Law 3: A person's form, including their genome, embryo, or body cannot be subjected to non-therapeutic inheritable alteration or enhancement.
With the deciphering of the Human genome, biotechnology has enabled our species to change itself into something other . . . something more than homo-sapien. The philosophy of Transhumanism symbolizes their objective with the sign H+ meaning humanity enhanced. Not only can we enhance the species, but we can introduce these changes into germline reproduction so that the changes are passed on to succeeding generations. Bruce Sterling, American science fiction author and activist said, "Maybe we're about to radically change the operating system of the human condition. If so, then this would be a really good time to make backups of our civilization." Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe," said H. G. Wells. In 1896 he launched the era of the science fiction genre with the release of "The Island of Dr. Moreau." Readers were horrified that science might someday produce human-animal hybrids called chimeras. In 1896 it was safely science fiction, today it is just science.
"The relatively new field of bioethics runs on the motor of boundary-breaking science. As university scientists craft pig-people and “humanzees,” as pregnancy.com offers women the opportunity to terminate for sex selection “before they show,” some moral philosophers and theologians seek to call a halt by digging into the definitive markers of humanness.
There are thus various voices shouting Enough! in the United States. Drawing on different strands within Western philosophy and theology, American scholars who agree on little else find themselves eager to cooperate to delineate the boundaries of truly human life. McKibben’s eco-interrogation of medical technology Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age has become a key text for lefties suspicious about unfettered biotech. Warning in particular about human germline genetic intervention, McKibben suggests that post-genetic enhancement generations may be, in an important sense, no longer human; grandchildren will no longer be the same sort of creatures as their grandparents. In the face of this disconnect with our primordial genetic heritage, it is time to say Enough, for, McKibben concludes, “We’re [already] capable of the further transformations necessary to redeem the world.”1
Amy Laura Hall, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina.
