Technology, Transgenics and a Practical Moral Code by Dennis R. Cooley

Author:Dennis R. Cooley
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

It has already been stated that humans have probably been limiting diversity and changing the environment ever since they evolved from their ancestors. In this argument, humans are a natural force just like any other, only with a greater potential to affect the environment. The conclusion is that TOs are part of evolutionary processes because they are an end of human activity, which is itself an evolutionary result. Hence, transgenic organisms do not violate evolutionary processes because they are created in accord with such mechanisms, and if that which does not violate evolution is good, then TOs are good as well.

However, the conclusion that transgenics are morally good merely because they do not violate evolution and are part of evolutionary processes shows the defect of this version of the evolution argument. The mere fact that an object or action does or does not transgress evolution entails nothing about the morality of the object or action. Those people with greater inclusive fitness, for example, are not morally better ceteris paribus than those less fit. Hitler’s eugenics program was designed to produce what his regime thought the fittest of human organisms, but the values indoctrinated or held by those involved in the programs were morally reprehensible and repulsive. The mere fact a human being is not a “pure Aryan” does not mean the person is any less of a moral being or morally defective in some way. Being more inclusively fit merely entails the person’s genes are more likely to be directly or indirectly passed on to the next generation, not that the person’s moral character is better or his actions more likely to be morally right. Hence, evaluating objects or actions according to their “fit” with evolution and its mechanisms is unlikely to convince any reasonable person that transgenics are morally justified on these grounds.

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