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"Pragmatism and Genetic Engineering"



     Copyright 1994 by Glenn McGee, Research Assistant Professor of

     Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. The text of this

     essay was presented in the CAPE Series at California State

     University; an earlier version was presented to the annual

     meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy

     in March 1994.



     NO QUOTES WITHOUT PERMISSION; DO NOT DOWNLOAD THIS TEXT.



A long time after the hopes and fears of eugenics had appeared in

literature and the courts, James Watson and Francis Crick began an inquiry

at Cambridge in 1953 into the secret libraries of human identity; a search

that 40 years later intimates the possibility of re-engineering the human

condition. The Human Genome Project (HGP) is the current result of Watson

and Crick's work; it is rivaled in scientific importance only by the

splitting of the atom.1



Through the HGP, a 15-year, $3 billion effort of the National Institutes of

Health, hundreds of scientists hope to "unlock" the "code of life" by

mapping the location of bits of information on the molecule of heredity:

deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), formed in the now ubiquitous image of the

double-helix. To date, the HGP has identified only 6,100 of the estimated

100,000 genes that comprise each chromosome at the nucleus of the body's 10

trillion cells.2 An even smaller fraction of the 3 billion chemical code

letter 'messages' in the genome have been located, and without a 'rosetta

stone', we can only map these codes, hoping later to 'read' them.



Yet already the Project has had a dramatic impact on medicine, and, as

Watson notes, genetics will be "overwhelming" for medicine within 10

years.3 Virtually every month a new disease is identified as having

"genetic roots." Once diseases are correlated with the genetic code,

altering the relevant sequences through genetic engineering becomes an

option. The possibility of "negative" engineering, which is geared only

toward curing disease in 1) the patient through somatic cell modification,

and/or 2) in the patient's offspring through germ-line engineering, is less

controversial than such "positive" engineering, which shares the purposes

of genetic engineering in agriculture: to make a better organism that is

not only disease-free, but also healthier, smarter, and more capable. Many

have a great deal of faith that we could connect DNA to "happiness and

misery [and] the meaning of human existence"4 As Thomas Lee writes, "the

effort underway is unlike anything ever before attempted...if successful,

it could lead to our ultimate control of human disease, aging, and death."5



The effort to map the genome proceeds at breakneck speed; societal

conversation has not yet caught up with the implications of 'genetic

choices'. While much of society reports a willingness to modify DNA for the

purpose of enhancing intelligence,6 education about genetics and medicine

is still in its infancy. Genetics is paraded by the scientific media as the

next "miracle drug" in visions of an immanent "new parenthood." Yet, as

Dewey notes, science can, by "protecting [its values] from inquiry," tend

to move momentously forward with precious little examination of "accepted

standard[s] which perhaps [are] outworn and in need of criticism."7 As

genetic knowledge creates unavoidable choices for the communities in which

we participate, the responsibilities of this knowledge present an urgent

need for a trenchant analysis of the social and political values that

constitute the human effort to control heredity.



Yet, remarkably, while the many questions of genetic engineering have

received increasing attention in the literature since the Presidential

Commission report on genetics in 1970, the Ethical, Legal, and Social

Issues (ELSI) team of the Human Genome Project has ruled that questions of

genetic engineering are "too premature" to address.8 Little attention has

been paid to the crucial question of how ethics might function as a guide

to genetic engineering. In particular, a pragmatic approach, which relies

on the work of William James and John Dewey, has never been tested.



Nonetheless, reference is frequently made in the literature to

"pragmatism," both by those interested in seeing genetics progress

unencumbered by complex criticism, and by those convinced that genetics is

the very embodiment of pragmatism's worst features. Alex Mauron makes

reference to "pragmatic" issues in germ-line engineering, but defines the

"pragmatic issues" as "that to which [an issue] can be reduced: a problem's

'categorical ethical nature'."9 And Johnathon Glover argues for a

"pragmatism of risks and benefits," writing that "the debate on human

genetic engineering should become like the debate on nuclear power: one in

which large possible benefits have to be weighed against big problems and

the risk of great disasters."10 Even more problematic is the scientific

treatment of pragmatism: Kenneth Ryan, in an article entitled "Pragmatism

and Ethics in Biological Science," writes that Dewey would want to see us

"play up the successes of biology, to avoid the critical attention of the

press." Criticizing this 'pragmatism', Hans Jonas suggests that the

philosophy of pragmatism is the most dangerous ally of the scientist, a

kind of "ruling optimism of our time." And Leon Kass writes that

"pragmatism ... ignores the fact that the very definitions of 'a benefit'

and 'a risk' are based upon judgments about value."11



Kass is correct to suggest that values of simple or rigid utility, as

deployed by the scientific community, leave the 'fundedness' of the ideals

of genetic engineering unexamined. He sees that what is needed is an

understanding of values that is both complex and contextual. However, Kass

does not see that it is precisely pragmatism that emphasizes the necessity

of a contextual, actional analysis of values. A pragmatic approach to

genetic engineering holds the most promise in dealing with what Kass and

others, ironically, term the "pragmatic tendency." This essay, then, is an

outline of my current project: an attempt to situate American philosophy in

relation to human genetics.



Whatever its justification, the human genome project has already inspired

society with the hope of "better" babies, and one way to deploy pragmatism

in the analysis of genetic engineering is to look at this promise of

"better" babies in its social context: parenthood.



Hope defines the journey of parenthood. Aspirations of parents for

themselves and their children create the context for reproduction. Hope for

a parent's "perfect baby" is central to preparation for birth and

parenthood; just as our society celebrates the marrying woman as "perfect

bride," so too there is emphasis, as an intimate relationship with baby is

undertaken, on the perfection of the child. "Perfect baby" is an icon of

the journey of hope. More than hope, though, responsible parenting also

involves choices. Choosing to make a baby involves a commitment to work to

make life better for that baby. We choose to make some of our hopes come

true by participating in pre-natal care. After birth, this hope suffuses

our desire to make of our child a person of whom we could be proud, whom we

can respect. Taken together, the choices and hopes of parents create a

moral atmosphere in which our children dwell.



Yet these hopes and choices have a dark side. Too often the hopes of

parents are unrealistic, misplaced, or lacking in foresight. Just as the

image of a "perfect bride" can become a model rather than an attitude of

celebration, baby may be forced to live up to, rather than be celebrated

within, perfection. How commonly the child of an athlete finds himself

prefigured as "child athlete." One of our culture's most common stories is

that of the "first doctor in the family," forced from a life's dream of

acting into medicine. The choices of parents create a value system or

ethos, and often that ethos can be too restrictive; it can become a model

that children are expected to meet. Our hopes must be mitigated by a

readiness to elasticize, perhaps even untie, the child's connection to

parental ambitions and hopes.



Though parenting involves hopes and choices that are profoundly important,

many of the choices aren't enunciated, or just seem to happen in the stream

of daily experience. In some measure, this seems appropriate. Parenting, as

creation, is sexual and intimate--not the stuff of calculation. But even as

the child grows older, it may remain unclear what impact our myriad choices

will have on our children. Only some of the important choices of parenthood

are lovingly thought out in advance--mostly, parents muddle through dozens

of choices every day with little knowledge of which actions and choices

will "register" in our children's moral and physical makeup. Parenthood is

characterized by a felt lack of control and understanding, a continuous

struggle to keep up with changing children in a changing world. Choices and

hopes never seem to work out perfectly.



This is at least in part what makes for the attractiveness of genetic

engineering: parents could participate systematically in the construction

of their perfect baby. How might such systematic choices be made? Science

has its own clue: in California, the sperm of "geniuses" is stored in a

special sperm bank. For a sizable fee, parents may purchase the sperm of

those whom the bank deems "exceptional." Whose sperm is stored?

Accomplished biomedical scientists of exceptional physical endowment.

Science has in mind systematic choices leading to its own notion of a

"perfect person:" six feet tall, weighing in at 185 pounds, this

"exceptional" person is without hereditary disease. His or her brain is

engineered to an IQ of 150, with special aptitudes in biomedical science.

He or she has blonde hair, blue eyes, archetypal beauty and poise. Neurotic

and addictive tendencies have been engineered out, as has any criminal

urge, but in the male model, aggressiveness is retained in part due to an

"athleticism" package: muscular and quick, he is competitive and can play

NBA level basketball, NFL level football, and NHL level hockey. He also has

the "sensitivity" package, and enjoys poetry from several cultures and

periods.



How distant is this "exceptional" son or daughter from the dreams of the

American parent? Some of the aspects of this child are not distant at

all:12 parents hope for healthy children and, if they can afford it, make

choices (such as choosing pre-natal care) to help "engineer" healthier

babies. Genetic engineering seems in this regard to offer the brightest

hope for parents. Huntington's and cystic fibrosis (and a few other rare

diseases) might be isolated problems on the helix. Through germ-line

therapy, these disastrous, but genetically discrete, diseases could be

removed from the DNA of the egg or zygote. Clearly parents would follow the

model in choosing to avoid a short, painful life for their children.



As Lewontin notes, though, the entire genome therapies effort has been

modeled on the idea that all disease is as discrete as Huntington's.13 This

is problematic because most diseases give evidence that etiology is

difficult to ascertain, and that illness is located in a complex and subtle

matrix of interrelations. Even when medicine is able to find clear and

distinct causality for a specific ailment, often unforeseen connections

doom a simple solution. The gene that predisposes to sickle-cell anemia (in

one of its varieties) appears, for example, to have the "side-effect" of

preventing malaria. Parents making the choice to eliminate diseases from

their children are subject to the realities of the human body, to complex

sets of interrelations that often befuddle the diagnostic tools of science.

There are limits to the foresight of medicine and parental wisdom: what

seems to be a wise elimination of "defects" may present unforeseen

consequences and impose surprising costs.



It may be that "code" itself will not help to identify or heal much of

human illness. Lewontin notes: "A deep reason for the difficulty in

devising causal information from DNA messages is that the same 'words' have

different meanings in different contexts and multiple functions in a given

context, as in any complex language."14 In addition, much of illness--much

of being a self--is experienced as a complex social matter.15 If we could

rid the alcoholic of a genetic "predisposition" to drink, would we have

dealt with her problem? Much of psychological pathology calls into question

the interplay between biological susceptibility and social values. The

difference, at least in complex illness (which may turn out to be most

illness) is fuzzy. Particularly in terms of mental illness, societal

preference seems indelibly attached to notions of pathology and health.

Notions of biology are themselves profoundly textured by political aims and

ends, and can serve to exonerate or stigmatize groups and traits.



So, making our baby healthy, which we experience as central to having the

perfect baby, is not a simple matter of altering biological/genetic codes.

This flies in the face, though, of medicine's long history of equating

disease and illness, patient and anatomy. We must recognize that the human

child is not an anatomical preparation, and that efforts to see it as such

have political purposes.16 Instead, efforts to articulate genetic

approaches to disease must begin with a recognition of the phenomenological

and political character of the body and its illnesses. To distinguish

between responsible parenting and halcyon dreams of science, careful

analysis of the social and political nature of disease and illness is

necessary.



Beyond the bright hopes that genetic engineering will eliminate diseases is

the dream of systematized choices about better, or exceptional babies. Some

greet any mention of positive engineering with icy denial. As Glover notes,

"resistance [to genetic engineering] is based on a complex of different

values... which fuses together many separate risks and doubts into a

fuzzy-outlined opposition in principle."17 One crucial element of this

"fuzzy" but categorical objection is the allegation that genetic

engineering is radically different from any other kind of human medicine,

and constitutes interference in a restricted area; is tantamount to

"playing God."18 As Robert Wright notes, "Biologists and ethicists have by

now expended thousands of words warning about slippery slopes, reflecting

on Nazi Germany, and warning that a government quest for a super race could

begin anew" if genetic engineering ventures "too far."19



Another and more reasonable fear is that we have not the slightest idea

what we are doing, and ought to avoid making hasty choices. Indeed, there

are already ample examples of failed genetic engineering. Monocultural

agriculture represents the most salient test of the difficulty of

engineering "the perfect crop." Hybrid varieties are often impossible to

protect from the complexities and dangers of nature. In the human

condition, this is the possibility of making an error and creating a

genetically advanced baby who cannot cope with an imperfect world.



It is here that our analysis of the hopes and fears that attend the

creation of babies can be helpful. First, we see that, in the light of

present medical and social activities, the charge that genetic engineering

is uniquely tantamount to playing God is specious and naive. In-vitro

fertilization already presents the moral issues of screening that would be

used in negative engineering, as do selective termination and

amniocentesis. Outside of medicine, we have seen that parenting is already

soaked with choices and hopes and decisions that shape the creation of

babies; choices that engineer children. From choosing a mate to prenatal

care to education of children, we make unavoidable decisions that shape the

lives of our families. Do we not already take actions to ensure that our

babies have "positive characteristics?" Clearly we do, and not only as

individuals and families but within our broader, social communities.



Our society already holds the belief that some decisions about reproduction

must be made in a larger context than parental choice. States that require

VD tests for marriage, and forbid intrafamilial intercourse, are expressing

an interest in selection. And an American healthcare system that offers

pre-natal care to only a portion of its population, but provides expensive

care for babies whose condition is caused by the lack of prenatal care, is

expressing an unintelligent interest in the kind of children who will be

born. These activities, parental and social, are a part of the atmosphere

of reproduction that must be a context for our decisions. So, as Jean

Bethke Elshtain puts it, "we are back full circle, to concerns with the

nature of human intimacy and the family. The new eugenics cannot be

disarticulated from a wider cultural and social surround."20



The issue, then, is how to make pragmatic decisions about positive

engineering in context. We have seen that genetic engineering is a

different kind of choice for parents because it represents the opportunity

for systematized, prefigurative control over the embodiment of the

offspring. At the same time, our pragmatic approach enables us to see the

problems associated with "positive" modifications of biological heredity in

their social contexts. If the child of an athlete would find the pressure

of a father's prodding intolerable, the scientifically perfect infant,

designed for the purpose of being a certain sort of child, would be pushed

even more decisively toward a biologically-predisposed character. What then

of that child's will? The dark side of parental control is that choices and

hopes can prefigure the life of the child: genetic engineering for the

purpose of articulating an exceptional child could be a radical extension

of this dark side.



Pragmatic appraisal of genetic engineering will ask to what extent parents

really hope for "raw capacity" in their babies. Parents also value the

sameness of children; we want our children to "be like us." The perfect

baby acquires that status through a felt union of two creatures whose child

shares a bond and a sameness with parents. "Isn't she perfect..." is an

acknowledgment of the fittingness of this baby for this parent at this

time, not a compliment on a perfect specimen. A genetically engineered baby

with stronger arms than father and more brains than mother; whose

embodiment is felt as different from the parents, might be markedly less

perfect for being exceptional; might be exceptionally different from father

and mother. We also want our children to be able to get along in the world.

The archetypal perfection of Atlas might make for great talents in an

infant, but what it would inspire is fear, not companionship, for the child

in life.



An intelligent approach will militate against hasty and acontextual

decisions. Just as it is difficult to plan the inculcation of values and

character in children, hard to know what action or word will register, so

too is it difficult to single out characteristics that will make a child's

life better. In the first edition of Mueller's Out of the Night (1925), the

geneticist favored breeding children who embodied the traits of Lenin and

Marx. In his second edition, Lenin was dropped for Descartes; Marx for

Lincoln. Political currency plays a role in our notions of perfection, and

what is popular today may be torn down in Berlin tomorrow. It is rightly

said that "we have always been fickle with our heroes."21 The perfect baby,

like perfect soybeans and perfect corn, could turn out to be markedly

imperfect--especially as a result of our lack of foresight. Just as

choosing a mate is a gamble, choosing eye color, sex, or a kind of

personality will be a hard call in a complex, temporal world. It would be

no advantage to choose male offspring, which most Americans report that

they would, if suddenly 60% of live births were male.22 Decisions about any

sort of "positive" engineering will require not only the context of

parenthood, but also the discussion and complicity of society at-large, as

Suzuki and Knudtson suggest.23



Genetic engineering may present new choices, but it is the moral equivalent

(in James' terms) of activities present in the context of parenthood. Thus

while caution is intelligent, we need not treat genetics as a slippery

slope to biological castes and Frankenstein. The categorical opponents of

genetic engineering, Rifken being the most notable, have utilized rigid

rules to enforce the sanctity of human genetic coding. Such an ethic does

little to guide our actions--it is simply naive in the light of other

social pressures to apply scientific results, obtain improvements in life,

and have healthy children. Ethics cannot ignore science: Dewey sees that

much of the problem with putting the values that are present in our culture

to use in our culture is that those values have been "undermined by the

conclusions of modern science."24



Those who would retain outmoded and categorical values do well to consider

Dewey's charge that "if intelligent method is lacking, prejudice, the

pressure of immediate circumstance, self-interest and class interest,

traditional customs, institutions of accidental historical origin, are not

lacking, and they tend to take the place of intelligence."25 For example,

the few fetal diagnoses available now are so expensive that only the

wealthy use them. As a consequence, a disproportionate number of children

with Down's syndrome are "almost certainly born to the less affluent."26

Our claim that some eugenic selection is already present in social

engineering intimates the real dangers, then, of uncritical genetic

research: it may be engineering that benefits only the powerful and

wealthy. If society chooses not to concern itself with positive genetic

engineering, we too have made a choice: to leave science to the scientists,

and its application to political pressure and happenstance. A pragmatic

approach considers the application of genetic research in its political and

economic context. Where there are therapies, there will always be pressures

on a physician to offer them.



At this point it is crucial to locate genetic engineering in relation to a

range of other social choices that affect the baby. We should ask not only

which of our difficult and intractable illnesses are social in nature, but

also which methods will be most robust in addressing these problems. And,

on the "positive" end, rather than suggesting that the ability to improve a

"math" gene solves the problem of mathematical illiteracy, we should

consider the social context: without funded classrooms, there will be

re-engineered children who will still sell drugs on street corners, and

perhaps will never learn math. A simple discussion of consequences in terms

of science will only license the momentum of science toward uncritical

conclusions. Even assuming that certain isolable ailments could be dealt

with by genetic engineering, a pragmatic approach advises an intelligent

and cautious approach; developing protocols and therapies experimentally

and gradually. This approach takes seriously the caution implicit in the

"hands-off" attitude of those who would leave genetics to nature without

surrendering the hope to make our condition and our nature better a little

at a time.



A thorough-going pragmatic analysis results in an understanding of genetic

engineering that ties revolutionary research to its social and political

context. Using the hopes and choices of parenthood as a guide, genetic

choices can be incorporated into the framework of family dynamics and

social amelioration. Yet genetics is also situated in the contexts of

medicine, politics, and the existing social structure. We need to explore

the context of the political and institutional structures that make

decisions about genetic engineering so urgent. We need to assay the

purposes and values we hold and make sure that those purposes guide the

activity of making gradual and experimental choices about positive

engineering in relation to the range of other social options. Finally,

then, pragmatism, rather than opting for utopian dreams or luddite denial

of possibility, can make a novel and useful contribution to our communal

discussion of genetic engineering.



Bibliography



Adams, M.: 1990, The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil,

and Russia, Oxford U.P., New York.



Agich, G.J.: June 17, 1977, "Recombitant DNA Research and the Idea of

Responsibility," Unpublished paper presented to Philosophy and Technology

Conference, University of Delaware. Copy at Vanderbilt Center for Clinical

& Research Ethics Library.



Arkes, H.: 1990, Guaranteeing the Good Life: Medicine and the Return of

Eugenics, Eerdmans, New York.



Auerbach, C.: 1956, Genetics in the Atomic Age, Essential Books, New York.



Augustein, L.: 1969, Come Let Us Play God, Macmillan, New York.



Borek, E.: 1965, The Code of Life. Columbia U.P., New York.



Brennan, B.P.: 1961, The Ethics of William James, Bookman Assc., New York.



Davis, B.D.: 1991, The Genetic Revolution: Scientific Prospects and Public

Perceptions, Johns Hopkins, Baltimore.



Davis, J.: 1990, Mapping the Code: The Human Genome Project and the Choices

of Modern Science, Wiley, New York.



Dewey, J.: 1991, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, Southern Illinois University

Press, Carbondale, Illinois.



1963, Philosophy and Civilization, Capricorn, New York.



1963, Liberalism and Social Action, Capricorn, New York.



1961, Democracy and Education, Macmillan, New York.



1958, Experience and Nature, Dover, New York.



1957, The Public and its Problems, Henry Holt, New York.



and Tufts, J.H.: 1932, Ethics, Henry Holt, New York.



1930, Human Nature and Conduct, Henry Holt, New York.



Elshtain, J.B., ed.: 1982, The Family in Political Thought, University of

Massachusetts Press, Amherst.



1990, Rebuilding the Nest: A New Commitment to the American Family, Family

Service America, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.



Gavin, W.J.: 1981, "Vagueness and Empathy, A Jamesian View," Journal of

Medicine and Philosophy 6, pp. 45-65.



Gaylin, W.: 1990, Being and Becoming Human, Penguin, New York.



Glover, J.: 1984: What Sort of People Should There Be? Penguin, New York.



Howard, T. and Rifken, J.: 1977, Who Should Play God: The Artificial

Creation of Life and What it Means for the Future of the Human Race, Dell,

New York.



Johanson, A.E.: 1975, "The Will to Believe and the Ethics of Belief,"

Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 11, pp. 110-127.



Jones, D.G.: 1984, Brave New People: Ethical Issues at the Commencement of

Life, Intervarsity Press, Chicago.



Kass, L.R.: 1985, Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs,

Free Press, New York.



1971, "The New Biology: What Price Relieving Man's Estate," Science

174:779-788.



Kevles, D.J.: In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human

Heredity, University of California Press, Los Angeles.



1992: The Code of Codes: Scientific and Social Issues in the Human Genome

Project, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.



Lewontin, R.C.: 1992, Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA,

HarperPerennial, New York.



McDermott, J.J.: "Pragmatic Sensibility: The Morality of Experience," in

DeMarco, ed. New Directions in Ethics, Routledge, New York.



Rafter, N.H.: 1988, White Trash: The Eugenic Family Studies, Northeastern

University Press, Boston.



Rifken, J.: 1983, Algeny: A New Word, a New World, Penguin, New York.



Suzuki, D.T.: 1988, Genethics: The Ethics of Engineering Life, Stoddart,

New York.



Footnotes



1) B.K. Zimmerman, Biofutures (Plenum Press: New York, 1984).

2) except red blood cells, which have no nucleus.

3) Time (March 15, 1993): 56.

4) R.C. Lewontin, "Doubts About the Human Genome Project," New York Review

of Books (34:4 May 1992).

5) (New York: Plenum Publishing), p. 1.

6) in a 1993 March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation survey, 42% of

Americans favored prenatal genetic manipulation "to improve intelligence."

Reported in Harper's (286:1715 1993): 11.

7) p. 583.

8) Alexander Capron (General Chair, HUGO International Meeting, 1991),

"Human Genome Research in an Interdependent World," Kennedy Institute of

Ethics Journal (1;3 1991): 247-251.

9) (Journal of Medicine and Philosophy (1991): 649-666.)

10) Glover, p. 25.

11) "The New Biology: What Price Relieving Man's Estate?" Science (1971)

174: 779-788.

12) This model actually resembles the efforts of the parents of Todd

Marenovich, for example, who was literally bred by his father to be a

quarterback. After raising Todd, Todd's father decided he might have better

luck with a linebacker and divorced, remarrying a woman who seemed more

likely to bear such a child.

13) Lewontin, 1992.

14) Lewontin, 1992.

15) See Dewey, "Morality as Social" and Zaner, "Context and Reflexivity:

The Genealogy of Self," in H.T. Engelhardt, Jr, and S.F. Spicker, eds.,

Evaluation and Explanation in the Biomedical Sciences (Dordrectht, Holland:

D.Reidel, 1975), pp. 153-174.

16) This history has been explored in detail by, among others,

Lain-Entralgo, Zaner, Lewontin, and Foucault.

17) What Sort of People Should There Be (England: Penguin Books, 1984), p.

25.

18) James Nelson and J.S. Rohricht, Human Medicine: Ethical Perspectives on

Today's Medical Issues (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984), p. 137-8. This is the

view of Jeremy Rifken and others, particularly see Augustein, Come Let Us

Play God, (New York: Macmillan, 1969), and for an evaluation see D. McGee,

"The Questions of Modern Medicine," in Matters of Life and Death

(Nashville: Broadman, 1977).

19) "Achilles' Helix" The New Republic (July 1990): 27.

20) Jean Bethke Elshtain, "The New Eugenics and Feminist Quandaries:

Philosophical and Political Reflections," Power Trips and Other Journeys:

Essays in Feminism as Social Discourse (Madison: University of Wisconsin

Press, 1990), p. 103.

21) Daniel McGee, "Making or Having Babies: A Christian Understanding of

Responsible Parenthood," in W. Brackney, ed., Faith, Life, and Witness: The

Papers of The Study and Research Division of The Baptist World Alliance

1986-1990 (Birmingham: Samford U.P., 1990).

22) We have only to look at the tragic results of the introduction of

ultrasound to India to see what thoughtless application of reproductive

technologies can mean. Indian women are forced to eliminate their female

fetuses despite the effect on the population and the women. Thus the very

technology that was created to bring more of reproduction under the control

of women came to be an instrument for the oppression of women-it is not the

maldistribution of technology that is at issue, but the actual

rearticulation of the purposes of that technology.

23) Lewontin, 1992.

24) "The Construction of the Good," in J. McDermott, ed. The Philosophy of

John Dewey (Chicago: U. Chicago Press, 1981), p. 577.

25) Dewey, in McDermott op cite, p. 583.

26) ibid.



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Send e-mail to: Glenn McGee

Created by: kim

On: January 14, 1995

Revised: 9/25/95