by Stefano Vaj
[84] This embarrassment is very clear in the International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects of the CIOMS, Geneva 1993.
[85] It is probably in this sense that we should read the reference to “human dignity,” according to which human cloning for reproductive ends would be, in the words of the Belgian Advisory Committee on Bioethics, “truly catastrophic to the human condition” and to be rejected, because it would entail “an intolerable reification of the person”. Hervé Kempf remarks: “It is not cloning that brings about this catastrophe, but instead the technological movement of which it is the expression… As to the ‘notion of dignity of the person on which the inspiration of the Committee has stood from the beginning’ an anthropologist like Philippe Descola has amused himself reminding us what a variable concept this is: in some societies it is ‘contrary to dignity’ not to eat one’s own spouse after his or her death or not to subject one’s own sons to extremely brutal initiation ceremonies. One may disapprove of such practices, but nothing permits one to say that idea of the person that they express would have “less dignity” than ours” (La révolution biolithique. Humains artificiels et machines animées, Albin Michel, Paris 1998, p. 218.)
[86] The theme of the “tabula rasa,” intrinsic to a certain extent to all egalitarian tendencies, from the myth of Abraham to its radicalisation by Locke and Rousseau, receives its most recent and complete (critical) treatment in Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate. The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Viking, New York 2002.
[87] Interesting how nature – already desacralised and degraded to the rank of a pale reflection, or a provisory and arbitrary creation, of absolute transcendence – is today rehabilitated as the unique moral and secure foothold by the very heirs of secularised monotheism.
[88] Jeremy Rifkin, The Biotech Century, Penguin Putnam 1998, p. XIII (Italian translation: Il secolo biotech, Baldini-Castoldi, Milan 1998).
[89] Francis Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future. Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, Picador, New York 2002 p. 7 (Italian translation: L’Uomo oltre l’uomo. Le conseguenze della rivoluzione biotecnologica, Mondadori, Milan 2002).
[90] Gregory Stock, Redesigning Humans, op. cit., p. 155.
[91] It is not by chance that such peoples were in all probability already heading for extinction before the collision with Western civilisation.
[92] Rifkin, The Biotech Century, op. cit., p. 172.
[93] More than elsewhere, the confusion of mainstream ideologies shows in its typical language, namely, the recognition of ever more numerous and contradictory “human rights”. We have already examined the tension between the sacralisation of the embryo and the mother’s rights, between the “rights to health” and the restrictions on research. Today, as Stefano Rodotà points out, “one speaks of the ‘right to procreate’, ‘the right to a child’, ‘the right to be born’, ‘the right not to be born’, [cf. the “wrongful life” law suits brought by the carriers of hereditary taints versus their parents], the ‘right to be born healthy’, the ‘right to have two parents’, the ‘right to have two parents of different gender’, the ‘right to genetic uniqueness’ [inevitably violated by Nature in the case of identical twins, but to be safeguarded for some ineffable reason or other when dealing with clones], the ‘right to an unmodified genetic heritage’ [cf. the Recommendation no. 984/1982 of the Council of Europe], the ‘right to know one’s own biological origin’, the ‘right not to know’, the ‘right to know’, the ‘right to treatment’, the ‘right to illness’, the ‘right not to be perfect’ [be it just for the purpose of stigmatising discrimination against the physically challenged], the ‘right to die’ [as opposed to the aspirations of life extensionism], the ‘right to die with dignity’ [with reference to the issues raised by life-prolonging care and euthanasia], the ‘right to assisted suicide’, the ‘right to one’s own gametes’, the ‘rights of the embryo’ or ‘on the embryo’, the ‘rights of the foetus’. This is not an imaginary or arbitrary catalogue (in fact, it is not even exhaustive). For each of these figures it is possible to find a legally significant reference in treaties or international declarations, in national laws, in legislative bills, in regulations, in precedents, in the views of some ethical committee” (from the preface of Chiara Valentini’s La fecondazione proibita, op. cit., p. 10). This situation is hardly new; what is harder to understand is how the well-known ultra-humanist Rodota’s stance can be enough to allow him to feel such an unmitigated enthusiasm for all the abovementioned examples, and yet such total indifference to their contradictions.
[94] This word seems particularly appropriate, given that αρχή, arché, in reality does not in fact mean “past, conservation, tradition, residue,” as in the everyday meaning of the term archaic, but precisely “beginning,” something which in a non-linear vision of history can belong to the past, but can also be presently in front of us in our future.
[95] Guillaume Faye, Archéofuturisme, op. cit., p. 18.
[96] Hervé Kempf, La révolution biolithique. Humains artificiels et machines animées, op. cit.
[97] Vice versa, it appears that the traditional identification of the difference between man and beast, and which would consist in a qualitative leap stemming from the “spark of intelligence,” the secularised avatar of the “soul” breathed by Yahweh into Adam and all his descendants, unique creatures “in his image and likeness,” has also been torn to scientific pieces. Already Gehlen, when founding philosophical anthropology, had shown how it is impossible to pinpoint the “specifically human” in that which is commonly defined as “intelligence,” and which would represent the specific “hook” upon which to hang the entitlement to “Human Rights” to all and only members of our species. Moreover Kempf remarks, speaking of naïve anthropocentrism: “It is primarily relative to animals that the old ideas about human identity today find themselves in crisis. There are no longer any rational motives for a radical separation, no clear reason to exclude animals from the realm of consciousness. Of all the features of this sort usually advanced to characterise the human, there isn’t even one, zoologists have demonstrated, that is exclusively so: primates use tools and can learn language and use it; one can discern some material cultures among African tribes of chimpanzees; the existence of ‘political’ ties among bonobos has been described, as has the hint of a moral system. All research in primatology and ethology has for the last thirty years moved in the direction of affirming a similarity in potential between apes and humans, and more generally, to an extent only gradually increasing with evolutionary distance, between man and animal. The difference is rooted in a more complex way in the whole human biology and arises from a gap that has progressively widened as our species has evolved, Conversely, the human-related taboos end up wavering in face of our making use of animals so close to ourselves without giving it much thought. One debate concerns for instance anencephalic newborns, that is, born without a brain: is it acceptable to remove their organs, which entails the killing of the newborn [who today can perhaps survive in intensive care for a few weeks after birth]? Yes, concluded in 1995 a Committee of the American Medical Association. No, according to George Annas, a bioethicist of Boston University. The question is taken up again with regard to the comparison between xenotransplants and transplants from anencephalic newborns by the Australian philosopher Peter Singer, who asks: if we are ready to kill a baboon in the hope of saving the life of a human, why are we not ready to kill, for the same end, a human whose potential does not come anywhere near that of the baboon?” (La révolution biolithique. Humains artificiels et machines animées, op. cit., p. 217). Singer, it should be said, would like to extend the prohibition to baboons, rather than accept the utilisation of anencephalic newborns, but the question is pertinent even for those who are not particularly upset by the “exploitation” of animals for nutritional, and other, ends.
[98] Gregory Stock, Redesigning humans, op. cit., pp. 1, 3 and 5.
[99] Ibid., p. 5.
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[100] For an analysis on the history of the doctrine of Human Rights, and on how this doctrine became the very “synthetic theory” in which at the political level have come to converge all the secular and religious tendencies of egalitarian motivation, see Stefano Vaj, Indagine sui Diritti dell’Uomo. Genealogia di une morale, LEdE, Rome 1985 (http://www.dirittidelluomo.org). A radicalisation, which is entirely consistent after a fashion, of some of the implications of this synthetic theory is the tendency that goes under the name of Animal Rights, and that has even shown itself able to spread, especially among the “Greens” and the environmentalists. The legitimate concern about the protection of wild species, or about the real significance for humans of a research excessively based on animal experimentation, results in an only-moralistic view that fails, inter alia, to explain why its supporters, including those ready to throw mud on fur coats or become vegetarians, accept to treat insects and bacteria differently from higher animals, or don’t hesitate to stamp out the life of innocent little lettuces just to eat them.
[101] Perhaps it is not by chance that the overhumanist reflection on the “magic” and on the self-awareness of the “third man” finds from the end of the seventies onward an empirical, and also terminological, confirmation in the gains of the so-called Neuro-Linguistic Programming, founded by two Americans, a linguist and a mathematician (Richard Bandler and John Grindler), who, starting with a resolute rejection of the “theologies” of traditional psychotherapy – especially of Freudian persuasions –, did then extend their own field of intervention to clinical psychiatry, management, applied psychology, the study of learning, cultural anthropology, etc. Fundamental to NLP is in particular the recognition of neurologic data, as genetically shaped, and of its programmability, in particular via language. Cf. by Grinder and Bandler, The Structure of Magic, (Science and Behaviour Books, USA 1975), Trans-formations: Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the Structure of Hypnosis (Real People Press, USA 1981) and Magic in Action (Meta Publications, USA 1992) (Italian translations: La struttura della magia, Le metamorfosi terapeutica, Programmazione neurolinguistica: Lo studio della struttura dell’esperienza soggetiva and Magia in azione, all published by Casa Editrice Astrolabio di Milano). By the way, albeit very far from the empiricism of NLP or of the anthropological approach of Gehlen, a post-Kantian understanding of “magic,” even though mixed with a non negligible amount of esoterism and commonplace, is to be found in the juvenile work of Julius Evola, such as Introduzione alla magia quale scienza dell’Io, Edizioni Mediterrannee, Rome 1981, (English edition: Introduction to Magic. Rituals and Practical Techniques for the Magus, Inner Traditions 2001) or L’uomo come Potenza. I Tantra nella loro metafisica et nei lori metodi di autorealizzazione magica, Edizioni Mediterranee, Rome 1988, and also Saggi sull’idealismo magico, I Dioscuri, Genova 1988.
[102] Giorgio Locchi, “La lettura del mito,” op. cit.
[103] See Piero Sella, “Progresso medico e dignità della vita,” in l’Uomo libero no. 22.
[104] It is however truly paradoxical to raise funds for the therapeutic research on children affected by the Tay-Sachs syndrome, as once happened in charity ball the author participated in, organised by a group of Milanese socialites – even though most of those ladies probably had not the foggiest idea of what this was about. This syndrome has its origin in a gene, luckily rare, that programs the gradual degeneration of the entire nervous system, leading to the death of the subject in early infancy. Today, even though it is theoretically hereditary, this disease represents only a social and human cost, not a dysgenic one, because none of its bearers stands the slightest chance of reaching reproductive age and leaving offspring. That being said, one does not see what could conceivably be the point of pharmacological attempts to delay the inevitable by a few weeks, perhaps by means of the suppression of the child’s growth hormone or other similar practices, when the only reasonable option in the interest of such children, their parents and society, is to promote and ensure an abortion at the beginning of pregnancy. But perhaps such a program is not sufficiently glamorous to justify a social event…
[105] One speaks of absolute genetic determinism when only the carriers of a given gene exhibit certain pathology, and when it is also the case that all carriers of this gene exhibit it. This is not the case, for example, of a genetic vulnerability to a specific kind of infection, which clearly will only be expressed in carriers who will actually be exposed to the contagious agent and contract the infection.
[106] Georges Vacher de Lapouge, Race et milieu social, Libraire Marcel Rivière, Paris 1909, p. 226. One of the most easily available titles in Italian about this author, and this from the standpoint of denunciation, is the mediocre Nicoletta Glovel, Le razze in provetta. Georges Vacher de Lapouge e l’antropologia sociale razzista, Il Poligrafo, Lecce 2001.
[107] Not only can the absence of, say, a limb be as much the result of a mutilation as of a genetic defect, but there also exists a number of conditions that are congenital, but not genetic, in the sense that they are not the consequence of a transmissible defect of the genome, but of events that have taken place during conception, pregnancy or parturition.
[108] This includes, according to the hypotheses of sociobiology, a “whisper of the genes” that recommends to stay away from the affected persons, at least sexually, since a genetic trait that would encourage sexual intercourse with those individuals instead of a “normal” partner, would result in a minor reproductive success of the carrier, and therefore ultimately to a progressive rarefaction of the gene in question.
[109] Nicholas Wade “Bioengineers Turn to Hens’ Teeth,” in New York Times, August 22nd 2000, p. F5; Jun Zou et al., “Micro-array Profile of Differentially Expressed Genes in a Monkey Model of Allergic Plasma,” in Genome Biology, 3, 5, 2002.
[110] While genetics is a more general term that refers to the study of hereditary traits, the so-called genomics represents the set of theories (and technologies) that today envisage to translate information about the genome into knowledge of which genes are present, what role they play and how the product of each gene (usually a protein or group of proteins) contributes to the properties and behaviour of the cells. Until a few years ago, the biologists were able to study the behaviour of a single gene, or at the most of just a few genes at the time. Genomics represents an effort to study what all the genes in a cell are doing and how their activity is orchestrated. See Michael Fumento, Bioevolution. How Biotechnology is Changing the World, Encounter Books, San Francisco 2003, p. 11.
[111] Cf. Michael Fumento, Bioevolution. How Biotechnology Is Changing the World, op. cit., p. 91.
[112] According to one saying, to distinguish rich societies from poor societies it would be enough to pay attention to the fact that in the former the “rich” are slimmer than the “poor”. Interesting, also in view of considerations below regarding sexual selection, how the socially dominant canons of beauty evolve very rapidly in this direction as soon as the transition has taken place.
[113] The seminal article of these studies was J.V. Neel, “Diabetes Mellitus: A Thrifty Genotype Rendered Detrimental by Progress”? in Am. Journ. Hum. Genet. no. 14, 1962, p. 353.
[114] On this see Yves Christen, “L’Eugénisme. Prospectives actuelles,” in Nouvelle Ecole, no. 14, Feb. 1971.
[115] It is interesting how in the collective imagination the typical candidate for cloning is… Adolf Hitler, replicated by some “mad scientist” or other, thanks to some cell or gamete that would have survived his death in some way, and been recovered. See the movie by Franklin Schaffner, The Boys from Brazil (USA, 1978). Two more recent movies that refer to this procedure are Alien, the Resurrection (USA 1997, with a fleeting creation and subsequent “euthanasia” by the protagonist of a series of “monsters” obtained via a partly unsuccessful cloning) and Star Wars, Episode II, Attack of the Clones (USA, 2002).
[116] On the other hand, some current speculations are examining the future possibility of memorising the set of
information, including the entire life experience of a human being, on some digital support, as well as the ways in which this might one day be re-transferred to a brain. If we speculate that this takes place upon a clone of the “memorised” individual, at an equivalent state of maturity, we would in fact be very close to a kind of “photocopy” clone imagined by science fiction, as well as to some form of immortality (cf. for instance Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near. When Humans Transcend Biology, Viking, New York 2005). Some science fiction writers (especially Greg Egan in Schild’s Ladder, op. cit., and various short stories) have moreover speculated that this might be a way to realise a form of teleportation, possibly over stellar distances, consisting in “faxing” from one place to the other entire individuals (or rather the information necessary to the development, maybe highly accelerated, of a clone at the point of arrival, as well as of the “software” and the “facts” needed to complete an organism that would be practically (and so ontologically?) indistinguishable from the one at the point of departure, who could hypothetically be destroyed, or continue a separate existence). Hervé Kempf remarks: “It is the idea of Chris Winter, heading a group studying Artificial Life at British Telecom… ‘By combining the information [pertaining to a person’s experience and to his or her conscious and unconscious record] with that inherent in his genes’, he told the Daily Telegraph, ‘one could recreate that person physically, emotionally and spiritually’” (La Révolution Biolithique. Humains artificiels et machines animées, op. cit., p. 137).
[117] Gregory Stock, Redesigning Humans, op. cit., p. XIII. See also Charles Mann, “The First Cloning Superpower” in Wired, January 2003. See also, with regard to Korean much-publicised researches, “Korean Team Speeds Up Creation Of Cloned Human Stem Cells,” in Science, 308, May 2005.