Crossing Species Boundaries Is Even More Controversial than

You Think
Thompson, Paul B., 1951-
The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 3, Number 3, Summer
2003, pp. 14-15 (Article)
Published by The MIT Press
For additional information about this article
Access Provided by UNESP-Universidade Estabul Paulista Julio de Mesquita Filho at 07/06/10 1:31PM GMT
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ajb/summary/v003/3.3thompson.html
14 ajob Summer 2003, Volume 3, Number 3
2003 by The MIT Press
Crossing Species Boundaries Is Even More
Controversial than You Think
Paul B. Thompson, Purdue University
Jason Scott Robert and Franoise Baylis (2003) argue that
scientic projects such as injecting human embryonic
stem cells into an early mouse embryo raise hackles be-
cause they challenge a boundary criterion critical to the
logical coherence of moral belief systems that privilege hu-
man beings. They might well be right, but the form of
their argument presumes that such privileging is largely
noncontroversial in bioethics. They write,
If we breach the clear (but fragile) moral demarcation line be-
tween human and nonhuman animals, the ramications are
considerable, not only in terms of sorting out our obligations
to these new beings but also in terms of having to revisit
some of our current patterns of behavior toward certain hu-
man and nonhuman animals. (emphasis in original)
Perhaps they intend this as an explanatory claim about the
broad public reactions of disgust toward transspecies work
involving human genetic materials, but I read them to be
making the claim that there is a clear moral demarcation
line between human beings and animals that is widely ac-
cepted among ethicists.
Clearly this is false, as is their earlier statement to the
effect that there has been no ethical controversy over
transspecies genetic manipulation of plants. In fact,
Midgley (2000) argues that a similar feeling of revulsion
over the use of genetically engineered food crops con-
stitutes sufcient moral grounds for banning them al-
together. A more recent article introduces the idea of
animal integrity as an argument against genetic manip-
ulation of animals, irrespective of whether human DNA is
involved (Bovenkerk, Brom, and Van Den Bergh 2002).
As someone who has spent the last decade working on the
ethical controversies associated with agricultural genetic
engineering (see Thompson 1997; Thompson 2003), I nd
it a bit depressing to see these issues so casually dismissed.
Absent any discussion of genetic manipulation, a frontal
assault on the moral demarcation line between human and
nonhuman animals has been ongoing for at least 30 years.
Singers Animal Liberation (1975) is reputed to be the best-
selling book by a philosopher in the twentieth century. In
fact, there is no consensus among bioethicists regarding
the demarcation between human and other species, animal
or not. Only someone whose head has been deep in the
sand of medical ethics would be tempted to make such a
suggestion.
Robert and Baylis base their broad claim on the inter-
esting and more sophisticated suggestion that simple
membership in the human species forms the basis for
human moral status, while factors such as the intent that
lies behind a nonhuman animals creation might enter into
our view of its moral standing. I believe that this claim
might have some merit were it properly qualied. First we
must acknowledge that the problem of ascertaining the
moral standing of human beings is itself quite amenable to
different situations and that membership in the human
species will not be a criterion appropriate for all of them.
It might be immoral to deny certain human beings the
right to vote, for example, yet we routinely deny children,
convicted felons, and noncitizens this right and do not
think that there is any injustice in doing so. This suggests
to me that what Robert and Baylis have hit upon is a feel-
ing that the circumstances under which a human being
has come into being should not be thought of as a justi-
cation for putting persons (or their body parts) to certain
instrumental uses, though it might be quite appropriate to
see such circumstances as relevant to the disposal of non-
human animals and their tissues.
Furthermore, it might be quite possible to ground this
feeling in a nonanthropocentric conception of moral stand-
ing. Emerging views in animal ethics emphasize geneti-
cally-based and environmentally-evolved capacities, drives
and functional needs as the basis on which any organism
should be extended moral consideration. The complexities
of human sentient experience and human capacities for so-
cially- and symbolically-derived needs provide the basis
for distinguishing between the consideration that should
be shown to human beings and that which should be
shown to chimps or gorillas. But similar distinctions es-
tablish the basis for differential treatment of great apes
when compared to sh, insects, or domesticated livestock
(DeGrazia 1996; Varner 1998). As Rollin (1995) argues,
the intent of human beings who breed or create animals
has a signicant effect on their basic biological and behav-
ioral capacities, drives, and functional needs, so there is at
least an indirect route to the kind of broad distinction that
Robert and Baylis want to draw. However, the moral ac-
ceptability of such planned modication of animal drives
and capacities has been the target of those who highlight
intrinsic value, so the relevance of such intent in estab-
lishing moral standing should not be regarded as noncon-
troversial.
More crosstalk between medical and environmental
bioethics would be a good thing, in any case.
Open Peer Commentaries
References
Bovenkerk, B., F. W. A. Brom, and D. J. Van Den Bergh. 2002. Brave
new birds: The use of animal integrity in animal ethics. Hastings
Center Report 32(1):1622.
DeGrazia, D. 1996. Taking animals seriously. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Midgely, M. 2000. Biotechnology and monstrosity. Hastings Center
Report 30(5):715.
Robert, J. S., and F. Baylis. 2003. Crossing species boundaries. The
American Journal of Bioethics 3(3):113.
Rollin, B. E. 1995. The Frankenstein syndrome: Ethical and social
issues in the genetic engineering of animals. New York: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Singer, P. 1975. Animal liberation. New York: Avon Books.
Thompson, P. B. 1997. Food biotechnology in ethical perspective.
London: Chapman and Hall.
. 2003. The environmental ethics case for crop biotechnol-
ogy: Putting science back into environmental practice. In Moral
and political reasoning in environmental practice, ed. A. Light and
A. de-Shalit, 187217. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Varner, G. 1998. In natures interests. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Summer 2003, Volume 3, Number 3 ajob 15
Open Peer Commentaries
Ethics and Species Integrity
Bernard E. Rollin, Colorado State University
In my earlier writings on genetic engineering and biotech-
nology (Rollin 1995), I distinguished three possible cate-
gories of putative socioethical concern relevant to these
modalities. The rst, which I called There are certain
things human beings were not meant to do, encompasses
various versions of the claim that genetic engineering, as
one example, is intrinsically wrongjust wrong in itself,
regardless of consequences. Examples of such an approach
are the claims that genetic engineering violates Gods
will, genetic engineering has man playing God, genetic
engineering views life as merely a bundle of chemicals,
and the notion under discussion that genetic engineering
crosses species boundaries, blurs species boundaries,
violates the natural order, and, most signicant for our
discussion, illegitimately mixes human and animal
traits.
The second category of issues is usually what claims of
the rst type devolve into when the alleged intrinsic
wrongness of, say, genetic engineering is challenged. Such
claims are transmuted into the view that genetic engineer-
ing is wrong because it will inexorably lead to bad conse-
quences. I call this category rampaging monsters. Inso-
far as no onenot even a genetic engineer totally devoid
of moral sensibilitywishes to see bad consequences re-
sult from these activities, if only so he or she will not be
shut down, this concern becomes as much a prudential as
an ethical concern, with the major ethical concern arising
in the question, how much benet morally justies how
much risk?
The nal category I call the plight of the creature,
the well-being of the newly-engineered entity. In genetic
engineering of animals this becomes the issue of harming
animals for human benet, as in genetically engineering
suffering animals as models for human diseases. In my
view the latter category presents the greatest moral chal-
lenge to genetic engineering.
Questions of the rst typethat is, those regarding
the alleged intrinsic wrongness of genetic engineering,
though widespreadare in my view examples of what I
have called a Greshams law for ethics, where bad ethical
thinking drives good ethical thinking out of circulation.
Like Jason Scott Robert and Franoise Baylis (2003), I
have argued that the arguments about species barriers
(particularly mixing human and animal genes) rest on a
mistaken, biblical or Aristotelian view of species as xed
and immutable rather than being slices of a dynamic, ever-
changing process. Also like the authors, I have tried to
show that both common sense and the writings of some
scientists tend to perpetuate the view that accords onto-
logical/valuational pride of place to the idea of species.
Their analytical critique of such a move is, in my view, ex-
emplary. If the notion of species is disputed, vague, or in-
determinate, we cannot tell with any exactitude where one
species begins and another ends, including the geneti-
cally-manipulated human species.
Against this background the authors attempt to deter-
mine why people continue to see crossing species as mor-
ally problematic. Their argument is, in essence, that how-
ever metaphysically and biologically problematic the
concept of species might be, it is built into moral practice:
notwithstanding the claim that biologically species are
uid, people believe that species identities and boundaries
are indeed xed, and in fact make everyday moral decisions
on the basis of this belief. The notion of xed species de-