After The Genome:
A Language for Our Biotechnology Future
Opening Remarks
James A. Herrick
April 12, 2013
Biotechnologies are changing not just the way we experience life, but how we
understand ourselves. In response, new paradigms now situate us in somewhat more
ambiguous arrangements with our innovations than in the past: as co-existent with our
machines, as augmented by our pharmaceuticals, as shaped by our devices, perhaps even
as subject to our discoveries. It thus comes as no surprise that we are involved in a broad
cultural debate over perhaps the most basic question imaginable—What does it mean to
be human in a biotechnological age?
We are here at Wake Forest University to explore the intersection of
biotechnology, ethics, religion, rhetoric and language itself. There are perhaps no more
pressing and consequential concerns being addressed by any group. This national forum
provides a location for leading scholars from a variety of disciplines to discuss the vital
topics of how language shapes competing visions of our biotechnological future, how our
talk affects the reception of biotechnologies in the public sphere, how the growing moral
implications of biotechnology demand robust new ethical perspectives, and how a new
scientific order of things impinges on venerable religious ideas.
Even if your only source of information was the popular press, it would be clear
that important developments were taking place in biotech circles. You might even
discern that we are in the midst of a technological revolution the likes of which the
human race has never witnessed, one that is ushering in enormous changes in social and
private life. A team at Duke University under the direction of Miguel Nicoleli recently
connected the brains of two rats so as to allow an untrained rat to learn from the
experience of a trained rat thousands of miles away via signals transmitted directly to its
brain over the Internet. Nicoleli confidently affirmed that such an arrangement could be
adapted to human applications. President Obama recently announced plans to map the
entire circuitry of the brain, perhaps an American answer to the enormous Human Brain
Project recently launched by the European Union under the direction of Henry Markram.
Just yesterday researchers announced a technique for rendering the brain transparent, a
breakthrough that some thing will revolutionize the study of brain diseases. In October
researchers under the direction of Shoukhrat Mitalipov at the Oregon Health and Science
University succeeded in repairing defects in germ line mitochondrial DNA in a human
embryo. Just last week news sources reported 3D printing of synthetic tissue at Oxford
University, a development that might be used to restore or replace damaged organs. Here
at Wake Forest University Medical Center, cutting edge research under the direction of
Dr. Anthony Atala in the exciting field of regenerative medicine is producing remarkable
therapeutic results that are shaping the future of organ transplant procedures. We will be
hearing more about these remarkable developments this morning.
While today’s biotechnological research is full of promise for widespread benefit,
some developments also raise major ethical questions that will require vigorous public
debate. These questions include the implications of genetic engineering for our
understanding of human nature, the impacts of advanced medical procedures on diverse
human communities, and the just distribution of life-saving and capacity-restoring
technologies. Robust ethical systems are essential in the context of such sweeping
change, systems sufficiently grounded as to provide reliable moral guidance on hugely
consequential issues, yet sufficiently adaptable as to ensure meaningful response in the
face of rapid technological advances. And, any truly adequate ethic of the
biotechnological future will have to attend to the nuances of the emerging languages that
are shaping public discussion of biotechnologies.
Embedded in the question of biotech language are concerns such as public
comprehension and reception of the new technologies, the moral valences of terminology
deployed in the public sphere, the persuasive force of rhetorical resources such as
narratives and metaphors, and the linguistic nuances of documents that ground important
medical decisions.
Rhetorical scholar John Lyne has noted that “the discourses of science have
substantial impact on thought, action and culture in our time.” And yet, we often are
aware of a great chasm between the language of the laboratory and discourse in the
public arena. Susan Wells has written of the languages of science that “no other
discursive formation is so relentlessly inaccessible to the public, so exclusively addressed
to practitioners of scientific disciplines.” In response to a 2009 Gallup Poll only 55% of
adult Americans could correctly associate the name Charles Darwin with the term
evolution, or any other term, for that matter. Here is another challenge at the intersection
of science, language and the public sphere—improving public awareness and
understanding of science.
But, the issues associated with language about technology are even more complex
than we might assume, for language is not a morally neutral tool, a fact as true of the
language of biotechnology as of other kinds of discourse. Implicit in its metaphors and
metonyms, its narratives and tropes, are ethical imperatives, moral preferences, and
selective perceptions. Psychologist Rom Harre wrote in 1986 that “Metaphor and simile
are the characteristic tropes of scientific thought, not formal validity or argument,” while
cybernetics pioneer Norbert Wiener added the cautionary note that, “The price of
metaphor is eternal vigilance.” This is not a new insight. Two hundred years ago
physicist Christoph Georg Licntenberg said, “A good metaphor is something even the
police should keep an eye on.”
Maybe just such a policing action is what philosopher of science Susan Oyama
had in mind in taking Richard Dawkins to task for anthropomorphizing DNA in his
monumental work, The Selfish Gene. Moreover, language itself evolves; terms emerge
and mutate as we craft a language adequate to describe the biotechnological future. Thus
economist Robert Fogel has written of “techno-physio evolution,” journalist Joel Garreau
of “radical evolution,” philosopher John Harris of “enhanced evolution,” and so on.
When we speak of the language of a biotechnology future, we must imagine a
large number of stakeholders operating in a wide range of arenas, each employing
language strategically to capture public attention, shape interpretation and expectation,
promote new technologies, order research agendas, and influence legislation. We also
face the challenge of creating forums for citizen response to the constantly changing
biotechnology scene, and such forums will demand a comprehensible public language of
biotechnology.
Finally, in recent decades science and religion have often been understood as rival
explanatory systems. As recently as 1997 Stephen J. Gould’s could employ the
strategically diplomatic phrase, “nonoverlapping magisteria” to describe their
relationship, or lack thereof. More recently, however, we have witnessed something of a
linguistic blurring of the line between the two titanic systems of science and technology
on the one hand, and religion and spirituality on the other. Some scientific writing has
taken on the tone and even the vocabulary of religious discourse: machines can be
“spiritual” according to inventor Ray Kurzweil, biotechnology miraculous according to
filmmaker Jim Gilliam, carefully managed genetic research might lead us back to Eden
according to biologist Lee M. Silver. Tech guru and critic Jaron Lanier writing in a New
York Times piece entitled “The First Church of Robotics,” argues that technology is
increasingly treated in technology circles as possessing transcendent, even redemptive
qualities. And, biotechnology and religion may be more intricately intertwined than even
these examples suggest. As the biotechnologies of the next fifty years emerge and
develop, as they shape our lives and even our views of ourselves, the themes of this
conference will need to be central considerations if our powerful biotechnologies are to
develop humanely and be distributed justly.