Religious Traditions and Genetic Enhancement

Among important new biotechnologies are those that offer the promise of genetic intervention, both to correct genetic anomalies and to enhance human capacities. In this chapter, we ask: How do different religious traditions assess the possibilities for genetic enhancement? Understandings of “nature” become crucial here. Do religious traditions have a view of nature that impacts their approach to new genetic technologies? Do they see nature as a given that should not be changed? Do they see genetic enhancement as an alteration of nature, and if so, is that alteration acceptable? How does the approach to nature of a tradition impact its evaluation of the ethical acceptability of genetic enhancement? Is altering nature a shift to something ‘non-natural’ or ‘unnatural,’ or is nature itself understood as always in flux, so that alterations are simply in accord with nature? Inherent in the question of altering nature is an incipient moral charge, an ethical electricity, so to speak. If the form of altering nature to be considered is genetic enhancement, it is intuitively and immediately considered a moral matter.

Our approach to these questions takes the following form. We begin with some caveats, definitions and clarifications: what is “enhancement,” how does it differ from “eugenics,” what is “nature,” how is the concept of nature relevant to moral norms or ideals? We then offer four case studies or scenarios involving possible genetic enhancement. Our third section reviews in turn a number of traditions: Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. In this section, we include a brief discussion of feminism as an important contemporary tradition that emerges in and draws from several religious traditions. As we look at each of these traditions, we will attempt to indicate how this tradition would reflect upon the four case scenarios.