International Forum for Genetic Engineering
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Developing viewpoints and public awareness

Genetic Engineering and the
Intrinsic Value and Integrity of Animals and Plants
Proceedings of a Workshop at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, UK 18-21 September 2002

Edited by David Heaf & Johannes Wirz                                                                        
Published by Ifgene – International Forum for Genetic Engineering, December 2002

Le Génie Génétique et la Valeur Intrinsèque et l'Intégrité des Animaux et des Plantes (une traduction adaptée du résumé des actes)

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Introduction

For more than two decades, public discussion of genetic engineering has been dominated by risk-benefit considerations. Arguments about its usefulness or its dangers for humans are exchanged even when the dialogue partners are starting from a stance which is already in principle for or against genetic engineering. Where do the living beings which are the focus of this technology stand in all this? In order to contribute towards an answer to this question the workshop put them at the focus of discussion. This was Ifgene's second workshop on intrinsic value. The first, which took place in 2001 in Switzerland, was devoted to plants¹.

Intrinsic value, the good of its own of a creature is gaining recognition in law. Indeed the concept of the dignity of creation is incorporated in the Swiss constitution. This workshop considered intrinsic value in relation not only to animals but also plants. Whilst giving moral consideration to plants seems controversial, the apparent closeness of animals to humans – both have sentience and consciousness – may make it easier for us to intuit the intrinsic value of animals and to recognise their interests. Nevertheless animals are exploited. Indeed, we are dependent on them for their products and the range of that dependence could be greatly extended by what genetic engineering already has to offer. How can awareness be sharpened for their essential nature so that in evaluating the technology we guard against violations of their integrity? This question was also addressed through practical observation of plant and animal phenomena guided by scientists from several countries.

Participants approached the subject from the most varied angles by hearing presentations from ethicists, people engaged in plant and animal breeding and husbandry, molecular geneticists, an animal welfare lawyer, a socio-economist and biologists specialising in the broader context of living organisms. In the interactive sessions, which included a two-hour panel discussion involving six of the guest speakers, the wealth of experience presented was deepened and challenged. Participants attempted to visualise perspectives and limitations of human involvement in shaping the heritable constitution of animals and plants.

Further material was introduced in breakout sessions which discussed the issues of the substantial equivalence of GMOs; a social contract for biotechnology; the Mexican maize landrace transgenic introgression; micro-organisms; the role of aesthetics in judging the technology and how the debate about genetic engineering is being tackled in The Netherlands and New Zealand.

It can be argued that overlooking aspects related to the essential natures of farm animals has led to the series of crises in UK agriculture over the past decade. This may be more than a hint that conceptually reducing animals to bioproduction mechanisms which can be optimised at the molecular level needs replacing by a science capable of understanding not only molecular and cellular form and function but also organismic and aesthetic qualities. This theme, one not only of epistemology but also of practical experience with animals and plants, recurred frequently throughout the discussions.

Whereas the papers in this document are from manuscripts submitted by the guest speakers after the workshop, the reports on the discussion sessions, which filled a relatively large proportion of the plenum, were compiled from lightly edited transcripts of recordings made at the time.

1. Intrinsic Value and Integrity of Plants in the Context of Genetic Engineering. Heaf, D. J. & Wirz, J.(eds.). International Forum for Genetic Engineering, 2001, UK. ISBN 0-9541035-0-5

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Summary

More than 70 people with various interests including animal and crop breeding and husbandry (both organic and conventional); environmental and moral philosophy; law; molecular and holistic biology; socioeconomics and political science and biotechnology regulation met during four days in September 2002 to work on this theme. What follows is an editorial selection of the highlights of the proceedings.

Value generated and conserved is the first fact of evolution. Life per se is defended – an intrinsic value (a good of its own, an inherent worth). Ecosystemic loci of intrinsic value are meshed into a network of instrumental value. Value is captured and transformed by living beings including humans. As part of the network they capture and enhance natural values and integrate them into the richness of culture. Enhancement promotes utility or adaptive fit in culture. Utility generated has intrinsic value. Organismic value-in-itself is smeared out to become value-in-togetherness. Ongoing defence of valued life means that not only does biological identity – the species as individuality – persist as a discrete pattern over time but also generates new achievements in biodiversity and complexity. Value seeps out into the system, and we lose our capacity to identify the individual as the sole locus of value. Intrinsic value, the value of an individual 'for what it is in itself' becomes problematic in a holistic web. Every intrinsic value has leading and trailing 'ands' pointing to value from which it comes and toward which it moves. But everything is good in a role, in a whole. Individual 'integrity' has to be 'integrated' into the ecosystem in which the individual resides. Each is for itself, but none is by itself; each is tested for optimal compliance in an intricately disciplined community. Every organism is an opportunist in the system, but without opportunity except in the ongoing system. Each is against the others, but each locus of value is tied into a corporation where values are preserved even as they are exchanged.

The foregoing puts humans firmly in the web of nature. Other workshop participants saw 'nature' as anything outside the sphere of human activity, i.e. pristine nature. This led to the idea that the more we artificialise organisms, i.e. adapt nature to human purpose with breeding methods old or new, the more we should conserve true wilderness. An alternative view sees man in partnership with nature in all its global diversity and as integrating culture and nature. Plant and animal breeding, as part of culture, should be regionally adapted and involve farmers, the people most aware of how organisms perform locally. The healthiest breeds are those whose integrity is not compromised to the point where the farmer is not guaranteed a decent human existence.

'Integrity' is a vague concept, but vagueness is the rule not the exception for concepts. Define a table, for instance! Integrity was discussed at levels beyond the organismic level implicit in the workshop title including species integrity (an ongoing widespread concern about GE especially in relation to GM fish and insects); landrace integrity (a session was given to the current maize transgene introgression in Mexico) and integrity of indigenous cultures. Threat to socioeconomic integrity was exemplified by GM cultivar alternatives to palm oil and labour saving GM coffee varieties.

How an organism manifests is determined by its inner nature and its outer circumstances. The organism informs all its parts subject to the outer circumstances which include the chemical substances it needs to manifest itself. Amongst these are value added substances in the organism's body such as the genes, the DNA. Two unresolved conflicting views of GE were presented. One is that changing the genes of an organism does not change the organism's integrity provided that it can still function, i.e. its inherent capacity to cope with the change is not so overwhelmed that it dies. A sheep with human genes is still a sheep. The other is that changing a gene alters an organism's very nature, e.g. adding one gene can change a plant's whole growth habit. In figuring out organismic integrity and intrinsic value, one needs all the levels of distribution and integration from genes to ecosystems. Several examples throughout the workshop illustrated the fact that organismic integrity includes integrity of its specific environment which can be seen as a larger member of the organism.

In capturing and enhancing value, how far humans should impact plant and animal integrity is a matter for ethics and law. Where scientists conceive organisms as 'models', for instance GM mice, their paradigm, which includes a 'parts approach', rules out from the outset any idea of intrinsic value. The argument goes that science deals with facts; ethics should come in only when science is applied, i.e. technology. But the investigative method itself is also a technology. Therefore it also deserves ethical scrutiny. Laboratory science is not value neutral. Intrinsic concerns, hitherto sidelined in the GE debate, could play a greater part.
Regarding scientific methods, the reductionism-holism polarity was a frequently recurring theme. Both approaches were well represented by practising scientists and they agreed that neither approach is indispensable. They are complementary. And modern biology is on its way to rediscovering the organism. Although GE is the logical consequence of the parts approach, the meaningfulness of a gene is revealed only in the context of both the organism in which it is expressed and the environment where that organism is expected to function. Some unintended effects on GM plant phenotypes only manifest when they are grown under their intended field conditions. A genetic engineer who ignores the whole, risks putting simplistic, incomplete science into the marketplace. For every step taken in precise manipulation of the parts of animals and plants a step should be taken in understanding them contextually. This involves very carefully looking at the parts with the intention of understanding the whole, not seeing the whole as being out of the parts. Holism, rather than being diffuse, leads back to the organism as clear idea. The workshop included two 2-hour sessions to demonstrate and participate in such phenomenological approaches.

Concern was expressed at the hegemony of reductionist science and the disproportionate research funding it receives compared with the science underpinning for instance organic agriculture. The latter too can harbour reductionist tendencies. Organic conversion demands as much an inner transformation of thinking as an outer change in farming methods.

Looking at organisms, even in the laboratory, invokes aesthetics, the science of sense or perceptive knowledge. Whether selection occurs in tissue culture or field, the breeder makes aesthetic choices based on morphology. If we focus on utility we do not really see the organism in question but rather ourselves because our attention is fixed on satisfying our desires. On the other hand, the beauty we behold in an organism is its intrinsic value perceived. It reminds us of the existence of values not created by man and the fact that plants and animals have a good of their own. In recognising their beauty we cannot help feeling that they deserve a certain respect, that it matters not only whether but also how they exist, i.e. under what conditions. Perception of beauty draws us into a moral relationship with other living beings which need be neither humans nor animals. We can rise from what were termed the common, the instrumental and the scientific modes of perception to the level of the personal mode of perception where we recognise the uniqueness of the living being and from this gain the knowledge necessary to love and respect it.

Phenomenological holistic observation can also help in judging where the limit should come in genetic enhancement of an organism by whatever method. In assessing breeding outcomes we should be open to the possibility that there are holistic observation methods yet to be developed, for instance qualitative and intuitive. These could have a part to play where nourishment is seen not merely as replacing substances or refuelling but providing surplus value for human creative, moral and spiritual development. How does GM impact this subtler aspect of human nutrition especially long term? Methods for assessing foods from modern breeds should supplement the concept of substantial equivalence with the additional categories of qualitative and ethical equivalence.
Much as moral intuition is an individual matter, the normative ethics needed for societal function – health, safety, freedom from cruelty etc. – brings in the need to draw firm lines in legislation. The alternative proposal that use of genetic modification should be determined by the market was objected to on the basis that in any society the market too, in order to function, presupposes a framework of rights. Efforts to establish such rights, which could include protecting the nature of an animal, will be most fruitful at the international level because governments avoid legislation that puts their country at an economic disadvantage. Relevant in this respect was the workshop session on the difficulties facing implementation of the potentially restrictive 'no, unless' statute on animal biotechnology in the Netherlands.

In public deliberations as part of the democratic process towards legislation, the term 'intrinsic value' might be too abstract and need replacing with terms such as freedom, independence, choice, dignity etc. Furthermore the focus should be on real scenarios rather than urban myths created by the media or speculative ethicists.

Some genetic modifications would be ruled out in principle but others might be judged by degree. In which case in setting the cut-off point, utility, for instance using animals for medical treatments and research (where most GM animals are used), should be balanced against the need to avoid impacting something fundamental to an animal's phenotype and thus its wellbeing. It was agreed that even traditional breeding has gone too far in this respect and several examples were given. Whilst it was acknowledged that GM is not likely to be used much on land animals farmed for food, a plea was made that in any future breeding the animal should 'have its say'. Artifice should not be forced on it but changes elicited.

Biologists present disagreed on whether GM is essentially different from traditional breeding although both supporters and opponents of the technology concurred that personal worldviews determine attitudes to it. Certainly both methods exploit cellular capacities to manage DNA but GM is faster, bypassing the correcting process of evolution. Apparent impacts on the health of GM organisms may be attributable to in vitro manipulations rather than the transgene, e.g. somaclonal variation in potato. Breeding prior to recombinant DNA technology also produced unintended effects. Biotechnologists have been ambivalent when presenting the technology. To research funders, investors and patent officers it must be presented as radically new. To regulators and consumers it must appear merely 'novel', based on tried and tested methods, raising no new risks.

The phenomenon of technology lock-in was described. A society becomes committed to a technology and can only relinquish it at great cost. High input intensive agriculture calls for GM cultivars and increasingly artificial breeding methods. GM is a logical continuation. There is a very high short-term cost in escaping from this trend, for instance into sustainable or organic agriculture. In medicine the corresponding switch of resources would be to preventive medicine. But, for instance, a Swiss referendum prevented such a switch on economic grounds. Lock-in already works to the benefit of biotechnology because it helps justify the agricultural and medical solutions it offers. Problems resulting from adoption of an inappropriate technology are diminished by the system round it evolving, e.g. by favourable legislation, subsidies etc. The domination by experts and scientists of the debate on GM adoption was seen as questionable if intrinsic concerns are not part of the scientific paradigm. Instead the debate needs equitable representation of value systems.

An evening panel discussion dominated by risk-benefit considerations revealed many existing structural problems in society such as democratic processes, inequitable power apportionment, allocation of resources or problems with existing agricultural or health management methods. GE was seen as a lightning rod for such concerns.

What we do to our plants and animals, we do to ourselves. We are intimately related to the natural world. All traditional peoples knew this simple truth – one session presented the Maori idea of culture where intrinsic value is taken for granted. If we deserve respect and have rights, so does the natural world. If we uphold the integrity and intrinsic value of plants and animals, we uphold our own integrity as well. But if we disregard the integrity and intrinsic value of plants and animals, our integrity and intrinsic value will be diminished in the process.

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Abstracts

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Ifgene – the International Forum for Genetic Engineering, is an Initiative of the Naturwissenschaftliche Sektion der freien Hochschule für Geisteswissenschaft, Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland.