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HUMAN GENETICS AND THE STATEMENT OF UNNATURALNESS

1. Introduction Both the citizens and the decision-makers are concerned about the naturalness of the new genetics. In Eurobarometers of years 1999 and 2002 citizens' views about naturalness of procedures and outcomes of the new biotechnologies were evaluated through several different questions. The interviewees were asked to react to statements such as "Modern technology has upset the balance of nature"; "Therapeutic cloning threatens the natural order of things"; "Even if animal cloning has advantages, it is basically against nature"; and "Genetically modified food threatens the natural order of things"(Gaskell et al. 2003, INRA 2000). The interviewees found both the procedures and outcomes of the new technologies highly unnatural. For example, 73% of Europeans tend to agree with the claim that modern technology has upset the balance of nature. Only 17% of citizens tend to disagree with this claim and 10% of them are indecisive (Gaskell et al. 2003:39). The interviewees were also asked about their degree of agreement (1 = totally disagree, 5 = totally agree) with the statement "Even if animal cloning has advantages, it is basically against nature". The mean of the degrees of agreement was 4.24, which was the highest mean among statements about animal cloning. For example, the mean of the degrees of agreement about the statement "Animal cloning is simply not necessary" was 3.85 (INRA 2000:39). Moreover, group interviews conducted in Denmark may even better indicate the central role of naturalness in public debates about modern genetics. In these interviews, the issue of naturalness was spontaneously taken up by the participants within all groups and they tended to consider genetics rather unnatural. For example, 71% of the interviewees strongly agreed and 16% somehow agreed with the statement that genetically modified food is fundamentally unnatural (Madsen et al. 2002:269). Even though claims and arguments about the unnaturalness of genetics are frequently stated in public debates, and although many citizens and decision-makers consider them as central to gene ethics, their exact meaning and moral significance has not been widely and explicitly analysed. Such analysis is however urgently needed, not least because of the fact that in non-academic discussions people tend to connect naturalness with moral acceptability and consider unnatural entities and happenings as morally suspicious. The arguments appealing to naturalness are not exceptional in academic ethics either, but their scope seems to be restricted to environmental questions and to the ethics of biological conservation (see for example Angermeier 1994, Angermeier 2000, Lee 1999, Lee 2003). In other ethical contexts, naturalness is often considered morally irrelevant (see for example Karjalainen and Hayry 1992:12-13, Matthews 1988, Sober 1988:180). I will next analyse statements and arguments appealing to unnaturalness in the context of human genetics. To put it more strictly, I will analyse the possible interpretations of the so-called statement of unnaturalness, according to which, practices and/or outcomes of human genetics are unnatural and, thus, morally undesirable. By human genetics I mean all purposeful procedures done to human genes, such as gene tests and gene therapy and those gene transfers in which human genes are transferred to animals (or animal genes to humans). The analysis of the statement of unnaturalness consists of answering the following questions. What kind of different meanings do the terms 'natural' and 'unnatural' have? Which of those meanings are morally relevant in the context of human genetics? Are some procedures or some outcomes of human genetics unnatural in the sense that implies moral undesirability? 2. Sensibility of the statement of unnaturalness Arguments appealing to naturalness or unnaturalness are often answered by claiming that any discussion about differences in naturalness is senseless. …