Genetic Engineering: There is No Genetic Definition of Humanity Essay

With advances in genetics and the decryption of the human genome, many people are taking the time to sit back and ponder the questions of what humanity is and where it comes from.1 Will techniques such as gene therapy eventually create people who aren't quite human? If humanity is a flexible and ever-changing concept, then how do people know if they are human? Does some standard measure of humanity seem likely in our future, and is it even ethically proper to impose such a standard? Philosophy offers the most satisfying definition of humanity: a human person is a conscious individual who interacts with an outside world. The details of the various philosophical debates on the exact nature of personhood would be enough to fill a library, but the main ideas can be summarized as follows: a person is self-aware, having the ability to think about thinking. Nothing in this definition of humanity involves matters of genetics or quantitative analyses of specific traits, which makes this definition applicable to people who may not be human in the way science tries to define the term. Defining humanity in a scientific sense, however, is a nettled endeavor. Many "strictly human" traits can be found in animals. Wolves have a complex social structure. Bonobos, a subspecies of chimpanzee, can learn an abstract symbol-language and show the ability to understand grammar and syntax.2 In other experiments dolphins-who are genetically more distant from humans than bonobos-learned a type of sign language showing that they, too, are able to grasp complex rules of language.3 One only has to yell at the family dog to see that animals can express emotion and empathy. What, then, is left to humans? Many point to our advanced technology as proof... ... 1. This paper was originally written for the course, "Human Genetics, Society, and Ethics," held at Washington College, Chestertown, Maryland. 2. Robert A. Baron, Psychology 5th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000). 3. Baron. 4. N. A. Campbell, J. B. Reece, and L. G. Mitchell, Biology 5th ed., (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1999). 5. Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999) 24. 6. Ibid. 7. Baron. 8. Ridley, 24. 9. Ibid. 10. Campbell et al., 446. Bibliography Baron, Robert. A. Psychology. 5th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000. Campbell, N. A., J. B. Reece, and L. G. Mitchell. Biology. 5th ed. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1999. Ridley, Matt. Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999.