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Are Made To Be Broken |
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Even if we set some rules,
will others abide by them?
By CHUCK McFADDEN
of TheColumnists.com
In its simplest terms, the dilemma is this:
In the United States, Western Europe and in some other developed
societies, advances in biological research will cause ethicists
and politicians to tortuously devise ethical frameworks to deal
with questions we have never had to think about before. Remember
President Bush’s struggle with stem-cell research back in
2001? That’s just one example.
But the answers we will so agonizingly arrive at over the next
10, 20 or 50 years will be ignored by some--perhaps many--nations
and biological researchers. They will produce results that defy
Western ethical values.
Knowledge cannot be contained. Like Coca-Cola, it moves across
national boundaries as if they were not there. “Forbidden”
research and development--reproductive cloning, for example--will
go on, if not secretly in the United States, elsewhere. So, no
matter how much we agonize and argue, it doesn’t much matter
what we decide.
Others will decide differently. They eventually will have the
technical ability to implement what we will regard as their wrongheaded
or dangerous decisions.
The science is stunning. We are working on the potential for
rejuvenating aging organs through stem-cell manipulation, cloning
human beings, ending some dreadful diseases and the possibility
of Methuselah-like lifetimes. They are achievable in theory and
in some cases researchers are moving beyond theory to experiment.
They are seeking effective ways to interfere with the mechanism
that causes the cells in our bodies to age and die.
They are also at work on ways of inducing undifferentiated stem
cells to develop into various types of human tissue--lungs, heart,
blood vessels.
It seems likely that at some point in the future, we will be
able to introduce such cells into the human body where needed,
nudge them into developing the way we want them to, and keep
organs functioning over much longer periods of time, if not indefinitely.
During the first human use of the technique, or even the first
testing, who would be the first to have organs made youthful
and functioning again? Christopher Reeve? The pope? The president?
The researchers themselves? Bill Gates?
Who should be entitled to a greatly lengthened lifetime, if indeed
such manipulations are ready for clinical trials 50 years hence?
The best scientists, inventors, composers and authors? Who are
they? How would such determinations be made? By a committee?
By how well one’s physician networks? By a national protocol
established by Congress?
We’ll eventually come up with answers--for us. But when
President Bush announced those limitations on federal funding
for stem-cell research back in 2001, some researchers moved to
England and are now out of reach of US limits. Scientists eager
to continue stem-cell research without being saddled with a US
president’s notions about morality are but one relatively
mild example of how science will go forward around the world,
regardless of what we think.
And it is unlikely that the ability to perform such sophisticated
biological manipulation, when it inevitably arrives in the hands
of nations such as Iraq, will first be used to produce superpoets.
What of a decision made somewhere to clone a few hundred thousand
high-endurance, very strong, pain-resistant soldiers?
Will we decide at some point that Western ethics, or even survival.
demand engagement in a worldwide biotechnology arms race, never
mind earlier ethical precepts?
It may be that the United Nations would have a role. It already
brings together researchers from around the world on projects
such as increasing agricultural production through improved plants.
Perhaps it could play a role in providing a rational, humane
and global policy on biotechnological research and manipulation.
But just as in nuclear proliferation, it would take but one rogue
nation--Iraq and North Korea are currently the two most obvious
nominees--to upset any international policy construct in the
name of its own national priorities.
Some may take comfort from the fact that even though there has
been nuclear proliferation ever since the Soviets detonated their
atomic bomb in 1949, no nation or group has detonated a nuclear
device as an act of war in the past 57 years. But that does not
guarantee a similar record on biotechnology, which is a good
deal quieter.
Biological research must and will continue, despite the questions.
We are not even sure at this point what all the questions may
be. But it is not too soon to begin thinking about globally enforceable
answers.
©2003 by Charles M.
McFadden. The McFadden caricature is © 2001 by Jim Hummel.
The cartoons are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco
Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
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