I was disturbed when a respected friend
of mine stated the he thought that GMO's are “an abomination.” He
was vehement that the genetic manipulation of life is absolutely
wrong and escalating the levels of action in opposing it, and it's
chief proponent Monsanto, is necessary. I could not spot the source
of my own disturbance with this argument in the moment because the
argument seemed internally consistent and logical, so I held my
peace. But now I have had time to reflect on the issue and figured
out what disturbed me.
The core disagreement is not with his
morality, it is with a combination of a factual premise that I take
to be mistaken and how key points in the argument rest on an
essentialism that I reject. In fact, I agree with an aspect of his
conclusion that Monsanto is evil, but the meaning of that conclusion
is a little different when it is reached without the lines of
argument that I reject.
A blanket argument against genetic
manipulation is like arguing against word or paragraph manipulation
in Wikipedia, it reflects a misunderstanding of how different levels
of the system work together in complex ways to create the outcomes
that are typically observed by most people. DNA molecules are made up
of four molecular letters that are arranged in sequences that can be
considered the equivalent of words, paragraphs, and chapters in a
book or pages on a web site. An individual animal or plant is
equivalent to an individual book or web site. However, life is not
static, like a printed book or some web sites. Life is more like
Wikipedia, and all the other wiki enabled web sites, in which there
are editing processes happening all the time. Due to the dynamic
nature of wikis, in which the structures of languages and wiki
programming combine to create the whole, you cannot take any
particular words or paragraphs in Wikipedia as essential to what
makes Wikipedia what it is. All the particular words and paragraphs
are susceptible to change in Wikipedia and the same is true of the
DNA of a species. There are editing processes occurring all the time
and the genetic material that specifies a species is like the written
material that makes up Wikipedia. Changes at the level of genes in
DNA or words and paragraphs in a wiki are crucial to the success of
the whole enterprise. There are reasonable fears about how
inaccuracies in Wikipedia could potentially have a nefarious effect
in the world, but the reality is that those effects have not been
found due to the dynamics that dominate most of the Wikipedia
project. In the same way that there is, in theory, a way to make
edits to Wikipedia that could destroy it as a viable source of
reliable information there is also, in theory, a way to make edits to
DNA that could destroy it as a reliable source for ecologically
suitable individual plants or animals. But the core mechanisms of the
project as a whole (life or wikis) are such that while the fear may
be reasonable, the evil it purports to unleash is effectively
mitigated against by the core features of how the systems work as a
whole.
Essentialism is the idea that things
have an immutable core substance or identity that uniquely makes them
whatever they are. It is common to assume today that an animal's DNA
contains the essence of what it is to be that kind of animal. Based
on reading lots of biology and cognitive science I am not willing to accept the idea
of essences as an assumed fact of life but, I am willing to accept
that essences can be interpreted as a necessary conceptual ploy.
Therefore, it is necessary to ground our working definition of the essence
of life, in this case, in a framework with respectable roots in
empirical work. And Fritjof Capra's definition of life from his book
The Web of Life serves that function for me. Taking that definition
seriously then there are three factors that are necessary to
constitute life and the absence of any one of the factors means you
do not have life. The three factors are a self-making pattern, a
dissipative structure, and a cognitive process. This puts forth a
tripartite essence test and the DNA molecule does not pass the test
independently, only whole cells do. Therefore, DNA does not contain
the essence of life.
Given this way of viewing the
relationship between DNA and life leads me to conclude that DNA
manipulation is no more of a manipulation of life itself than is
surgery or pharmacology. We accept that both surgery and pharmacology
run substantial risks but we have developed large scale systems to
mitigate the dangers. The acceptability of these activities is
predicated on the idea that under the right conditions an otherwise
dangerous action (cutting someone open or feeding them a toxic
substance) is morally good. It is not adequate to reject genetic
manipulations wholesale, it is necessary, instead, to establish
robust features in the larger system in which genetic manipulation
activities are embedded to minimize or eliminate the morally
objectionable circumstances that can make it reprehensible.
My friend's argument, as I remember it,
was founded on the following moral logic which has three lines of
logic that support the conclusion, one line that I agree with and two
that I do not. There are two relevant facts of life are crucial to
the discomfiture I experienced as I took in his argument:
1. Moral Imperative: Sacred things
must be revered and kept pure.
2. Fact of Life #1: Sacredness is a
human construct that it is not arbitrary, it has a moral component
that is ultimately about how we create well-being. Applications of
the concept of “sacredness” that do not contribute to well-being
are delusional.
3. Fact of Life #2:
Communities/Ecologies make on-going sacrifices of the individual
living beings (members) that make up the community/ecology to the
greater good of the Community/Ecology surviving and thriving. This
can be stated more generally as a universal system dynamic in which a
higher level unit of organization always sacrifices some lower level
units of organization in order to survive and thrive, though the same
sacrifices can also kill it if they get out of hand.
4. Life is sacred since it is
inherently necessary to the well-being of living things, therefore,
any manipulation
(a) of life itself,
(b) that pollutes life, or
(c) that is irreverent of life,
is wrong and constitutes an evil.
5. (Rejected) The essence of life is in DNA,
(a) therefore, (Untrue) alterations to the DNA
molecule are manipulations of life itself.
6. (Rejected) The essence of a species is
contained in the set of genes (long sequences of genetic material)
within the DNA molecule of the members of that species,
(a) therefore, (Untrue) taking a gene from one
species and putting it in the DNA molecule of another species
pollutes the DNA molecule of the recipient species.
7. The lives and rights of living
beings are inherently valuable to the communities/ecologies in which
they are embedded.
(a) therefore, actions that sacrifice
the lives and rights of living beings for corporate financial gain
that does little or nothing to benefit the exploited
communities/ecologies is irreverent of life.
8. Monsanto is evil because it
(a) (Rejected) per #5, manipulated life itself.
(b) (Rejected) per #6, polluted the DNA of some
species with the genes of another species,
(c) per #7, has taken actions that
sacrifice the lives and rights of other beings for corporate
financial gain that did little or nothing to benefit the exploited
communities/ecologies. (true)
I do not have a problem with the
conclusion that Monsanto is evil, but I do not agree with two of the
three lines of argument that lead to that conclusion. Monsanto has
not manipulated life itself, they have manipulated genes which are
NOT the essence of life. Moving the molecular components of DNA from
one species to another is not much different than copying a word from
one wiki to another. While it is possible to make potentially harmful
changes the fact is that the way that living systems and wiki-enabled
web sites work those changes are both unlikely to be viable in the
first place and if they reach viability they will likely have only
localized effects within the larger system. There are certainly
features of the larger system that have enabled Monsanto to act in
evil ways and those larger features need to change, but GMO's are not
the evil. Corporate power to act without moral restraint is the evil.
I am not against GMO's. But, the
immoral use of GMO's should be a part of the conversation about
abuses of corporate power and how we should be reigning it in on many
fronts. Corporations should not be allowed to act in ways that either
violate the sacredness of life through utter destruction of living
communities (such as mountaintop removal mining or clear cutting
forests) or provide insubstantial benefit to those communities of
life that offer up some of their members for exploitation.
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