, George MacDonald, said of flowers that they must
die so that we may learn to love their beauty rather than gather and horde
their bodies. A similar turning toward the inner and essential is necessary in
relation to our own physical capacities. They are never �merely� physical, but
always are expressing something inward, and that something is our life.�
To become obsessed during the second half of life with the physical
powers as such rather than the life behind them is to turn away from ourselves.
Bernard Lievegoed,
a student of organizational development and individual psychology, offered a
perspective on the broad course of human life that has been central to my own
self-understanding, and I would like to sketch and excerpt it briefly for
NetFuture [and Southern Cross Review] readers. The point in relation to the foregoing is that it is
meaningless to talk about biotechnology and ethics except in
the context of some such view of our lives. In many discussions of
biotechnology, the view being advanced remains unspoken and implicit --
understandably so, since it would appear unbearably crass if it were brought
out into the open.
In �The Developing
Organization�, Lievegoed reminds us that the small child's inner life is
heavily dependent on biology, so that, for example, the beginning of an illness
shows up in behavior and mood.� But as
the child grows older, its individuality progressively asserts itself, shaping
the psyche more and more independently of the body.
Lievegoed
describes the central periods on either side of the biological zenith as
follows.� (He was writing in 1969 and
from the standpoint of European organizational management.� His age markers, described in terms of male
employees, should be taken as a rough schema, not some sort of fixed law.)
�� Around the thirtieth year, sometimes
sooner, sometimes later, a change
�� takes place in a person's inner constellation.
Many experience this as
�� a definite farewell to youth. Emotional
instability decreases.� One is
�� no longer totally immersed in one's
situation but can stand back and
�� observe things objectively. The rational
element gains the upper hand.
�� One has some life-experience to look back
on and some things in the
�� future seem more concrete....
�� The period of the thirties is a time of
consolidation, in which one's
�� own career is made visible, matter-of-fact
judgments are formed, and
�� actions are carried out in a considered way
.... One feels at home in
�� the logical organization of scientific
management, but not in the
�� static tasks it demands....
�� At thirty-five a man has reached the middle
of his life.� His vital
�� forces still support him, his mind is fully
developed, and his will is
�� directed towards activities with concrete
content.� Problems at the
�� social level are solved in a rational and
organizational way.� Talking
�� to workers and also middle-management people
of this age, one notices
�� that they feel they have got life
"nicely sorted out".� They
know what
�� they can get out of it, and also
approximately their own level within
�� the hierarchy of the organization.� It is interesting that this does
�� not give rise to any problems.
�� Not until the following years do they
encounter, at first incidentally
�� and then more often, a �crisis of
values�.� "I have achieved what I
�� have been seeking for years.� What now?�
Another twenty-five years in
� �this
town, with this firm, till I retire?"�
A feeling of uncertainty
�� arises which did not exist a few years
earlier.� What once seemed of
�� value is now no longer attractive.� "There must be something more!"
�� Many seek it in external change -- of
house, work, or marriage; in the
�� old days people used to emigrate, to make a
new beginning far away, to
�� be twenty once again, to go through the
expansive period once again,
�� but this time in a different and better
way.
�� The crisis at the beginning of the forties,
drastic for some, creeping
for
others, is a crisis into which man is thrust so that he can once�� more take stock of his values. His
"objective drives" have brought him
�� to a certain point, but now they are
suddenly found to be empty and no
�� longer give real satisfaction. Where does
one go from here?� Where can
�� one find new values and new aims?
�� For the whole of the phase of expansion
(from the age of twenty to the
�� age of forty) man is carried by
experiencing his vital forces and
�� placing himself at the center of his
environment.� This does not mean
�� that he is unsocial, but the emphasis is on
the self: "I am
�� successful", �I am managing the department very
well", �I made a
�� success of that transaction".
�� The crisis now leads from I to we,
from subjective ego-centeredness
�� to objective social awareness.� At thirty-five a man will ask in a
�� certain situation:� "How can I solve this problem?"�
A man of fifty-
�� five, if he has weathered the crisis in the
right way, will ask in the
�� same situation, "Who is the most
suitable person to solve this
�� problem?" or even "How can I
delegate this task so that the person
�� concerned can learn something from solving
it?"
So, after the
crisis and reversal of direction at the zenith, we may rise to new levels of
creativity based on our experience and deepening insight. "A person like
this, at the height of his individual capacity, is able to conceptualize, to
guide policy, and .... to mature to real thoughtfulness and wisdom.� This level of creativity can last for a long
time before it finally succumbs to the onslaught of old age or actual physical
infirmity".
Of course, things
may not turn out this way.� It may
happen that one is unable to weather the crisis in the right way.� If, at mid-life, "he continues to drift
with the stream of vitality which has carried him so far, if he bases his
self-esteem on physical achievement or on his work routine", then his
inner life will follow the same descending curve as his body.� "He will have to apply more and more
effort just to remain at a constant level; he will find it more and more
difficult to take in new things, for as biological rigidity increases he will
also become
psychologically
more and more set in his ways".
This is why the
way we manage employees is so crucial. "The surest way of having
difficulties with men after they are forty is to give them work when they are
young which hardly takes any time to do, and to let them carry out this work
year after year".� Eventually such
a person becomes an obstinate dead weight in the organization, unable to adapt
to change:
�� Management faced with a problem of this
kind must in the first place
�� ask itself:� What mistakes have we
made so that he has become like
�� this?�
When he was between forty and fifty did we not profit from the
�� fact that his department ran on oiled
wheels?� Did we leave him there
�� because we could not be bothered to make a
change? Did we overlook the
�� symptom that no promising young men emerged
from his department ready
�� to move on to higher levels?
�� Many people, particularly those who are
very active and full of
�� vitality, are in danger of taking this
path, and yet they could be
�� released from this kind of cramp with the
help of a deep-reaching
�� conversation, a transfer, or a special
assignment.
Of course, many
have written similarly of basic life cycles in more recent decades. My reason
for going into all this here is not to quibble over the detailed accuracy of
Lievegoed's picture, but merely to point out how vacuous so much discussion of
a re-engineered humanity begins to appear as soon as you really look at the
human being.� The discussion typically
proceeds without first calling up any meaningful image of the person the
engineers are determined to re-make.�
The conversation takes place in a near-vacuum, with the central place
occupied by the technology rather than the person being subjected to it.� Particular technological tricks are
automatically translated as human "improvements" -- without any basis
having been given for distinguishing between improvement and degradation.
It hardly needs
adding that if a decisive turn in
human development occurs at mid-life, with the body beginning its descent and
the psyche (at least potentially) growing toward wisdom and selflessness as the
essential fulfillment of life's meaning -- and if, given the psychosomatic unity of the human being, these
complementary movements are inseparable � then a preoccupation with the
prolongation of our physical powers could prove to be just about the most
destructive thing imaginable.
But where, within
the biotechnology industry and the journalistic media are the relevant
questions even being asked?� We can be
thankful that the President's Council on Bioethics has stepped into this
void.� It is not a good sign, however,
that they had difficulty finding a publisher for this report, which, being
subtle and full of profound insight, was deemed to
have little sales
potential.
The
Council's report, Beyond Therapy,
considers four broad domains in which biotechnological applications are
currently employed or envisioned: the "improvement" of children, the
pursuit of superior performance (especially in athletics), the engineering of
ageless bodies, and the pursuit of
"happy souls". In each of these cases the report discusses the
current state of the technology, the scientific background, and the ethical
issues. You will find the report
(which, I understand, will be published
in book form) at www.bioethics.gov.
© 2003 Steve Talbott
This article was originally distributed as part of NetFuture:
http://www.netfuture.org. You may redistribute this article for noncommercial purposes, with this notice attached.
Steve Talbott, author of The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst currently edits
NetFuture, a freely distributed newsletter dealing with technology and human responsibility. NetFuture is published by The Nature Institute, 169 Route 21C, Ghent NY 12075 (tel: 518-672-0116. You can reach Steve at: [email protected]
