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    Ghislain Perreau – Biotechnologies and individual liberties

    biotechnology

    The issue of knowing the new boundaries between individual freedom – the freedom of everyone to use their body – and prevention poses a lot of problems. It is true, in the biotechnology sector, we are invited to define if the use of new technologies that aim at the improvement of humans should or shouldn’t be controlled and limited for reasons of prevention and precaution. In order to answer this question, we can study the positions of thinkers like John Harris, Ronald Βailey or James Hughes.[1]

    [Read the French language version]


    Is the use of biotechnologies an insult to the freedom of future children?


    An objection to the free use of biotechnologies is that their use in reproduction like, for example, the genetic modifications of embryos, is an insult to the freedom of the latter, and consequently harmful to them. This idea stems partly from the fact that we have some obligations for the next generations and it is our duty to delimit the practices that could harm them, for reasons of prevention and precaution. This is what John Harris expresses when he declares that we ought to not legate a decadent environment to our descendants and that we also have some responsibilities regarding their genetic inheritance.


    According to him, though, whatever we do in the present will have an impact in the future and in this sense, it would be nice, if we are going to be using biotechnologies and reproductive technologies freely, not to act in a way that may harm future generations, because this would be the only obstacle for banning those techniques. What Harris is trying to show is that there are two ways to cause damages. On one hand, we can provoke harm acting in a “positive” way, purposely modificating certain things that could bring about harms in the future. But, on the other hand, we can reach the same result “letting things be as they are, knowing that there will be a damage”, acting, that is, in a “negative” way.


    In this case, the argument against the use of reproductive technologies is reversed, because in this case we cannot forbid their use just because it is possible that they may harm future generations. We can indeed consider that our lack of intervention for the modification of certain defective genetic traits of our descendants is, also, a way to harm them. After that, the argument for banning the use of reproductive technologies can not be based any more on the simple fact that we have some obligations to those who will come after us. The fact that we act to modify something is not morally different from not acting, when we are aware of the consequences.


    However, according to another argument, we don’t have the right to modify our childrens’ genetic traits, because something like that would mean that we deprive them of the liberty to chose and it would be a decision taken without their consent. Harris’ answer shows us, to begin with, that the sense of a childs’ consent is not practicable when we are about to define if the use of reproductive technologies is legitimate, because this argument is completely irrational. It is true, it would be like saying that we should not interfere to the modifications of a children traits before its birth, because then it’s acting against his or her consent. We see, though, that this argument isn’t solid, because if we were to ask for the consent of a child for every decision we take on his or her behalf, it would not survive the first day of its life, because it would not be in a position to answer. And this goes for the whole part of the beginning of its life, even when it is no longer an infant. We remind that, from the moment of its birth, a child has to suffer many medical interventions without which it could not survive and that, consequently, some interventions that depend directly on the parents’ will are proved to be more than necessary for its well being and health. These interferences represent, at that point, a danger to the child, but in this case it appears like we are acting on his or her behalf, exclusively to his of her benefit and in order to prevent future anguish and harm.


    The principle of precaution



    A logical attitude would be to say that decisions regarding the use of biotechnologies, like the potentiality to allow them or not, cannot be based exclusively on personal opinions, religious beliefs, aversion and not even on certain groundless arguments. A rational examination of the benefits as well as the possible risks that arise from the use of these techniques is therefore necessary before taking any decision.


    However, the problem is that no-one possesses the absolute truth in any field. Consequently, it would it would be logical to adopt a liberal position, according to which in order to make decisions regarding strictly people and do not harm others, we should let everyone chose freely. Despite all this, it is normal that the State could interfere in those decisions, if it is clear that their consequences can harm others


    Another version of this argument is the “principle of precaution”, that has been intensely criticized by certain authors John Harris, Ronald Bailey or James Hughes. Actually, according to this principle, no technology should be used unless all the dangers it might create are absolutely known. Such a position could seem balmy and the result of common sense. In reality, though, it harms the progress of science and, moreover, it is inapplicable. As Ronald Bailey proves in his Liberation Biology, such a principle cannot be applied, since the consequences of certain technologies on the social, medical of technical level cannot be totally known beforehand (p. 243). And in order to show at which point this criterion for the choice of technologies that should be allowed is high, Bailey and Hughes support that even aspirin would not be safe, according to the principle of precaution, because of some of its side effects.


    The problem is, as Hughes notes, that the possibilities that biotechnologies can offer us involve “huge risks and huge benefits”. It is, therefore, essential, the decision to allow the use of these technologies to be based on something else than the principle of precaution and everyone to be able to decide if they want to be benefited by those technologies or not. If it is true that some inventions have evidently disastrous implications, and everything that may emerge from those has to be examined, this does not mean that an equally strict criterion should be applied on the new technologies. This is because, as Harris notes, the principle of precaution theoretically means that “nothing should be done for the first time”, which is an irrational and harmful thing as far as individual freedom is concerned and human progress and its route to the improvement of its condition.


    The boundaries of the liberal view regarding the use of biotechnologies


    However, despite the arguments in favor of the free use of biotechnologies, we can express a reservation concerning the liberal view of the authors we studied. It is about an in depth observation that can be a boundary to the free use of biotechnologies, according to everyone’s evaluation. In essence, it is about an objection that Hughes himself expresses in his Citizen Cyborg when he states that the supporters of freedom undoubtedly pay too much attention to freedom and this could have harmful consequences, especially in the use of reproductive technologies (p. 141). That is because, considering that the state should not interfere to the choices that parents have as far as reproduction is concerned, unless there are sufficient reasons, it is possible to be driven to a society where deaf parents, for example, could, given the means, succumb their children to genetic modifications in order for them to be deaf as well. Consequently, what appears as problematic in such a liberal perception of democracy is that we have to make a choice between those two attitudes. We can, on one hand, define what attitudes are harmful to the development of a child and its intelligence, for example, with the aim to forbid those practices. But we can equally consider, and this is the example that Hughes gives, that since we do not forbid pregnant women to smoke, we should let parents in full freedom concerning reproduction, simply by preventing them from making some choices that are considered bad.


    The problem is, therefore, that in such a society, the danger of abusing people themselves is much bigger than in a society where the uses of biotechnologies and reproduction technologies are restricted by law. However, Hughes considers that even in a society that sets the criterion of intervention so high and that gives so much value to individual freedom, parents would almost always act in a manner to improve their child and not to harm it. From then on, we should accept to pay the price of some abuse and some harm, in order to respect as much as possible the freedom of childbearing and the freedom in relation to our body. This is exactly, though, the critique that we can address to such a liberal concept of political organization, because apart from leading to abuse, it requires the sacrifice of the freedom of some in order to allow the freedom of a larger number of people.


    However things stand though, Hughes thinks that we will be obliged to take some decisions and make choices that will sometimes be, hard and very complicated, but this is a necessary condition for a free society.


    The terminus is, then, if we want to believe in the possibility of creating a better society, where people will be able to have a better life, a longer life and in agreement with their deeper convictions. Another terminus is, if we also want to believe in the responsibility and the intelligence that are interwoven with human nature.


    Conclusively, the solution to the problem of restriction of the use of biotechnologies for the benefit of prevention and foresight is compromise. We can think of a compromise that will allow the use of biotechnologies, allowing at the same time the political power, via scientific organizations as independent and neutral as possible, to set some boundaries. On the contrary, those boundaries will not be set unless some practices radically harm the health of people or their moral integrity and under no circumstance because they will be in conflict with personal views.



    Note

    [1] See John Harris, Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); James Hughes, Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond To The Redesigned Human Of The Future (New York: Westview Press, 2004); and Ronald Bailey, Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution (New York: Prometheus Books, 2005)


    Special issue: transhumanism
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    Ghislain Perreau / / webpage

    in the second year of his studies in philosophy at the university of Sorbonne Paris-IV

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