As a journalist visiting the U.S., I have been struck by the acceptance of genetic manipulations by the people in this country. Skeptics tend to be viewed as hopeless pessimists in the face of high hopes and exciting weekly reports about new drugs, genes and treatments–even the possibility of human cloning–all coming from the revolution in genetics and molecular biology.
Who could be against healing the sick, or using animals as organ donors to save human lives, or developing new crops that could defend themselves against pests and help to feed everyone?
On the other hand, why did the critics of genetic engineering just seem to vanish?
What happened to those old fears of unintended side effects, of terrifying mutant viruses, of accidents too terrible to contemplate? What about hubris, the tendency of humanity to dig our own graves because we overrated our own capacities?
In my country, Germany, people who believe in the ethical future of genetic manipulation often are viewed as cockeyed optimists. The negative view of any type of human experimentation, of course, reflects the national guilt over Nazi eugenics atrocities perpetrated during the Third Reich.
Yet even today many advances accepted elsewhere are forbidden, such as artificial insemination with a deceased person’s sperm, or the removal and manipulation of egg cells, even surrogate motherhood after in-vitro fertilization.
Moreover, the German antipathy extends to agricultural biotechnology. When the first genetically engineered food crops were imported from the U.S. a few years ago, German housewives demanded they be identified with a label of some kind, preferably a skull and crossbones.
German ecologists have been fighting for years against the interest of the pharmacology industry to breed new kinds of crops and animals. The naysayers argue that new species never could be integrated into the existing ecosystem without problems.
When the promise of genetic technology gets stamped as “dangerous,” such lofty concepts as ending world hunger are in trouble. But many Germans maintain their point of view is very practical: Why dream of selling genetically engineered seeds and expensive supercattle to the Third World if political and economic structures do not exist to ensure that such products could be used efficiently?
In the 1970s, Germans were fighting the use of nuclear energy; now the momentum has switched to genetic engineering. Philosophers such as Hans Jonas are fierce supporters for the value and autonomy of nature.
The ideals of a new radical ecological pantheism often seem to be more seductive than the Christian religion. Young Germans, especially, find it easier to discover the mystical spirit of nature than the spirit of the pope’s encyclical.
The reluctance to change nature at the most fundamental level is not new: Since the late 18th Century, German philosophers have sought to reconcile nature and the human spirit, to balance physics and metaphysics.
The German chemical industry views genetic engineering as a gold mine, but the public still is prone to fear and doubt. When German President Roman Herzog in a widely discussed speech in Berlin urged German society to give up its strong hostility toward new technologies, he was soundly criticized for downplaying the dangers.
Then scientists screamed foul. Jens Reich, a well-known biologist and unsuccessful presidential candidate from the Green Party, complained that Herzog had failed to distinguish between reasonable arguments among scientific experts and the irrational fears of the public.
If, as a visitor, it seems to me that philosophers in the U.S. do not feel comfortable to judge ethical questions in the life sciences, the German transcendental and existential views of life are eager to stake their claims. So it could be argued that such social evaluations do not really take place in vacuums. They are deeply grounded in the history of national souls.
The Puritan ethic holds that hard work leads to economic success, which represents the will of God and is ethically legitimate. The German philosophy is convinced that the principle of responsibility must direct technical progress.
Even if such differences in mentality influence the two nations, the power of international business is unlikely to be too concerned about them.
My country probably is going to find it extremely difficult to continue its stance as a kind of conservative Ethic Park in a geopolitical landscape that seems beguiled by “Jurassic Park.”
I find it a shame that such enormous technical progress–if successful–will give governments no choice but to climb aboard. German philosophers will join the dinosaurs, their ethical pleas surviving only as words, like prehistoric mosquitoes suffocated by the golden amber of economics.
