Biological Ethics

Table of contents

Introduction I

José María Martínez Doral

The word "deontology", which gives degree scroll to this course, comes - almost without modification - from the meeting of the Greek words "deontos" and "logos" and means Theory of duties, i.e. something like Ethics or Morals.

For some time now, however, in academic usage, the word has undergone a significant restriction of meaning, since it is not usually applied to ethics or morals considered in general, but to the ethics or morals of the professions. Thus we speak of medical, legal, technical or, specifically, biological deontology. From the perspective of an objective ethics - an ethics based on the nature of things - it is a question of dealing with the sometimes very difficult human problems posed by the biological research and its numerous and increasingly questionable technical applications; with the values and duties of the professional in biological science.

The basic problem, which is becoming more and more pressing, is whether biological science - and in general, the scientific way of knowing - is also an ethical written request so that everything that can be done biologically should be done or at least be rightly done; or whether, on the contrary, biology is not an ultimate written request but an instrument that can be used well or badly and that must always be placed at the service of the true ends of human life.

Let us remember - in order to gradually approach the solution to this problem - that, without too much prior reflection, almost everyone accepts these two complementary propositions: first, that however desirable or convenient certain behaviours may sometimes appear, if there are ethical imperatives that prohibit them, they should not be carried out. The second is that, however painful or demanding they may seem, certain behaviours must be carried out when an ethical duty prescribes it.

To put it another way: there are things that cannot be done - ethically, honestly - although they can be done - materially - and there are things that cannot be left undone - honestly - although they can be left undone factually. One can betray one's best friend, but one should not do so. One can enrich oneself at the expense of others, or unjustly exploit others, but one should not. Not everything that can be factually done is just. There are human limits, ethical limits, limits imposed by the objective laws of Nature. And the reverse is also true. There are not only things that should not be done, even though they can be done, but also things that could be left undone and yet have to be done. There are indeed values of moral life, to which one cannot be indifferent, values which urge us and compel us, although one may in fact disregard them. Is it right to react in the same way to a shop window and to a road accident? In both cases, I can pass by. In the former, it doesn't matter if I do; in the latter, I must not.

The distinction, then, between what can and what should be done, between possible behaviour and just behaviour, seems clear and hardly debatable.

What people tend to discuss is a prior and more fundamental question which, for some time now, and at least in our culture, has been extremely confused: the question of what is the criterion - if any - of agreement with which we can afford to make that distinction. What, in particular, are the things that must not be done - regardless of whether they are materially possible - and what must be done, even if, materially too, they are susceptible to omission? And, above all, why are there things that must be done and others that must be omitted?

The discussion of these questions is very lively in our time -there has never been so much interest in deontological questions as now-, but from the outset it is worth noting that there is at least one point on which the agreement is almost general: the desire to find a certain objectivity on which to base ethical evaluations, the desire to overcome the absurd abdication of reason implied by ethical relativism. To maintain, in fact - as relativism maintained - that "two contradictory morals are equivalent", that in ethics everything is a matter of taste or subjective preferences, that in the moral field there is no room for objectively valid affirmations, appears more and more as what it is: a colossal absurdity and a resignation of reason. Should we believe that the choice between freedom and slavery, between love and hate, between truth and falsehood, between honesty and opportunism, between life and death is only result of so many subjective preferences? Should we think that man is not capable of discerning and formulating moral judgments, as valuable as the other judgments of reason? The aspiration, then, for an objective ethics is almost general, as is the desire to overcome relativistic subjectivism. There is the conviction that objectively there are behaviors that are better than others, there are behaviors that are just, good and others that are unjust.

But where can we find this ultimate written request , this firm criterion that allows us to distinguish radically - and unequivocally - what is just from what is unjust?

Today it is commonplace among some biologists - and among many other people, due to the widespread prestige of the life sciences - to affirm that the criterion goal is precisely biological science. Since man is what biology establishes and, above all, what it will manage to make him be, there is no written request that is prior to or superior to biological science and technology. There is a truth - and an objective truth - about man, but this truth - you will say - is determined by Science.

Perhaps there would be no objection to admitting an answer to this subject if, indeed, biological science were capable of ascertaining and configuring a true image of man. But is it? Can it really be said that with the methods of biology we are able to give a full account of everything there is in man, his intelligence, his feelings, his language, his aspiration for immortality, his unwavering search for meaning? Biology can give us an increasingly accurate but always partial image of the human being, and no more decisive error of interpretation - and one with more unpredictable consequences - can be conceived than to pass off this partial image as complete and total.

It must be said, then, that scientific objectivism is insufficient; indeed, it can be source of innumerable errors of assessment. A radical overcoming of ethical subjectivism, a satisfactory foundation of human duties - and indeed of human rights - leads us inexorably beyond scientific reason, to an exercise of reason that is capable of revealing to us the true image of man. Indeed, it is only in this image that we find the criterion for distinguishing what is just or what is unjust from what one wishes to do with him, regardless of whether it can be done or omitted. Only in the inherent qualities of the human being - bestowed on him by the Author of his nature - can we find the unequivocal foundation of those duties and rights. A reasonable Deontology presupposes a true Anthropology.

Throughout this course, we will look at the contemporary positions that have been confronted with the problems of Deontology: the now almost abandoned relativism - subjectivism or ethical intersubjectivism -, the attempt to convert Biology into a moral written request , and, finally, the foundation of human rights and duties, in the staff-communitarian demands, made clear by a philosophical Anthropology.

First of all, we will consider the topic of the scientific knowledge : the reliability and meaning of biological science and how the scientist must travel this path of searching for truth, of knowing reality.

A series of specific questions are also considered - scientific experimentation on man, engineering Genetics, generation technology, ecology, eugenics, etc. - which often raise, in a pressing manner, the unavoidable problem of the Science-Conscience relationship, the problem of the Biology-Ethics relationship, in a word, the problem of Biological Ethics.