C. S. Lewis wrote in *The Abolition of Man* several decades ago that, in the battle for mastery over nature, "there neither is nor can be any simple increase of power on Man's side.  Each new power won *by* man is a power *over* man as well.  Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger.  In every victory, besides being the general who triumphs, he is also the prisoner who follows the triumphal car."

This simple and disturbing truth has yet to find its proper place in the public dialog about genetic engineering, which has focused mostly on the (very real) likelihood of accident and miscalculation.  But Lewis' concern is the more fundamental and inescapable one.  In his own blunt terms,

If any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live  after it are the patients of that power.  They are weaker, not stronger.

I don't think you can say, however, that one person's power over another is inherently evil.  A mother has power over her child, an airline pilot has power over the passengers, and anyone who cares about community knows that we are all dependent upon each other.  Some form of power is necessary if we are to act in the world at all.

Everything depends, then, on the values with which we exercise our power. The traditional wisdom has it that the only healthy power is self-abnegating power, devoted to the service of others.  This is power turned inside out and transformed into love.  Those who are acted on by such power are not made weaker, but stronger.

The cultural streams from which this wisdom has flowed are alien, not necessarily to the genetic engineers themselves, but certainly to the modern discipline of genetic engineering, founded as it is upon the habit of viewing the organism as a machine.  The patients of the discipline can therefore expect to be treated like machines -- and more and more made into machines.

Machines don't suffer, of course, and we do hear much talk of deliverance from suffering.  But if you listen carefully you will notice that the suffering to be eradicated belongs more to the wielders of power than to its patients.  The parent cannot bear the thought of a "deformed" child, nor can the engineer tolerate standing by helplessly.  As most "deformed", "terminally ill", and "catastrophically suffering" individuals can tell you, it is above all the well-off who cannot face suffering.  They are the ones who most readily forget that the truest aim of life on earth is not merely to be rid of suffering, but to redeem it, to bear its fruits, to escape it by achieving whatever it is that our own life is most forcefully asking of us.

That there is, in any significant sense, a life to do this asking is, of course, a premise scarcely informing the apparatus of genetic engineering as we have it today.  For the asking requires that there be an antecedent whole -- a being -- presupposed by all the "mechanisms" of our physical organism.  Needless to say, this kind of language is anathema in the engineer's laboratory.  I'm reminded of the world-famous artificial intelligence researcher at MIT who, taking sarcastic issue with my use of the word "human" in *The Future Does Not Compute*, wrote:

Can I presume he's in favor of religion or something?  Isn't that the most usual "human" solution to problems?

I think it's fair to say that those who are most eager to take effective charge of human destiny are also those most reluctant to glimpse any coherent or respectable answer to the question, "What does it mean to be human?"  So their enterprise unavoidably becomes arbitrary, which explains, among other things, their casual attitude toward gene transfers.

It is not that we must refuse to change, develop, evolve.  The power to transform ourselves is close to our essence.  But there is all the difference in the world between mere arbitrary change and change that proceeds according to the inner necessities of our own being.  And there is all the difference in the world between the diabolical power that imposes change upon others arbitrarily and from without (because it recognizes no inner being worth consulting), and the power of love that both recognizes and serves the other.

Which sort of power drives the world's genetic engineering laboratories? Don't take my word for it.  Why not ask the would-be engineers of humanity, before handing them the keys of power, "What does it mean to you to be human?"  We should consider their answers carefully, for these answers will tell us, directly or indirectly, the significance of the engineering project.  And if their answer is that it doesn't mean much of anything at all to be human, well then, what does it matter whether or not we suffer their messianic interventions?  -S.T. 

Reprinted from NetFuture 6 JAN 2000 newsletter

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Leon R. Kass cites the Lewis passage in his valuable article on "The Moral Meaning of Genetic Technology" in *Commentary* (September, 1999).

Related articles from NetFuture:

** "What Does It Mean to Be a Sloth?" by Craig Holdrege in NF #97.  How can one begin to think about the distinctive character, or being, of an  organism?  What is the antecedent unity that guarantees, rather than results from, the various "mechanisms" constituting the organism?  Of course, the person who is determined to see nothing will see nothing.  But this article can help those who are willing to see begin to do some disciplined looking.      

** "Is Genetic Engineering Natural?" in NF #75.  Are the genetic engineers doing nothing more than we've always done with our various breeding techniques?  Also see the follow-up article, "Loosing Genetic Restraints", in NF #77.

** For other articles, see "Genetic engineering" in NetFuture's topical index.