Altering Nature: Volume One: Concepts of ‘Nature’ and ‘The Natural’ in Biotechnology Debates

338 Pages·2008·17.94 MB·English

by  B. Andrew Lustig

Altering Nature
Philosophy and Medicine
VOLUME 97
Founding Co-Editor
Stuart F. Spicker
Senior Editor
H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., Department of Philosophy, Rice University, and Baylor
College of Medicine, Houston, Texas
Associate Editor
Lisa M. Rasmussen, Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Charlotte,
Charlotte
Editorial Board
George J. Agich, Department of Philosophy, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green,
Ohio
Nicholas Capaldi, College of Business Administration, Loyola University New Orleans,
New Orleans, Louisiana
Edmund Erde, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Stratford, New Jersey
Christopher Tollefsen, Department of Philosophy, University of South Carolina, Columbia,
South Carolina
Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J., President Loyola University, New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana
For other titles published in this series, go to
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B. Andrew Lustig • Baruch A. Brody
Gerald P. McKenny
Editors
Altering Nature
Volume One: Concepts of ‘Nature’
and ‘The Natural’ in Biotechnology Debates
Editors
B. Andrew Lustig Baruch A. Brody
Davidson College Baylor College of Medicine
Gerald P. McKenny
University of Notre Dame
ISBN 978-1-4020-6920-8 e-ISBN 978-1-4020-6921-5
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4020-6921-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008925365
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Contents
Contributors ................................................................................................... vii
Introduction .................................................................................................... 1
B. Andrew Lustig, Baruch A. Brody, and Gerald P. McKenny
1 Spiritual and Religious Concepts of Nature .......................................... 13
Aaron L. Mackler, Ebrahim Moosa, Allen Verhey,
Anne Carolyn Klein, and Kurt Peters
2 Philosophical Approaches to Nature ...................................................... 63
John H. Zammito, Philip J. Ivanhoe,
Helen Longino, and Phillip R. Sloan
3 Scientific and Medical Concepts of Nature
in the Modern Period in Europe and North America .......................... 137
Laurence B. McCullough, John Caskey,
Thomas R. Cole, and Andrew Wear
4 Ethical Challenges of Patenting “Nature”:
Legal and Economic Accounts of Altered
Nature as Property ................................................................................... 199
Mary Anderlik Majumder, Margaret M. Byrne,
Elias Bongmba, Leslie S. Rothenberg,
and Nancy Neveloff Dubler
5 Technogenesis: Aesthetic Dimensions
of Art and Biotechnology ........................................................................ 275
Suzanne Anker, Susan Lindee, Edward A. Shanken,
and Dorothy Nelkin
Index ................................................................................................................ 323
v
Contributors
Suzanne Anker, MFA, is Chair of the Fine Arts Department at the School of Visual
Arts in New York City.
Elias Bongmba, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Religious Studies Department at Rice
University.
Baruch A. Brody, Ph.D., is Leon Jaworski Professor of Biomedical Ethics and
Director of the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College
of Medicine. He is also the Andrew Mellow Professor of Humanities in the
Department of Philosophy at Rice University.
Margaret M. Byrne, Ph.D., is a Research Associate Professor in the Department
of Epidemiology and Public Health, Miller School of Medicine, University of
Miami.
John Caskey, M.D., Ph.D., is currently in residency training in Pediatrics,
Psychiatry, and Child Psychiatry at Brown University’s School of Medicine.
Thomas R. Cole, Ph.D., is the McGovern Chair in Medical Humanities and
Director of the McGovern Center for Health, Humanities, and the Human Spirit at
the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in Houston. He is also a Professor
of Humanities in the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University.
Nancy Neveloff Dubler, LL.B., is the Director of the Division of Bioethics and
the Center for Ethics and Law in Medicine, Department of Family and Social
Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center, and a Professor of Bioethics at The Albert
Einstein College of Medicine.
Philip J. Ivanhoe, Ph.D., is Reader-Professor of Philosophy at City University of
Hong Kong and an Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Boston University.
Anne Carolyn Klein, Ph.D., is a Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University
and a Founding Director of Dawn Mountain Tibetan Temple, Community Center,
and Research Institute.
Susan Lindee, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of the History and Sociology
of Science at the University of Pennsylvania.
vii
viii Contributors
Helen Longino, Ph.D., is a Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University.
B. Andrew Lustig, Ph.D., is the Holmes Rolston III Professor of Religion and
Science at Davidson College.
Aaron L. Mackler, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theology
at Duquesne University.
Mary Anderlik Majumder, J.D., Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the
Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine.
Laurence B. McCullough, Ph.D., is a Professor of Medicine and Medical Ethics in
the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine.
Gerald P. McKenny, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theology
at the University of Notre Dame.
Ebrahim Moosa, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Islamic Studies in the
Department of Religion and Associate Director of Research at the Duke Islamic
Studies Center
Dorothy Nelkin, B.A., was a University Professor in the Department of Sociology
at New York University until her death in 2003.
Kurt Peters, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies and Director of the
Native American Collaborative Institute at Oregon State University.
Leslie S. Rothenberg, J.D., is Professor Emeritus of Clinical Medicine at the David
Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a clinical ethicist at Kaiser Permanente,
Los Angeles.
Edward A. Shanken, Ph.D., is a Visiting Scholar at the California NanoSystems
Institute and a Senior Researcher in the Art/Sci Lab at the University of California,
Los Angeles.
Phillip R. Sloan, Ph.D., is Professor and former Chair of the Program of Liberal
Studies and a Professor in the Graduate Program in History and Philosophy of
Science at the University of Notre Dame.
Allen Verhey, Ph.D., is Professor of Christian Ethics at the Duke University
Divinity School.
Andrew Wear, Ph.D., is Emeritus Reader in Medicine at the Wellcome Trust Centre
for the History of Medicine at University College London.
John H. Zammito, Ph.D., is the John Antony Weir Professor in the Department of
History at Rice University.
Introduction
B. Andrew Lustig, Baruch A. Brody, and Gerald P. McKenny
Nearly every week the general public is treated to an announcement of another
actual or potential “breakthrough” in biotechnology. Headlines trumpet advances in
assisted reproduction, current or prospective experiments in cloning, and develop-
ments in regenerative medicine, stem cell technologies, and tissue engineering.
Scientific and popular accounts explore the perils and the possibilities of enhancing
human capacities by computer-based, biomolecular, or mechanical means through
advances in artificial intelligence, genetics, and nanotechnology. Reports abound
concerning ever more sophisticated genetic techniques being introduced into agri-
culture and animal husbandry, as well as efforts to enhance and protect biodiversity.
Given the pace of such developments, many insightful commentators have proclaimed
the 21st century as the “biotechnology century.”
Despite a significant literature on the morality of these particular advances in
biotechnology, deeper ethical analysis has often been lacking. Our preliminary
review of that literature suggested that current discussions of normative issues in
biotechnology have suffered from two major deficiencies. First, the discussions
have been too often piecemeal in character, limited to after-the-fact analyses of
particular issues that provoked the debate, and unconnected to larger concepts and
themes. Second, a crucial missing element of those discussions has been the failure
to reflect explicitly on the diverse disciplinary conceptions of nature and the natural
that shape moral judgments about the legitimacy of specific forms of research and
their applications. Often, only minimal connections are drawn between judgments
about particular issues and the deeper conceptual discussions of nature and the
natural. These minimal connections tend to reflect simplistic readings rather than
richer understandings informed by the diversity of perspectives and interpretations
actually found within particular disciplines and modes of discourse. This crucial
point deserves further elaboration.
Both current and future developments in biotechnology pose normative ques-
tions of profound importance. A careful reading of normative debates on specific
areas of biotechnology – on assisted reproduction, genetics and transgenics,
human-machine incorporation technologies, and others – reveals that contrasting
normative responses to biotechnology – positive or negative – are informed by different
conceptual interpretations of nature and the natural, with differing implications for
judgments about the rightness or wrongness of particular interventions or “alterations”
B.A. Lustig et al. (eds.) Altering Nature, 1
© Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2008
2 B.A. Lustig et al.
of nature. These different interpretations often emerge from different disciplinary
perspectives and modes of discourse. Nevertheless, despite the fundamental role
played by these different interpretations of nature, there has been insufficient dis-
cussion or analysis of the various ways that nature and the “natural” are described
in different modes of discourse and the relevance of those different descriptive
accounts for invocations of nature as a normative appeal, as well as the relevance
of such understandings to judgments about particular biotechnological applica-
tions. The result is that, while various concepts of nature and the natural underlie
debates about biotechnology, key questions remain either unanswered or insuffi-
ciently addressed. First, precisely how are nature and the natural understood from
various disciplinary perspectives? Second, in what ways, if at all, do particular
interpretations of nature have prescriptive implications? Third, what moral insights
may be gained not only from specific disciplinary vantages but also from cross-
disciplinary comparisons of the ways that concepts of nature function, either in
contrasting or in complementary ways? Finally, what implications for public policy
discussions and choices emerge as most supportable in light of that rich diversity
of perspectives on concepts of nature and the natural?
The research represented in this volume, and a second volume that accompanies
it, emerges from a multi-year research project funded by the Ford Foundation and
co-sponsored by Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Medical
Ethics and Health Policy, and Davidson College. The first volume, introduced here,
assembles the research from five scholarly groups who explored the ways that con-
cepts of nature and “the natural” frame debates about biotechnology from particular
disciplinary perspectives and modes of discourse. The second volume, which will
be separately introduced, studies four broad areas of biotechnology – assisted
reproduction, genetic therapy, human-machine incorporation, and biodiversity – in
light of the research on various concepts of nature in Volume One, and considers
the possible implications of cross-disciplinary understandings of those concepts for
public policy discussions and choices.
In the present volume, as noted, five groups of scholars explore characteristic
meanings of nature and the natural from different disciplinary perspectives. We will
review each group’s research in more detail below, but a few preliminary remarks
are in order here:
1. Conceptual Framework for the Analyses. Each of the groups was provided with
four broad categories of questions about concepts of nature and the natural:
ontological questions, epistemological issues, moral questions, and aesthetic and
representational concerns. Ontological questions included concerns about how
nature is perceived and described. To what extent is nature seen as fundamen-
tally ordered, broken/fallen, or random? To what extent is nature, considered as
a whole or in its parts, viewed in dynamic or static terms? To what extent is
nature, taken as whole or in its parts, seen to exhibit telos? In light of such con-
siderations, then, what are the relations – if any – between natural teleology and
human desires and aims? Epistemological questions focused on the extent to
which nature is seen as accessible to human reason and to what degree nature is