Is Genetic Engineering Wrong, Per Se?

In recent years, the possibility of altering the characteristics of animals and plants through human manipulation of genetic material has left the realm of science fiction and become a reality. Numerous commentators, including some philosophers, have expressed serious reservations about the desirability of these new practices. The commentators sort into two main groups. First, there are those, such as Bernard Rollin, whose concern focuses on the possibly harmful consequences for animal and human welfare and for the environment, of genetic tampering.1 At the other extreme are those who, like Andrew Dobson and Jeremy Rifkin, regard genetic engineering as wrong per se. They regard the new practices as wrong whether or not they lead to consequences which would be regarded as good or bad, when considered in isolation from their causes.

genetic engineering is wrong, regardless of the consequences. On the one hand, an advocate of the claim might mean that genetic engineering is simply intrinsically wrong, where the reason for holding this view is that the practice falls within a potentially larger class of acts that are intrinsically wrong. This is not, we think, what is usually meant by those who make that claim. When authors warn against the evils of genetic tampering, the dramatic images they tend to invoke suggest that it is usually more charitable to interpret them as holding that the practice is intrinsically wrong per se. They imply that there is something peculiar to genetic engineering that makes it intrinsically wrong, even though less dramatic forms of interference with animal breeding might not be intrinsically wrong. If this were not the question that concerned them, why then would they focus attention on it to the exclusion of the broader evil they take it to fall under? Our immediate concern is with this second question although our arguments will have a direct bearing on the first, more general, issue. Our objective is to isolate the considerations that have been advanced in support of the view that genetic engineering is intrinsically wrong per se and to argue that the reasons offered are not good ones.