Leon Kass on Genetic Technologies
"The genetic genie, first unbottled to treat disease, will go its own way, whether we like it or not," warns Leon Kass in his 1999 article, "The Genetic Genie: A Danger to Humanity." Advancing genetic technology poses new ethical issues for our society and raises the question of how far we will let the innovations go. With the decoding of human genes with the Human Genome Project and enhancing of selective prenatal testing we have the potential to know our entire genetic profile and ultimately design our own offspring. As with any new technologies, people are frightened and confused about the possible outcomes of this research. One person with a particularly influential voice in setting limits on controversial experimentation is the leader of President Bush's council on bioethics, Dr. Leon Kass. Even though I agree with Dr. Kass's concerns about the possible disastrous affects of too much genetic knowledge at this time, I find his arguments ineffective, relying too much on rhetoric, rather than scientific facts.
Kass is against genetic engineering research because it would force upon us far too many social dangers. Kass advocates putting this experimentation on hold until our society is better able to deal with the decisions we will have to make in order to benefit from this research. He thinks that the numerous promises of genetic research are sucking in its unassuming victims. He admits that the research might offer cures to illness and disease, but he does not want society to forget that once doctors have clearance to 'play God' there will be no stopping them. Once this great power of controlling and changing human life at its genetic basis becomes possible, he asks, how far will it go, and will we be able to constrain "the genie" after we let it loose?
Although I am more liberal than Kass, I agreed with the concerns he raises. Since our society has not had extensive genetic knowledge available to us thus far, we will not know how best to regulate the use of this information at first. Access to personal genetic profiles of patients will also inevitably lead to discrimination in the workplace or from insurance companies. Additionally, if couples gain the ability to choose exactly what features their baby would possess, the diversity of our society may suffer. Laws will need to be passed to protect the individual and society from the potentially negative effects of this knowledge, but our society will develop these protective measures when we need them.
Even though I agree with Kass's societal concerns, I do not concur with the way he presents his argument. Kass belittles the people who do not agree with him, or, more importantly, those who do not share his views for the same reasons. Kass makes the statement, "Only simplistic thinkers believe they can easily answer such questions [about ethical issues surrounding genetic technologies]" (17). By using the word "simplistic," Kass judges the people who do not answer the questions the same way he does, because they obviously cannot ponder these issues as deeply as he can.
More often than not, his reasoning has underlying flaws. For example, when Kass discusses the problems derived from having greater genetic knowledge, the biggest problem he sees is that the individual will have to live with the knowledge that one might develop a disease for which one has a genetic predisposition. He finds these individual worries over ones medical future even more important than the possible discrimination in the workplace or from insurance companies if this information becomes public property (14). Personally, I am more concerned with the later issue because it can be more damaging than the former. Many people have an indication of the medical problems to which they might be predisposed because it "runs in their family." A woman who has had multiple deaths in her family due to breast cancer should know to examine herself religiously for any early signs of tumors. If she were dropped from her insurance because the company was aware that she had the breast cancer gene, she might not have the coverage that she needs to treat her condition and perhaps save her life. This possible lack of insurance coverage is a greater threat to her than simply worrying that she might develop cancer.
Kass also generalizes and oversimplifies the issue in stating that, "this complaint ['playing God'] is too facilely dismissed by scientists and nonbelievers" (16). Kass is implying that scientists have no qualms about putting themselves on the level of God because they see themselves as pursuing knowledge to potentially help people. Kass is scoffing at the researcher's humanitarian goal of giving people with fatal illnesses another chance at life. His generalization is unfair to medical professionals and diminishes the strength of his argument, especially for the scientific community.
Kass's interweaving of literary, mythological, and religious references proves that Kass is well read, but does not bolster his argument. For example, he quotes a rather lengthy passage from C.S. Lewis in 1965 to explain why every advance has a drawback (15), refers to God in Genesis to explain that God is the Creator not man (16), emphasizes that Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is a mere glimpse of what is to come if genetic engineering goes too far (17), and cites the mythological character of Midas to show how humans can get too greedy for this knowledge and end up having a situation they do not know how to deal with (17). These allusions fit awkwardly with the technical information Kass presents in this article, and they take away from his message. Basing his argument on these references to non-medical professionals quoted out of context, or on stories that have nothing to do with medicine, fails to support his claims.
Another stylistic device Kass uses less than effectively is his random "shock value" stories. When he warns about how much genetic knowledge is really beneficial for society, he refers to a case in which a father had his ten-year-old daughter undergo an ovariectomy and a mastectomy because she had a predisposition for breast cancer, or the "breast cancer gene" (14). He again uses this technique when he describes how doctors take a God-like role with their patients. He portrays a situation where a doctor doing rounds with medical students commented about a 10-year-old patient with spina bifida, "Were he to have been born today... he would have been aborted" (16). In both of these examples, there are no specific citations to the source of the information, nor any disclaimers that this is not necessarily how everybody in the medical field acts or feels. He has pulled two very interesting, but not necessarily representative, cases from who-knows-where to support his claim, but he ends up hindering his progress towards making a truly convincing argument. These anecdotes only serve to inflame people's emotions in the area of genetic research, where we must make rational and well-informed decisions. These stories are not effective at proving that this research should be stopped.
In sum, I agree with Kass's concerns about genetic research. The ability to know and manipulate a person's genes will raise many issues, such as confidentiality and problems of discrimination that I do not believe our society can deal with at present. At the same time, I do not think that research needs to be halted all together in the area of genetic engineering. On the contrary, this research has the potentially to be extremely beneficial to humankind by providing cures to horrible diseases, and therefore the investigation needs to be continued. This experimentation is not yet close to having the tremendously detrimental effect on our society that Kass foretells, and, if we stop now, it will just take that much longer to gain any benefit from it. With technological advancement in medicine there has been and there will be initial trepidation, but when it proves beneficial to society it gains acceptance, and society deals with the issues the new technology raises. I am a firm believer that our society will handle with the problems that come up when we need to, so that even though we are not ready for this technology at this time, we will be when it arrives. Kass's blanket fear of any advances in genetic technology is unwarranted. Where would we be now if scientists had not taken the risk to develop antibiotics, vaccines, chemotherapy, and other treatments for illnesses that have come into widespread use today?
Works Cited
Kass, Leon. "The Genetic Genie: A Danger to Humanity." Current Nov. 1999: 13-18.
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