Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword: shopping at the genetic supermarket
- List of abbreviations
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Is inheritable genetic modification the new dividing line?
- 2 The science of inheritable genetic modification
- 3 Nuclear cloning, embryonic stem cells, and gene transfer
- 4 Controlling bodies and creating monsters: popular perceptions of genetic modifications
- 5 Inheritable genetic modification as moral responsibility in a creative universe
- 6 Ethics and welfare issues in animal genetic modification
- 7 Radical rupture: exploring biologic sequelae of volitional inheritable genetic modification
- 8 “Alter-ing” the human species? Misplaced essentialism in science policy
- 9 Traditional and feminist bioethical perspectives on gene transfer: is inheritable genetic modification really the problem?
- 10 Inheritable genetic modification and disability: normality and identity
- 11 Regulating inheritable genetic modification, or policing the fertile scientific imagination? A feminist legal response
- 12 Inheritable genetic modification: clinical applications and genetic counseling considerations
- 13 Can bioethics speak to politics about the prospect of inheritable genetic modification? If so, what might it say?
- Glossary of scientific terms
- Index
4 - Controlling bodies and creating monsters: popular perceptions of genetic modifications
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword: shopping at the genetic supermarket
- List of abbreviations
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Is inheritable genetic modification the new dividing line?
- 2 The science of inheritable genetic modification
- 3 Nuclear cloning, embryonic stem cells, and gene transfer
- 4 Controlling bodies and creating monsters: popular perceptions of genetic modifications
- 5 Inheritable genetic modification as moral responsibility in a creative universe
- 6 Ethics and welfare issues in animal genetic modification
- 7 Radical rupture: exploring biologic sequelae of volitional inheritable genetic modification
- 8 “Alter-ing” the human species? Misplaced essentialism in science policy
- 9 Traditional and feminist bioethical perspectives on gene transfer: is inheritable genetic modification really the problem?
- 10 Inheritable genetic modification and disability: normality and identity
- 11 Regulating inheritable genetic modification, or policing the fertile scientific imagination? A feminist legal response
- 12 Inheritable genetic modification: clinical applications and genetic counseling considerations
- 13 Can bioethics speak to politics about the prospect of inheritable genetic modification? If so, what might it say?
- Glossary of scientific terms
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The idea of modulating the human genome to fit human plans and desires is stuff for fertile imagination and intellectual creativity. Ingenuous creators of popular culture (writers, film makers, cartoonists, and others) exceed the genetic engineers in their inventiveness. Even though their monsters might still be enclosed in the plastic test tubes of imagination, and even if not all of their content is meant to be taken as a serious forecast of a future technology or a future society, it is still meant to be seen as a contribution to the assessment of the powers and dangers of genetic manipulation of human and non-human bodies and to the decisions to be undertaken in the present. Pop culture is part of an enlarged bioethical discourse. The monsters of fiction sometimes demonstrate an imminent monstrosity, not primarily of those affected by gene transfer, but of the geneticists who perform it, and of the powers that influence and control them.
Genetic fantasies depend on how the genome is intellectualized. Images and phobias of genetic modifications presuppose – or reveal – an implicit understanding of what genes mean for human existence. A story about genetic change must seize in some terms on what it is that should be changed and the consequences that an intervention will have for the lives of those affected. The manipulators and also the authors of the imagination need a causal account of the genome.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Ethics of Inheritable Genetic ModificationA Dividing Line?, pp. 57 - 76Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006