When this article appeared, Jeremy Rifkin was co-director of the Peoples Business Commission (PBC), a group committed to defining the key issues that will confront the world in the next half century. He is the co-author of Who Should Play God? a source book on genetic engineering.
In the spring of 1980 , PBC filed a legal brief before the Supreme Court on the case Diamond vs. Chakrabarty. At issue was whether General Electric would be allowed to become the first U.S. corporation to be granted a commercial patent on a genetically engineered living organism.
This article was excerpted from Rifkin 's comments in a conversation with Sojourners staff after the court announced its decision.--The Editors
On June 16, 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, five to four, that human-made life forms may be patented. The decision gave companies the go-ahead to create new forms of life and the right to own and control that life for 17 years under patent law. The case before the court involved a new micro-organism created by a scientist working for General Electric. This particular life form had never before existed in nature. The function of the bug was to eat up oil spills; it had a voracious appetite for oil.
Many things can go wrong with an organism like this. Scientists have no way of knowing how the bug will interact with other life forms in the ecosphere. They can only test it in a laboratory, which can't repeat all the conditions of nature. It might very well be that this bug, once it slurps up the oil, will not die as it is supposed to, but instead grow exponentially and destroy hydrocarbons well beyond oil. It could devastate an entire ecological niche. The possibilities of this happening in any particular case are remote. But the court decision opened the floodgates to thousands and thousands of laboratory-created life forms. One would be hard pressed to guarantee that all of them will be safe.
You can't recall a bug to the laboratory like you can recall a Ford Pinto. Once it's out, it's out. We're playing Russian roulette with every life form we introduce. The other important thing about a bug like this is that it is pollution of a new kind--biological pollution--which grows as the organism reproduces itself, generally at an exponential rate.
When the court handed down its decision, the media immediately called it a narrow interpretation of the law. In fact, it was the broadest patent decision in the history of patent law, and probably the most far-reaching decision ever handed down by the court.
The justices weren't at all silent on the moral and ethical issues involved. What the court did in its ruling was give its imprimatur to a redefinition of life--that life is just mechanism, a combination of physical and chemical arrangements. The justices essentially said that human beings and corporations may control and define life itself.
Even if genetic engineering were placed firmly under government control, I would still be totally opposed to all aspects of the technology. There are certain technologies in which the inherent dangers are too great regardless of who's controlling it and for what benefit. For example, to believe that nuclear power plants in socialist East Germany are somehow different from nuclear power plants in capitalist West Germany is naive and ridiculous.
I think what we have to learn is that just because a new technology can be done, doesn't necessarily mean it should be done. For too long we've assumed that you can't stop "progress." Well, let's redefine progress.
Let me put the issue in perspective. There have been two major turning points in history in relation to how we organize and manipulate the earth around us. The first was about 10,000 years ago when we harnessed fire. For the last 10,000 years we have been recombining all of the non-living matter of the planet into the artifacts of civilization. We call it the age of metals.
In the 1970s, scientists in laboratories were able to take living material, from unrelated species, and fuse them together, creating new combinations and forms of life that have never before existed in the living gene pool. This is recombinant DNA technology.
A lot of people say, "Isn't this just an extension of things like hybridization and natural breeding and the things we've been doing to intervene in the gene pool for thousands of years?" Absolutely not. With genetic engineering, and specifically with recombinant DNA technology, we can for the first time cross species' boundaries. In nature, a mouse cannot mate with a human being. A carrot cannot mate with an oak tree. Under nature, there are well-established laws that govern separation between families and species. In the few exceptions to this, the offspring is neuter or asexual, like the jackass. But this new technology makes it possible to recombine all the forms of life one wants and make them sexually reproductive. In the book Who Should Play God? we quoted many of the major scientists in the field. Most of them said their ultimate aim is human genetic engineering, making the "perfect human being."
While the General Electric bug covered by the court case is not a product of this kind of gene splicing, the industry argued, and the court accepted, the notion that any living thing created by human beings that does not exist in nature and serves some useful function is patentable. The decision laid the legal groundwork for the entire field of recombinant DNA technology.
Every single one of these genetic engineering technologies will be looked at as a benefit or a quick fix for someone, somewhere, somehow, under some circumstances. That's the Faustian bargain. The problem is that the totality of these technologies provides a one-way road directly into the brave new world, where we reduce life to its physical components, mechanize it, and bring it under human control and design.
What you never hear mentioned in the debate on genetic engineering is the word "eugenics." Eugenics is the inseparable philosophical wing of genetic engineering--the idea that you can use genetic manipulation to create a better organism, a better species, a better race, a master race. Now you might have the best of intentions, but the minute you go from observing the gene pool to actively manipulating it you are making a decision about which genes should be bred in or bred out of the gene pool forever. Your judgment about what is a good or bad gene might be very different from mine. And our decision as a culture might be very different from some other culture in some other period of history, for example, Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.
So in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision, each person in this country must ask: Whom do I trust with the ultimate authority to decide what is a good gene and should be bred into the gene pool, and what is a bad gene and should be bred out? Do I trust the U.S. government to decide what are the good and bad genes? Do I trust the corporations? The universities? The fact is, the majority of us would be hard pressed to find any institution on this planet that we would entrust with this ultimate authority over life. Therefore we must say no to the genetic age.
This genetic engineering stuff is no longer science fiction. It is quite real. When Who Should Play God? was written three years ago, we projected that the first test tube baby would be with us within a handful of years. The scientific community said, "Oh, that's a hundred years away." It happened just two years after we wrote the book. We have to remember that the information in genetics is doubling every 24 months. No science has ever developed this fast.
Having said all this, I do not take it for granted that this technology and the genetic age is a fait accompli. I believe it can be stopped and should be resisted across the board, even knowing that there are certain benefits to be derived. The point is, there's no such thing as "responsible" engineering of new forms and combinations of life.
The debate on genetic engineering offers us a great opportunity because it represents the final metaphor, if you will, for the Age of Enlightenment. It is the final example of how we've reduced all of life to pure design and mechanism. I believe the debate on whether we should move into a genetically engineered society is going to galvanize opposition from different corners of the population here and around the world.
I think the church community is becoming aware of what is at stake with genetic engineering. But it still wants to treat it as a technology that must be looked at with caution.
Frankly, I'm shocked at the lack of response up to now within the Judeo-Christian community. Even the pope could muster only a few sentences of concern about genetic engineering. One would expect it to get a great deal more attention since it actually is the major theological question of the age. Never before have we faced anything of greater import to society than the question: Do we want to take life and place it within our design, our control, and our manipulation? Do we want to engineer life in our image rather than maintain it in God's image? It seems to me that the Bible is very clear on this. But where is the church?
The position of some church leaders has been disappointing up to now. While they have acknowledged that genetic engineering poses grave problems of a theological and moral nature, they are quick to extol what the scientific-corporate establishment has told them will be great possibilities and opportunities forthcoming from this technology. I think that's naive. They haven't learned anything from 30 years of involvement with the so-called peaceful atom.
If the church does not have the wherewithal to come out in opposition to the genetic age, then it seems to me that it's time to admit, once and for all, that Christianity has become little more than a permanent apologist for the secular order.
I have a feeling that many religious leaders think they cannot make a moral or theological decision on this. They say you can't stop science. This is not stopping science, it's stopping genetic engineering. If they can't make a decision to say no to patenting life and engineering the gene pool, then I think there is very little hope for the present Christian leadership.
It could be that the Christian community is just now waking up to this monumental issue, moving it beyond the church's so-called professional ethicists and science experts to the pulpits and parishes. If this is so, we could see a tremendous public reaction against the redesign of God's creation in the corporate laboratories.
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