WESLEYANISM AND GENETIC ENGINEERING
By Harold B. Kuhn
Asbury TheologicaI Seminary
Unprecedented advances in the field of the
biomedical sciences have brought it into the range of possibility for man to modify and
even radically alter the human genetic endowment. This capability has clashed with
formerly accepted attitudes with respect to the inviolable nature of the human
reproductive system. The gap between society and science is not only exposed but also
raw-edged. Unless reasonable assurances are soon given that there will not be a misuse of
techniques of genetic engineering, there may well be a social response conditioned by
fear. It seems imperative to this writer that the issues raised by the biomedical sciences
be exposed to public scrutiny-and more important still, to the scrutiny of the Christian
conscience.
The most important areas within which genetic tailoring
is being attempted are the following: mass genetic screening, in vitro (test tube)
fertilization, monogenic gene therapy, polygenic gene therapy, and cloning. To this list
may be added in utero or prenatal surgery, which would quite possibly be
facilitated by in vitro development of fetuses. The argument most frequently
advanced in support of the employment of one or more of these technological means for
genetic control is that the total number of possible genetic defects carried by the race
is increasing, and that the race's genetic load is becoming dangerously heavy.
Several reasons are adduced as causative for this. The
mutation rate in human reproduction is being vastly increased by population increase.
Contributory to this is the fact that medical science is able to maintain alive into
reproductive age many potential bearers of genetic defects (e.g., diabetics). It is
estimated that the proportion of children now being born with visible genetic defects is 1
in 20; the percentage is said to be growing.
Before we proceed further, something needs to be said at
the point of the relation of today's genetic engineering to the classic or conventional
science of eugenics-a science which in the broad sense deals with the improvement of the
human race through the isolation and control of hereditary factors.
It is standard today to speak of negative and positive
eugenics. The former is concerned primarily with the treatment of individuals and
individual ailments, whether monogenic or polygenic, without regard to the wider genetic
situation. That is to say, negative genetics makes no conscious effort
38
_"__to modify the overall condition of the
genetic pool, but rather it seeks to eliminate hereditary defects which have already
occurred in persons.
Techniques in this connection center in genetic
counseling, possible genetic screening. Objectives include possible limitation of repeated
births to parents bearing genetic defects, possible dissuasion of probable bearers of
defective offspring with respect to such matters as institutionalizing of the hopelessly
handicapped in the light of other family needs.'
Positive eugenics, on the other hand, attempts to modif~
the actual condition of the genetic pool. Feeling that the elimination of present defects
means attacking the problem too late, positive eugenics seeks to deal with the problem in
advance by applying therapeutic measures to human genes, and to utilize the information
and the genetic results thus gained for the improvement of the race, or at least for the
elimination of those elements which produce the most readily visible forms of racial
deterioration.2
This seemingly long introduction is intended to provide
the background for a consideration of the several areas within which genetic surgery is
presently undertaken. After a discussion of these, it will remain to discuss the challenge
which they present to the evangelical Christian, with special reference to those of us of
a specifically Wesleyan orientation.
I
A. In mass genetic screening, the size of the project is
a major factor which distinguishes it from the so-called negative eugenics. The focus
becomes, not the individual couple, but entire groups of persons, in order to determine
the possible presence of genetic disease-in the form of carriers or in actual appearance
of the disorder. Screening programs include those for the detection of the sickle-cell
trait, with its consequent sickle-cell form of anemia, and of Tay-Sachs disease, which
occurs chiefly among Jews of Eastern Europe and Asia.3
The goals of such programs are detailed in an article by
Marc Lappe, James F. Gustafson, and Richard Roblin, entitled "Ethical and Social
Issues in Screening for Genetic Disease." These goals are, in part, as follows: to
"contribute to improving the health of persons who suffer from genetic disorders, or
allow carriers of a given variant gene to make informed choices regarding reproduction, or
move toward alleviating the anxieties of families and communities faced with the prospect
of serious genetic disease."4
These objectives are laudable in themselves, since the
large majority in any group thus tested are neither carriers nor themselves afflicted.
Thus they can be given meaningful mental and emotional reassurance.
The problems which seem implicit in screening programs
are chiefly two:
first, the inadequacy of present testing procedures; and
second, the matter of the voluntary and confidential nature of the programs themselves. In
some cases, false positive reactions have been registered, to the distress of those
involved. As for the extent of the programs, there is serious concern that they may be
made compulsory within a given ethnic group, and thus exert a dehumanizing influence upon
their members. Also, the question of confi39
™__dentiality enters: Should insurance
companies have access, even on demand, to such information? Thus, false diagnoses and
accessible public records constitute genuine problems at this point.
B. In vitro fertilization and related
experimentation is coming under increasing scrutiny today. So-called test-tube
fertilization has been contemplated for several decades. A landmark in the progress of
this technique occurred in the early 1960s, when an Italian researcher, Dr. Danielle
Petrucci, with the assistance of his colleagues Dr. Laura de Pauli and Raffale Bernaboo,
fertilized a human ovum in a test tube and kept it alive for 29 days, until it attained
the size of a small garden pea. A later conceptus lived for 59 days. The destruction of
both of these triggered papal opposition, causing Dr. Petrucci to stop his researches.5
A wide range of experiments, actual or projected,
cluster about in vitro sperm-and-ovum operations, each raising possible problems
and perils. Along with fertilizations aimed at demonstrating the length of period in which
a test-tube conceptus can be kept alive and providing observable specimens of early
embryonic development, in vitro experiments are being utilized for the purpose of
developing artificial uteruses and especially artificial placentas. The ultimate goal here
is, of course, the development of a full-term fetus without the presence of a maternal
body.
Another sought-for objective is that of artificial
inovulation, in which an ovum may be transferred to the test-tube, artificially
fertilized, and transplanted into the fallopian tube or uterus of a foster mother. This
would be designed for employment by two classes of women: those who want "their
own" children but due to professional plans or other personal reasons wish to avoid
personal experience of pregnancy; and as well, those who for medical reasons find
contraindications for pregnancy. In either case, presently developed techniques do not,
many qualified persons fear, offer sufficient safeguards against damage or even death to
the transferred embryo.6
The presence of an embryo in vitro offers
opportunity for a wide range of possible experiments upon it. It is difficult to sort out
those experiments which are within the probable range of feasibility from those which are
merely dreams in the minds of genetic engineers. But several are at present the subject of
serious and active discussion. Among them are: the excision and addition of genes, the
repair or modification of genes, and the injection of various modifying substances into
the developing embryo designed to effect genetic changes within it. None of these is
without the element of risk to human material, and raises the question of the rights
of a fertilized ovum or zygote at time of c6nception, and of the developing embryo.
C. Gene therapy, both monogenic and polygenic, seems
uppermost in the minds of many biomedical specialists. It gbes without saying that traits
or qualities produced monogenetically (that is, by a single gene or by one gene of a
allelic [allelomorphic] pair) are vastly more simple than those produced by a number of
genes. Thus genetic surgery which confines itself to monogenic traits or qualities would
carry fewer hazards than that dealing
40
ÿÿ1__with complex traits of polygenic
origin. Such traits as skin and hair color or bodily shapes are polygenic traits whose
mode of inheritance is far from clear.7 No less than nine genes are found to be
involved in the fertility or sterility of one type of Drosophila or fruit fly.8
It follows that even the simpler forms of genetic
surgery require a fantastically detailed internal analysis of the cell's genetic data.
Nevertheless, genetic surgery is definitely "with us," for those who project its
use have already developed the art of microsurgery to a point at which the basic
building-blocks in human genetics are capable of being treated by means of it. Nor is
microsurgery the only technique by which genetic surgery is to be effected. It is
projected to affect basic genetic materials-and ultimately the gene pool of the race-by
means of enzymes or of viruses.9
This latter-genetic alteration by means of viruses-at
first thought impresses us as contradictory, since we usually regard viruses as our
enemies. Present investigation of the viruses indicates that they are quasi-living things,
having a coating of protein and a core of nucleic acid. They have no mechanism for
ingestion and metabolism of food, nor for reproduction. It is the understanding of this
writer that we do not yet fully understand the ways in which viruses invade cells and
preempt their metabolic and reproductive processes. But cells seem to obey the virus,
which always demands the production of more viruses.
AlQng with this, viruses effect significant changes on
the cell's nucleus, through the working of its own DNA. Now, some viruses have the ability
to move with ease in and out of human cells, doing little or no damage. Two of these are
the so-called Shope virus and the 5V40 type. Such a viral transduction may, it is
believed, serve to modify the genetic code; those working to develop this form of genetic
transformation envision the alteration and resynthesizing of the inner structure of human
genes.10
Genetic surgery thus promises to combine microsurgery
and chemical and viral infusions. Dr. Edward L. Tatum, Nobel Prize winner, forecasts the
use of laser beams for the erasing of unwanted genes, and the replication of destroyed
genetic materials by the use of enzymes. Some go further and suggest the genetic
redesigning of the entire human body. Should this prove to be possible, the sky would
become the limit for human experimentation.
D. Cloning represents another area where the exercise of
genetic tailoring is envisioned. Briefly stated, cloning is a process by which an ovum is
denucleated, by microsurgery or by laser beam, and its nucleus replaced by a somatic cell,
often from intestinal tissue, of a donor. This body cell switches on the denucleated ovum
in much the same way that the male reproductive cell would in normal fertilization. The "clone" which results has the same chromosome number as the engrafted cell, and
is of the same gender as the donor-iji reality, it is an identical twin, a generation
later. Thus far, clones have been produced in fruit flies, frogs, and salamanders; it is
projected, however, that cloning of mammals will shortly be effected, since the technical
difficulties seem surmountable.~1
Will this technique be applied to humans? Some predict
that it will be done so with success yet in this decade. The problems will be many: What
41
will be the adjustments needed if two (or more) of the
same genotype occur but a generation apart? Will clones be sterile? (This seems to be the
case with cloned salamanders and frogs.) What will be the effect upon the human gene pool
if clones prove to be fertile? More important still, does cloning call up the spectres of
Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984? It is in any case possible that
cloned individuals would lack the adaptability to changing environments which seem to be
linked to the genetic process of bisexual reproduction. And if clones returned to normal
reproduction with members of the opposite sex, what would be the potential for an
accumulation of negative genes and mutations to be fed back into the gene pool?
It follows that the various projected and anticipated
forms of genetic engineering bristle with unanswered questions and bear within themselves
major hazards, not to mention grave moral questions. It is to these latter that we now
turn.
II
The broad spectrum of techniques for genetic engineering
does, of course, pose a variety of problems and raise a large number of issues. These may
be divided into four types: the legal, the medical, the ethical, and the religious or
spiritual.
This is scarcely the place or time to undertake a survey
of the legal issues which will inevitably be raised as biomedical research is pursued in
the areas under discussion. It should be observed that legal safeguards seem inadequate at
the moment, and there is little reason to suppose that these will be raised until
spectacular breakthroughs make it imperative for legislators to step into the situation.
Some feel that any such effort will prove to be "too little and too late."
A. Objections to avant-garde experimentation with
human reproduction and human inheritance are raised from time to time upon medical
grounds. The most telling set of warnings from the medical point of view with which this
writer is acquainted is found in published form in an article in the Journal of the
American Medical Association 220, no.10 (June 5, 1972): 1346-359. In this carefully
drawn essay, Paul Ramsey, the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion in Princeton
University, details a series of issues which evidence that "this artificial mimicry
of nature . . . in the matter of fertilization" (i.e., in vitro fertilization
and the forms of experimentation which grow out of it) contravenes the historic purpose(s)
of the medical profession, which is to prevent injury to human life, and in case of
injury, to save life. It would extend this paper beyond tolerable limits to survey the
steps by which he demonstrated, conclusively we think, that such experimentation serves,
not to conserve life, but to create, beyond permissible limits, hazards to life.
B. The ethical questions raised by the several forms of
genetic manipulation are numerous; they center around issues which serve to relate them
rather intimately to religious/spiritual questions. It is helpful, however, to try to
isolate some purely ethical issues before proceeding to see the religious involvement of
them.
42
¶É__There arises, perhaps first of all,
the ethical question which springs from the complicated nature of inheritance and the
consequent factor of artificially created risk. The nature of today's genetic "load" (i.e., "the array of mutant genes found within the gene pools of
populations")12 rests of course upon the almost infinite intricacy of
genetic inheritance. Over several millennia of human history, there has developed a
complex of what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin calls "fragments of the world." Our
Maker has built into the mechanisms of human inheritance sequential safeguards by which
even the perversity of the race-at times its sexual perversity-does not succeed in
breaking down the continuum of human life. But these techniques are built in; and
it may be questioned whether even scientific man knows sufficiently much of the
complexities of the genetic structure of the race to undertake such radical modifications
of it.
The ethical issue appears most visibly in the
possibility of the interruption or subversion of the normal streams of inheritance. This
would, in the long run, be more damaging than the production, evidently quite possible, of
monsters and chimerical specimens. The treatment or possible destruction of these would
certainly have a strong ethical involvement. But how much more serious might be the "surprise" effect of the immediate contamination of the genetic stream-say by
means of a return to bisexual forms of reproduction by cloned individuals.
Ethical problems likewise emerge when genetic
experimentation leads-as it quite probably will-to institutionalized control of human
reproduction. Such problems as: the right to privacy, the right to marry, the right to
procreate-these may well be raised in critical form in our own lifetimes. Such rights will
be increasingly called into question if gene therapy for disease be extended to similar
therapy for the modification of socially undesirable or disruptive behavior. Moreover, it
seems clear, as Paul Ramsey suggests, that there will be cumulative "successes"
in genetic experimentation, leading step by step to policies of "immense disvalue for
the human community "13
The objection is sometimes raised that there is really
little reason to suppose that the more drastic forms of genetic engineering (e.g., actual
gene surgery or cloning) will actually be undertaken by biomedical scientists. This
represents, we think, an inadequate reading of history. Such things will be undertaken for
precisely the same reason that the climbing of Mount Everest is repeatedly
attempted-because it is there. Thus, the "wedge argument" or the "camel's
nose in the tent" objections become genuine ethical issues. And those who undertake
to guide mankind into Brave New World will quite probably exercise their scientific
activities at a tempo which stops nowhere short of the limit which society will tolerate.
The ethical implications of this are, we believe, inacceptable to the ethically sensitive.
C. The religious and spiritual implications represent a
refinement and a specialization of the ethical objections to the more radical forms of
genetic experimentation. At this point, it needs to be said that some forms of the
spiritual life respond more directly than others to peril-challenges made by novel types
of social engineering. In general, liberal forms of Christianity are
43
more inclined to be pragmatic and "open"-and
to accept with greater eagerness new advances, particularly in the social sciences and in
the areas of the modification of human behavior. These forms are, of course, less
disturbed by the materialistic orientation of genetic engineers than are Evangelicals.14
Forms of spiritual life which retain the major features
of historic Christianity are more likely to view such matters with reserve. This is due in
part
-but not entirely-to the conservatism which is part of
the accompanying tradition. But we venture to suggest that part, at least, of this reserve
stems from valid insights and a Spirit-given sense of threat to the deeper values of
humanhood as bearing, even if now in wounded form, the image of God. Evangelicals who
concern themselves with such matters are concerned with what may happen to the human dimension
as the basic elements involved in the ongoing of the race are made matters of
experimentation at their deepest level.15
The assignment of topics for this Ninth Annual Meeting
of the Wesleyan Theological Society included, in the case of this paper, the element of
the specifically Wesleyan implications for the subject, or more precisely, the
implications of the subject for the Wesleyan understanding of things. It goes without
saying that our theological tradition contains no direct mandate, affirmative or negative,
for manipulation or control of the human reproductive process. We will need, therefore, to
content ourselves in these closing minutes with suggestions concerning the possible
bearing of the major thrust of our tradition upon the issues in hand.
It is suggested that, as we are a part of the broader
evangelical movement of our time, we will have much in common in our social outlook and
social critique with evangelical groups within Lutheranism, within modified Calvinism, and
within the charismatic movements. We share, for example, with other Evangelicals in the
rejection of the view, so common in our time, that the legal is the moral. Our society
does pressure us in this direction; but it belongs to our genius as part of the body of
Christ to insist that the right rests upon higher ground than legality.
We are in agreement, too, with the general evangelical
understanding of the dignity of man-a dignity which has survived the Fall. Thus, whatever
calls into question that dignity and whatever tends to cause human worth to be judged by
some "index of performance rather than by man's high ancestry, must be and is
repudiated by us. Again, we refuse to set up criteria for human worth upon the shallow
basis of physical perfection or even human symmetry. Thus, we would, in agreement with
other heirs of historic Christianity, reject the proposal that a fetus which was shown by
amniocentis to be less than fully "normal" (e.g., in full possession of a normal
complement of limbs) should be aborted.
In common with other Evangelicals, Wesleyans will agree
with Paul Ramsey that "men ought not to play God before they learn to be men, and
after they have learned to be men they will not play God."16 It is
possible that we as Wesleyans will place an overall higher estimate upon man as man because
of our conviction that the unlimited dignity of our Lord's selfoffering at Golgotha
renders all human persons salvable. Without wishing to
44
assign less lofty motives for the recognition of the
dignity of the individual person to those accepting, explicitly or implicitly, a view of a
limited atonement, we do believe that the view of Christ's atonement as adequate for all
who will meet its terms has valuable theological significance.
Again, the Wesleyan understanding of the role of the
human will has implications for the concepts of its thoughtful adherents for sexual
reproduction, and for the wider purposes of sexuality for humans which ought to be broader
than those drawn from more limited conceptions of the role of human volition. These
implications need, it seems to this writer, to be thought out and articulated far more
fully than they have been to date.
Finally, the Wesleyan understanding of perfection (i.e.,
in the "evangelical" sense as opposed to its quantitative and absolute usages)
has a direct bearing upon the question in hand. The objective of the genetic engineers
seems to be, not merely the production of novelty, nor the correction of human
imperfection(s), but the ultimate production of "perfect" humans. The spelling
out of this quest usually includes the achievement of individuals with large physical and
mental prowess. Seldom do the engineers raise questions concerning moral and spiritual
excellence as a genetic idea. The understanding of things human in our tradition stands as
a perpetual challenge to the ideology which seems to inform the engineers of humanity.
The Wesleyan view of man understands perfection in
dimensions radically different from every view which omits the element of man's high
ancestry (the imago dei) and which excludes the reality of a historical calamity
(the Fall) in which the first human pair involved the race. In the light of the biblical
view of man, perfection inheres, not in the attainment (by whatever means) of physical or
mental enlargement. It consists rather in moral and spiritual renovation-renovation which
lies wholly outside either the vision or the techniques of human engineers, and which is
available to man solely on the basis of supernatural intervention, from beyond man.
The expectation of the perfection of man in terms of
modification of the genetic elements contributory to his empirical presence in the world
is, in this light, an impossible one. The Wesleyan understanding of perfection calls into
question, not onry as futile but as presumption, the technological mimicry of the work of
the Creator, who endowed our first ancestors with dimensions which place him essentially
beyond the reach of technological manipulation. For man's perfection transcends in
superlative measure his physical and mental endowment.
REFERENCE NOTES
1. For a carefully written discussion of negative forms
of eugenic techniques,
including a section entitled "Clinical Genetics and
Counseling," see Kurt Hirschhorn,
"Human Genetics," in the Journal of the
American Medical Association for April 30,
1973.
45
4. In the New England Journal of Medicine, issue of May 25,
1972, p.1129.
5. David Rorvik, Brave New Baby, pp.79 f.
6. Ibid., pp.113-16.
8. Ibid., p.362.
9. Rorvik, Brave New Baby, pp.96 if. Leroy Augenstein, Come,
Let Us Play God, pp. 20ff.
10. Paul Ramsey, Fabricated Man, pp. 44f., 101 f., 11Sf.
11. Rorvik, Brave New Baby, Chapter III, especially pp.108-li.
Ramsey, Fabricated Man, pp.73 f.
12. H. J. Muller, "Our Load of Mutations," in Bruce Wallace, Topics
in Population Genetics, p.169.
13. In Journal of the American Medical Association 220, no.11:
1481.
14. Ramsey, Fabricated Man, pp. 92ff.
15. Nelson, Human Medicine, pp. 25ff.
16. Ramsey, Fabricated Man, p.138.
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