Science, Technology & Bioethics

Transcription

1 Science, Technology & Bioethics Opening Stanza of T. S. Eliot's Choruses from the Rock The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven, The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit. o perpetual revolution of configured stars, o perpetual recurrence of determined seasons, o world of spring and autumn, birth and dying The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to GOD. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust. Discuss: Come up with five effects that technology has had on your life for good or for bad. Bioethics in the News: BioArt Washington State and Oregon (along with Canada) have Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia Suicide tourists go to Switzerland regularly, pay good money, and get helped with their death Human enhancement - make artificial limbs that are better than the original (360 degree hands) Artificial Intelligence CONSTRUCTION OF CHILDREN Surrogacy - on the rise. Way to make money. Growth in the fertility industry. Growth in egg donations (Harvard eggs going for $30,000 in 2010). "the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. Stephen Hawking Advances in fertility industry - use the engine of a Harvard egg and mix it with the nucleus of her own egg, so the child will be brilliant but still look like you. Find better sperm, and find somebody else to carry the child. IVF No longer reproduction, but now reconstruction. Transhumanism - attempts to live forever Organ snatching. People lying dead on the street with organs missing. Huge market

2 Kidneys for sale on Craigslist Pregnant men? Transgenderism Our bodies should not be accepted as they are; use technology to remake ourselves. Science, Technology, and Technopoly In the 1960s, it seemed well-established that the future of ethical reflection would be found in what Science had to tell us. In London, 1962, scientist Jacob Bronowski announced, I am, therefore, not in the least ashamed to be told by somebody else that my values, because they are grounded in my science, are relative, and his are given by God. My values, in my opinion, come from as objective and definitive a source as any god, namely the nature of the human being That makes my values richer, I think, and it makes them no less objective, no less real, than any values that can be read in the Testaments. I think that in time the facts of science are going to make us become less Christian. There is eventually bound to be a conflict of values. Francis Crick What does Scientific Naturalism value? 1. The pursuit of certainty 2. Binary approaches to truth 3. The pursuit of accuracy. 4. The pursuit of control. 5. It values technique, that is, what tools could be made to gain knowledge/mastery over the world and how they could be instrumental to achieve an end. To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Abraham Lincoln And so It is important to remember that the cultural context in which science evolved was primarily technological that is, the focus was on the practical purposes for the scientific knowledge gained. Society has sought to make things and use things to gain more understanding, information and knowledge. In this, technology is the tool the means to achieve this. What s more, we are told that technology is simply a neutral tool. I mean, it is something that we all use for our purposes and is neither good nor bad. And yet, we are going to argue that the modern commitment to technology has quite significant ethical and philosophical implications not only in what we do, but how we think about what we do and why we do it!

3 Our Western culture has devoted great energy towards making practical applications of the scientific knowledge that we are gaining. But what are the factors that shape how we think of application? Thin Ethics: Usually what is at play is the idea of principleism. Prinicipleism is the formation of morality based on humanness and assumes a base morality of humanity. In many ways, it is a secularized form of ethics which ends up ignoring questions of purpose, design, and destiny. Instead, it concentrates on utility, and how something can be used or not used well. What is taken into consideration is often effectiveness and efficiency. In bioethics, thick arguments originally lost out not because they were worse, but because they were not useful to the people who were providing the resources. John H. Evans Science, Bioethics & Religion In the end, we are preoccupied with making things (homo faber) and using the world well (read - efficiently) than we have been in knowing the world (homo sapiens - in the Biblical sense - admiring, cherishing it). Our interest in knowledge is for the sake of putting it to use. How do things work? Discuss: What modern movies do you think best engage with the nature and impact of technology over our lives? How do they do so? How do scientism & technology shape the way we think and live? Anthropocentric (man-centred) thinking Focus on Manipulation rather than working with Sceptical - in our thinking, the default has become that science has a better handle on reality than any competing lens through which to see the world. This leads to scientism which essentially argues that only science is trustworthy to understand, explicate, and deal with reality. Therefore, science is the only positive force to understand the world, and science is thus viewed as good, and the appropriate technology is also good. Ethics are Pragmatic - connected to the pragmatic agendas inherent within the scientific enterprise - always how, never why. Distraction: Device paradigm - focuses our attention towards technical activities instead of activities which bring meaning and significance.

4 Shifts us away from the what and the why towards the how Restless activism A growing focus on comforts and convenience led by what Max Weber called specialists without spirit and sensualists without heart. Anti-teleological - uninterested in the questions of final purposes Social order is increasingly seen as a technical problem that can be solved by technical means. Thus, we see the increased use of technology by the modern state to exert control over society and the world. Results: Our questions are limited - Modern technology has drawn a boundary around how we can interpret the human condition and fixed the horizons for how we see the world. The only questions we ask when doing anything is What does it do? and How does it work? not What is it? and Why is it? The [manipulative] knowledge does not inspect; it analyzes. It does not construct a picture of thee world, but a formula. Its desire is to achieve power so as to bring force to bear on things, a law that can be formulated rationally. Here we have the basis and character of its dominion: compulsion, arbitrary compulsion devoid of all respect.the new desire for mastery does not in any sense follow natural courses or observe natural proportions. Indeed, it treats these with complete indifference. The new mastery posits its aims arbitrarily on rational grounds Our thinking is affected - We are so Romano Guardini immersed in this that we can no longer step back out of it. Incapable of discerning meaning other than what we make - meaning becomes socially constructed We value Making over Receiving Abstract Thinking Eclipse of God from our lives Removal of mystery We are preoccupied with planning We have become a fix-it generation Suffering Myopic - can t see the big picture anymore Depersonalized relationships

5 Medicine & Bioethics 1 Discuss: What are the particular ways that you approach medicine that are specifically shaped by your faith? Think about an atheist and her approach to medicine. In practical ways, how do you differ from her in your approach to medicine? If ethics gets separated from the gospel, it will become legalism. We need to look at ethics in light of the Gospel. Why bioethics is one of the more important issues we need to attend to For one, we didn't have anything to do with the start of the world. We weren't there, and didn't participate in anything. There is also a lot we simply don t understand about origins. Now, we do have a lot more to do with the beginning of life and the nature and quality of life. All life - plant, animal and human life. What s more, we have a lot to do with death and dying as well. Too often, we end up taking creative powers that really aren't ours to take and impose them upon others. Let us be honest enough to confront our culture in its entirety and ask: it is merely coincidence that, in the midst of so much technological mastery and economic abundance, our art and thought continue to project a nihilistic image unparalleled in human history? Are we to believe that there is not a connection between these facts? Theodore Roszak The challenge we face is to think well to think Christianly in the areas of biological life. This is why Medicine is so important. It brings you and I to an intersection between science and faith. Questions we need to ask: What are the limits and purposes of these new technologies we are experiencing in the world today? What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be protected? How shall technology be used when it is applied to human life? And how do we respond? What kind of posture we can take. Huddle? Apathy? Protest? Participate? What is the relationship between Christianity and medicine? What is the telos of medicine? 1 Drawn from lecture by Dr. Jennie McLaurin entitled Meaning and Medicine - Critical Issues in the area of Bioethics (Vancouver: Regent Audio, 2010).

6 Dealing with Beginnings Bioethics is where theology should be having a lot to say about life, its beginnings and ends. It is about the manipulation of life. Buying, selling, borrowing, testing and changing human life. It is not whether or not you are using technology, but whether or not you allow technology to shape who you are or your offspring. Many people are so busy talking about the embryo, but not how the embryo actually got to be there. The idea of ownership - who owns the eggs? Who owns the womb? Who is the mother? We speak in terms of "rights" and not about gift and givenness. Dealing with Endings It is ironic that the more effective medicine becomes in the area of curing disease, the less clear it becomes in terms of how it can be carried out meaningfully. From where does it get its direction? Instead, we are left with principleism and a form of technological imperative. We can do this and so we should do this and do it well. Think about life-extending technologies, for example. Why don't we talk about our age? That's not biblical. Aren t we called to number our days? What about Cosmetic surgery? Bioethical issue. What does it mean to age? What does it mean to accept limits? Costs? Ideology that come out of this - death is hidden (out of sight, alone), suffering is meaningless and can be mastered, nature can be mastered, human body gets separated into tiny pieces which attending specialists, left in a place of despair. Nothing to hope in unless you can fix death. When is death? When does death actually occur? When do we lose the image of God? When are we no longer human? Euthanasia - "good death"? And yet, we know that death doesn't have dignity, people do. Who's life is worth something? On what basis do we ascribe value to life? It is incredible how medicine does not see mortality as an intrinsic part to what it means to be human. Death is something that befalls us. It is an unexpected failure. And so, it often is cloistered away and hidden. As Christians, how do you see death? Do we see death as part of our earthly design or something that really shouldn't happen. All hospitals were places of religious witness.

7 Transhumanism - a means of escape? Growing focus on slowing down the aging process. Why? Death is increasingly seen as a fatal disease that needs to be eradicated. The ideal, for many who call themselves transhumanists is to slow the aging process to the point where there no longer is a stopping point in a life. Is it a quest for eternal life? Is it a desire for endless youth? The goal for many transhumanists is to escape the limitations of the human body. A desire to be located nowhere and everywhere - to be immaterial. If who I am is the behaviour of nerve cells and brain activity, then we can transfer this into a computer program and your self would be captured in this. Underlying this thinking is that you and I are essentially brain and that s it. Desire to become non-biological, expand our brains to infinite levels. No sense of embodied-ness other than perhaps virtual bodies. Medicine as a Secular Power Faith is excluded in the discussion of the limits of medicine. For all intents and purposes, God is eclipsed. The belief in God is effectively excluded from any conversation over how medicine is carried out in the world today. Where do we find a place for religion? In its utility - how useful is it? Comforting one in bereavement Prayer as a tool to be used to achieve an end. Intrinsic meaning of what it means to be human, what it means to be sick, what it means to die have been lost. To summarize: Medicine today is secular, is a commodity, very centred on the autonomous self, technology driven, private, choice is exalted, and telos is happiness, immediacy Bioethics is not concerned with "can we?" We can. The question is whether or not we should and who makes that call? Who gets hurt? Who is a who? More Areas of Exploration: 1. The way we speak - words Language is a way of being in and having a world. Language is not so much directed to getting things done, but it actually works towards creating a world in which we can think, plan, and do stuff. Disconnection of language from nature. Doesn t need to correspond to nature. If our language is instrumental, that is, a tool that we use to get what we want (including manipulating nature by making it what we want it to be), then we have opened the door to strip reality of its meaning and assign whatever we want to them. If we can change the nature of reality simply by stating it differently, then again we are in control.

8 We can change nature simply by speaking it differently. If our language is soaked in technological influences (how things work, how they can be controlled, how they can be manipulated), then it becomes extremely difficult to speak of goodness in light of anything that we do. Everything has simply become a means to an end. 2. The way we relate -sex Let s keep extending this - if reality is what we name it (for we are, after all, in control), then we can change reality simply by speaking it differently and if meaning is now socially constructed, then how does that apply to our understanding of gender? If everything is viewed in terms of a tool and how it can manipulate its object, THEN what kind of ramifications does this have on how we view sex? We can change the meaning of sex simply through the use of language. Marriage can mean what we want it to mean. Sexual intercourse can be expressed in the way we say it can be expressed. And if enough people say it, then it will be so. Sex can be engineered to look however we want it to. It is this break of the covenant between word and world which constitutes one of the very few genuine revolutions of spirit in Western history and which defines modernity itself. George Steiner Sex has become the tool by which we exert our will and our power. The person with which one has sex can become simply an object - a means - to achieve a desired end. Discuss: How does e-harmony or Plenty of Fish reflect the influence of technology on society? A Christian Response: Discuss: How do we resist the dangers of science and technology? We need to rediscover the Doctrine of the Trinity We need to recover the doctrine of the Incarnation We need to speak in dialogue rather than using our words as a tool We need to have our imagination recaptured Reading of good books which stir our imaginations Reduce screen time. Focus on meaning We need to recover the Givenness and the Revelation of the world We are not the authors of reality creatio ex nihilo

9 We are not in control of reality There is a givenness to the world before we even came along. What we can learn about reality is rooted in the fact that God allows reality to be know-able! The world is both independent and completely dependent upon its Creator and we need to hold these two truths in tension. We need to re-affirm the goodness and the meaning of marriage We need to re-affirm and engage in Christian friendship] mentoring Discuss: What are some ways that technology be harnessed to glorify God? How does technology help or hinder prayer? What are some practical things you can change in your life to live more fully?