In this blog post, we take an in-depth look at how human rights and responsibilities are being redefined amid the technological changes brought about by the genetic revolution.
The era of the genetic revolution is upon us. This revolution refers to the shift from genes being randomly assigned by nature to being artificially assembled by humans. Once ignorant of the existence of genes, humans are now able to not only decode genetic information, but also manipulate it. Genes show “greater predictability than any other rule of human life” for a wide range of traits, such as intelligence, personality, and life and death, throughout a person’s life. This is why the technology to decode and manipulate genes is called a revolution. However, the revolution has always been accompanied by concerns about whether the changes it will bring about will result in unethical violations of existing human rights. In particular, in the late 1990s, when Dolly was cloned, this anxiety intensified with the increasing possibility of human cloning using nuclear replacement technology. As one of the measures to address this issue, under the leadership of Amnesty International, a collection of lectures by leading scholars in the fields of genetics, philosophy, law, and medicine was published under the title The Genetic Revolution and Human Rights. In this book, Steiner argues that the genetic revolution has brought about a profound change in children’s human rights, specifically in their rights vis-à-vis their parents and society with regard to genetic defects.
He argues that, unlike in the past, children born with defective genes can hold those who provided them responsible and demand compensation. Given that it is generally the parents who provide the genes, this suggests, as commentator Wolf points out, that children can hold their parents responsible for their genetic defects. There are two points to note here. First, rights and responsibilities are complementary concepts. The subject of a right has the right to demand certain actions from the object of that right, and the object of a right has the responsibility to perform certain actions toward the subject of that right. Second, the right to hold someone responsible for defective genes is almost identical to the right to have normal genes. Considering these points, Steiner’s argument can be reversed as follows: In the age of the genetic revolution, children have the right to demand normal genes from their parents, and if this right is violated, they have the right to hold them accountable and demand compensation commensurate with the damage. Looking at Steiner’s argument, the right of children to demand normal genes is not a new right. However, before the genetic revolution, the right that could be asserted against society has shifted to parents after the genetic revolution.
Steiner puts forward the egalitarian premise of natural resource distribution as the basis for supporting the right of children to normal genes against society before the genetic revolution. The egalitarian premise of natural resources is the theory that natural resources should not be exclusively owned by anyone, and that when such exclusivity occurs, equal redistribution is necessary. Steiner divides all things except humans into natural objects and artificial objects, which are the products of human labor, and classifies genes before the genetic revolution as natural resources. This is because genetic information is considered to be a product of nature through a long evolutionary process. Contrary to the ideal put forward by the egalitarian premise of natural resource distribution, in reality, genetic traits are not distributed evenly among people due to random allocation by nature, resulting in a gap between those with superior genetic traits and those with inferior genetic traits. According to the egalitarian premise of natural resource distribution, such disparities are fundamentally unjust. Therefore, these disparities must be eliminated through the redistribution of the natural resources in question or, if such redistribution is fundamentally impossible, through the redistribution of other resources such as property as a second-best option. Such redistribution must be carried out on a social level, so in a world before the genetic revolution, children with genetic defects could be considered to have the right to hold society responsible for defective genes based on their right to claim normal genes from society. This also implies that genetic defects are not the responsibility of specific individuals, such as parents, because genes are natural products created randomly by nature.
However, in the era after the genetic revolution, with the advent of genetic engineering, Steiner argues that genes have been transformed from natural resources created by natural chance into artificial objects processed by human labor. Therefore, as with all artificial objects, he argues that the entity that processes them should be responsible for any defects in the results. To explain this further, genetic defects are no longer a matter of bad luck, but rather the result of parental negligence, and the fact that parents did not actively investigate whether their embryo had genetic defects and did not treat them is an unethical act of deliberately harming their child. Therefore, if a child suffers disadvantages due to poor genes, it is not society, which has a duty to realize the equitable distribution of natural resources, that should be held responsible, but rather the individuals who caused such damage, namely the parents.
In that case, is Steiner’s claim that genes are classified as natural products valid in the context before the genetic revolution? He argued that from an evolutionary perspective, nature is the entity that produces genetic information, and therefore genes are the same as other natural products such as the atmosphere and the ozone layer. However, if we examine the mechanism of evolution in detail, we cannot deny the fact that human labor played a significant role in the creation of human genes, in addition to the workings of nature. This is because changes in the genetic makeup of a species during the process of evolution are the result of constant interaction between living organisms and their environment. The fact that the artificial efforts of individuals can influence the genetic combination of the next generation can be supported by at least the following four types of efforts. First, the efforts of individuals to survive and reproduce, that is, to pass on their genes, through fierce competition and overcoming the environment. Second, the efforts of individuals to change the environment that influences the formation of genetic combinations through land reclamation and migration. Third, the act of actively selecting a mate when an individual reproduces sexually. Fourth, as revealed in epigenetics, the act of modifying gene combinations through lifestyle habits and selective exposure throughout an individual’s lifetime. Unlike the atmosphere and ozone layer, which Steiner cited as typical examples of natural products, genes are products of nature with significant human intervention. Steiner’s overly simplistic and dichotomous definition of natural products as products of nature and artificial objects as products of human labor seems somewhat insufficient to classify genetic products, which are the result of both nature and human labor, as either natural products or artificial objects.
To overcome this limitation, it seems necessary to improve the criteria for distinguishing between natural products and artificial objects. Rather than determining whether nature or humans influence the result, it would be more appropriate to determine whose influence is greater. Results that are more influenced by nature are classified as natural products, while those that are more influenced by humans are classified as artificial objects. There is a simple indicator for determining whether nature or humans have a greater influence on the outcome: whether humans can predict the results of their specific efforts. Unlike nature, which acts by chance, humans act with a purpose and therefore have intended results. Through countless experiences, humans can predict the future results of their efforts based on whether or not their specific efforts consistently produce the intended results. The higher the predictability, the greater the control humans have over the results, meaning that they have a greater influence than nature. Based on this criterion, genes are classified as natural objects. In order to exert a specific influence on genes or the genes of future generations, humans make efforts such as the aforementioned mate selection and environmental cultivation. However, these efforts do not necessarily guarantee actual results in terms of changing genes. This is because humans cannot overcome natural forces such as random gene allocation or genetic defects caused by natural disasters such as radiation. Therefore, as Steiner concluded, it is reasonable to classify genes as natural products in the era before the genetic revolution.
Furthermore, according to this standard, it is also reasonable to classify genes as artificial objects in the era after the genetic revolution. However, this is not because, as Steiner argued, human effort can be involved. It is because human genetic outcomes can be manipulated with a high degree of predictability through highly controllable artificial efforts, namely genetic engineering. If genes are classified as artificial objects, then even if genetic defects are caused by natural accidents, parents who have the power to control them but allow them to continue should be held responsible. This can be understood by considering the example of a child who is injured by a natural disaster after birth, even if it is not necessarily genetic. Natural disasters are natural accidents, but if parents who have the financial resources or connections to treat their injured child neglect them, it is generally considered unethical. However, this is not simply because the parents have control over the situation. If that were the case, children could hold everyone who has the financial means to treat them, i.e., society, responsible for their genetic defects. This situation is no different from the era before the genetic revolution, according to Steiner’s argument. The relationship between children and parents is special because parents are the legal representatives of their children. In the theory of justice for minors, parents are generally considered to be the legal representatives who make decisions on behalf of their children. The fundamental reason why parents have this legal right is because they are responsible for raising their children. When proxy rights and the duty of child-rearing are viewed as complementary concepts, parents have the right to make decisions on behalf of their children, but conversely, they also have a duty to care for their children in a manner that is beneficial to them. As entities with a duty to pursue the interests of their children, parents have a duty to exercise their control to minimize any disadvantages their children may suffer.
So far, we have examined the validity of Steiner’s argument that children have the right to hold society or their parents responsible for genetic defects and demand compensation from them, both before and after the genetic revolution. His argument is based on the classification of genes as natural objects before the genetic revolution and as artificial objects after the genetic revolution. In this discussion, we point out that Steiner’s classification is too simplistic and broaden the classification criteria from the presence or absence of human intervention in genetic outcomes to the relative certainty of the influence manifested in the outcomes. This strengthened Steiner’s argument that, based on the egalitarian premise of natural resource distribution, society has a responsibility to compensate for the inferiority of genes, which are natural products, before the genetic revolution, and that parents are responsible for the inferiority of genes, which are artificial objects, based on their passive intent after the genetic revolution. In addition, it emphasized that in the genetic age, not only do parents have control over genes, which are artificial objects, but also, as fundamental representatives of their children, they have a responsibility to raise them, which gives children the fundamental right to hold their parents responsible for genetic defects.
