If scientists are going to play God, they must follow ethics and act with wisdom

The biotech future is here. Advances in biotechnology helped produce vaccines for COVID-19. Scientists have created brain-computer interfaces that allow paralyzed people to operate robotic arms. Regenerative medicine is creating therapies that may repair organs and tissues. And biotech innovations will help agriculture adapt to climate change and the demand for nutritious food.

Some of this is strange, like our ability to redesign our bodies. Plastic surgeons are doing “butt lifts” and leg-lengthening surgeries. Drugs can enhance mood and cognition. Biotech can be abused. Is a butt lift really necessary? Pain medication is abused. And athletes use blood doping and steroids to cheat. But the overall hope is that science and technology will help us live longer and healthier lives.

To encourage this work, the Biden administration recently put forward an initiative aimed at supporting and enhancing biotechnology and biomanufacturing. As might be expected in our wacky world, some conspiracy theorists suggested this was a sinister plot. They claimed that Biden was promoting “transhumanism” and ignoring human rights.

This is nonsense, of course. Biden is not a transhumanist. I doubt he even knows what that means. If you don’t know already, transhumanists dream of enhancing, improving, and even “transcending” humanity through the creative use of technology. Some even hope to download their consciousness and live forever. Biden is not proposing that we create a race of cyborgs or superhumans.

Biotechnology can be spooky and weird. We are tinkering with the genetic basis of life. Technology changes our understanding of the mind and the self. Our bodies and genes have become playgrounds. And we are challenging traditional assumptions about aging, disability and death.

This technological capacity creates dangers. Scientists have crossed ethical lines in the past. A few years ago, a Chinese scientist, He Jiankui, used CRISP technology to edit the genes of human embryos. Bioethicists condemned his experiment. The scientist was jailed. But he was released from prison earlier this year and is seeking funding for a new project.

So, there are reasons to worry. History provides other warnings. Nazi doctors engaged in atrocities. And in the U.S., there were unethical projects such as the notorious Tuskegee syphilis experiment, in which Black men infected with syphilis were allowed to die.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell warned in the 1950s about knowledge divorced from wisdom. Reflecting on early advances in biotech and atomic energy, Russell noted that technical knowledge is narrow. Scientists are tinkerers and inventors. But scientists are not experts in social justice, ethics — or wisdom. Russell concluded, “with every increase of knowledge and skill, wisdom becomes more necessary.”

Are we wise enough to regulate the biotech revolution? The good news is that past atrocities have led to the creation of codes of ethics and a regime of ethical training and supervision. These days, biomedical research requires ethical regulation and control. Basic principles of bioethics focus on respect for autonomy, avoiding harm, providing benefit, and securing justice. There are also special requirements to protect vulnerable people.

There are ethical review boards on university campuses and ethics training for researchers. Health-care institutions have ethics advisory committees. Professional organizations also have codes of ethics. Of course, those committees, boards and organizations are only as good and as wise as the people who staff them.

Biden’s biotech initiative includes a couple of sentences about ethics. It states that we must ensure that “uses of biotechnology and biomanufacturing are ethical and responsible.” This is important. But it is also vague. Perhaps the executive order is appealing to the codes and oversight mechanisms mentioned here. But the public needs more assurance that advances in biotechnology will be wisely regulated. We need an ongoing public conversation about what counts as ethical and responsible biotechnology.

Finally, we should also realize that there will be some issues we disagree about. The depth of our disagreement about abortion is one example. Despite these disagreements, we must search for common ground. The bioethics community focuses on widely shared values such as autonomy, beneficence and justice. There are disagreements about how these values apply in specific cases. But we should all agree about the need for ethics and wisdom as we continue to tinker with Mother Nature.

Andrew Fiala is a professor of philosophy and director of The Ethics Center at Fresno State. Contact him: fiala.andrew@gmail.com.