ANY DISCUSSION OF animal ethics in relation to telos automatically gives rise to the issues occasioned by genetic engineering of animals for production purposes or for research. The question that arises is whether it is wrong intrinsically to genetically modify animal telos. In the traditional, Aristotelian, account of animal telos, the question would not arise since for Aristotle teloi are fixed and immutable natural kinds. For Aristotle there is no modification of telos possible, because if one could effect such modification, knowledge would be impossible. For Aristotle, the universe is inherently knowable. It is not that Aristotle had no acquaintance with thinkers who postulated modifiability of natural kinds. Empedocles, for example, expressed an embryonic theory of evolution by natural selection. In Empedocles’s cyclical cosmogony, the material components of the universe combine and disintegrate in accordance with the actions of two principles he called “love” and “strife,” which are forces of attraction and repulsion. This occurs in a regular and cyclical way. For example, random combinations of basic elements produce teratological entities such as a man with the head of an ox (a Minotaur). Being unsuited for survival, such organisms are selected out. These epochs have been recorded in myths and legends.
Aristotle rejected such evolutionary accounts on the grounds that we see no evidence that these things occur. It has been suggested that Aristotle, as a naturalist, would probably have encountered such regularly occurring entities as fossilized fish. But, in accordance with his powerful theoretical bias, he would have seen such things not as fossils, remnants of things past, but rather as stone fish, themselves a different natural kind.
Nonetheless, in today’s scientific worldview, natural kinds are not fixed and immutable but stages along a gradual series of mutations, occurring very slowly but nonetheless leading to variations in natural kinds significant enough to count as new species—witness the modern account of the evolution of the horse.
If minute changes in genetic traits favorable to survival lead to species change, there is no good reason to suggest that human intervention, intentional or unintentional, cannot be a vector in the evolution of species. We have in fact drastically altered species in an intentional way ever since we have been able to do so. We have created new plant species in abundance through hybridization—the tangelo and numerous subtypes of orchid are examples of such genetic manipulation. Indeed, it is estimated that 70 percent of grasses and 40 percent of flowering plants represent new species created by humans through hybridization, cultivation, preferential propagations, and other means of artificial selection. (We have as yet to produce a new species of animal, but the barriers to doing so are technological in nature, soon to be overcome.)
One of the first and most pronounced ethical objections to genetic engineering has been the largely theologically based claim that genetic engineering violates “species integrity” and is thus “intrinsically wrong.” This is of course a variation on the old dictum that was a mainstay of horror movies: “There are certain things humans were not meant to do.” Such a claim perhaps makes sense in the metaphysics that proclaims that God created the universe out of immutable natural kinds, but not in the metaphysical worldview of science and evolution. In fact, numerous theologians of all denominations have had the chutzpah to proclaim that genetic engineering (or cloning, in reference to Dolly, the first cloned sheep) “violates God’s will.”
In 1995 I published the first book on the ethical issues attendant upon genetic engineering of animals, The Frankenstein Syndrome. I discovered rather quickly that there was no place to turn to get an idea of the scope of these issues. Since the scientific community was captive to the ideological belief of “value-free science,” no one in that community was addressing these issues. The general public, in contradistinction to the research community, was extremely concerned about the ethics of biotechnology but could hardly have been more scientifically illiterate and was totally suspicious of science and particularly of anything “messing with nature,” which I called “the Frankenstein syndrome” in my book.
We have already discussed the US public’s scientific illiteracy. There is little reason to believe things have improved in recent years. The combination of scientific ideology, or the common sense of science, on the part of scientists and public illiteracy and suspicion concerning science created a perfect storm, resulting in what I have called a “Gresham’s law for ethics.” Gresham’s law, it will be recalled, was first articulated by Renaissance economist Thomas Gresham, who affirmed in essence that “bad money drives good money out of circulation.” Consider the post–World War I German economy. The Deutschmark was so devalued by inflation that it took a wheelbarrow full of them to purchase a loaf of bread. Thus if one owed ten thousand marks on a piece of real estate, one would not pay that debt in gold. Rather, people would pay with valueless paper. Similarly, I have argued that “bad ethics drives good ethics out of circulation.” Bad ethics, such as the claim that genetic engineering violates God’s will, is far more seductive than are legitimate concerns about the welfare of a genetically engineered animal, and thus it tends to seize center stage. And once a piece of bad ethics has established itself, it is extremely difficult to dislodge. Claims like this enjoy the appeal of the exotic.
There are three kinds of allegedly ethical claims about genetic engineering that are worthy of consideration. The first is some variation on “intrinsic wrongness” of biotechnology, such as that it violates God’s will. Such claims are invariably without a basis. The second sort of issue raises the question of societal or biological risks and dangers brought into play by the technology. Strictly speaking, of course, this is less an ethical issue than a prudential one. No one benefits if the technology occasions harm or disaster. The most genuine ethical issue, the third kind, concerns what I have termed “the plight of the creature” and involves harms that may befall a genetically engineered animal. If the animal is genetically altered in such a way as to impair its welfare, that is a legitimately ethical issue, even if human benefits are correlatively produced. This is particularly true in a time when society has begun to take issues pertaining to animal welfare much more seriously than at any other time in our history. However, such legitimate questions tend to become eclipsed by bad ethics.
Through the vehicle of transgenic animals, one can, for example, study the functions of various genes in organisms by ablating genes from the genome of an animal that is relatively familiar. Or, conversely, one can add new genes taken from radically diverse organisms. The effects of such manipulations are unpredictable and may result in serious welfare problems for the experimental organisms.
For many people, the genome encoding the telos of a certain kind of animal is sacred and inviolable. This is based in a radical misunderstanding. Given an animal possessed of a certain telos, one should not violate the interests flowing from that telos. But I would argue that it is not wrong to change the genes determining an animal’s nature. For example, if a certain sort of animal often suffers from a genetic disease, I see no problem with replacing the gene in question to change the kind of life the animal leads in a positive way. The problematic issue therefore lies not in changing telos per se. Some changes can be very positive, while others would seriously harm the animal’s quality of life. The problem, rather, lies in violating what I call the Principle of Conservation of Welfare. This principle asserts that if one is genetically modifying a given telos, the resulting animal should be no worse off after genetic modification than the parent stock would have been without the genetic modification, and ideally the animal should be better off. (It is interesting and gratifying that when I enunciated this principle at a USDA conference on genetic engineering of animals, the audience response was almost unanimously positive.) The moral problem of genetically modifying an animal (or more accurately, a kind of animal) arises only if the animal’s welfare is compromised or diminished by the genetic modification, in which case it should not be done.
What does genetic engineering portend for animal welfare? Given our history of animal use, the prospects are not positive. After all, after some ten thousand years of animal agriculture based on honoring the ancient contract and deeply respecting and relying on animal husbandry, it is remarkable how quickly the rise of industrial agriculture could subvert these deeply ingrained principles for the sake of profit and productivity. Efficiency, productivity, and profit quickly came to dominate animal agriculture, with good husbandry rapidly relegated to, at best, some antiquated nostalgia and, at worst, something to be overcome.
Biotechnology, in the same vein, provides us with virtually complete control over animals. For example, we were historically constrained in our ability to study human genetic diseases in animal models by the natural and adventitious occurrence of the relevant mutations. Now we can simply modify relevant genes at will. With current technology, one can in principle create animal models for all human genetic diseases, no matter how horrendous and no matter how much suffering their creation entails.
To flesh out our discussion with a real example, let us examine the first attempt to produce an animal “model” for human genetic disease by transgenic means, that is, the development, by embryonic stem-cell technology, of a mouse that was to replicate Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, or hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT) deficiency. Lesch-Nyhan syndrome is a particularly horrible genetic disease that leads to a “devastating and untreatable neurologic and behavioral disorder.” Patients rarely live beyond their third decade, and suffer from spasticity, mental retardation, and choreoathetosis, which is uncontrollable, jerky, spasmodic writhing. The most unforgettable and striking aspect of the disease, however, is the patient’s irresistible compulsion to self-mutilate, usually manifesting itself as biting fingers and lips. The following clinical description by W. N. Kelley and J. B. Wyngaarden conveys the terrible nature of the disease:
The most striking neurological feature of the Lesch-Nyhan syndrome is compulsive self-destructive behavior. Between 2 and 16 years of age, affected children begin to bite their fingers, lips and buccal mucosa. This compulsion for self-mutilation becomes so extreme that it may be necessary to keep the elbows in extension with splints, or to wrap the hands with gauze or restrain them in some other manner. In several patients mutilation of lips could only be controlled by extraction of teeth.
The compulsive urge to inflict painful wounds appears to grip the patient irresistibly. Often he will be content until one begins to remove an arm splint. At this point a communicative patient will plead that the restraints be left alone. If one continues in freeing the arm, the patient will become extremely agitated and upset. Finally, when completely unrestrained, he will begin to put the fingers into his mouth. An older patient will plead for help, and if one then takes hold of the arm that has previously been freed, the patient will show obvious relief. The apparent urge to bite fingers is often not symmetrical. In many patients it is possible to leave one arm unrestrained without concern, even though freeing the other would result in an immediate attempt at self-mutilation.
These patients also attempt to injure themselves in other ways, by hitting their heads against inanimate objects or by placing their extremities in dangerous places, such as between spokes of a wheelchair. If the hands are unrestrained, their mutilation becomes the patient’s main concern, and effort to inflict injury in some other manner seems to be sublimated. (Kelley and Wyngaarden, 1983)
At present, “there is no effective therapy for the neurologic complications of the Lesch-Nyhan syndrome,” according to Kelley and Wyngaarden, who boldly suggest in their chapter on HPRT-deficiency diseases that “the preferred form of therapy for complete HPRT deficiency [Lesch-Nyhan syndrome] at the present time is prevention,” that is, “therapeutic abortion.” This disease is so dramatic that I predicted in 1976 it would probably be the first disease for which genetic researchers would attempt to create a model by genetic engineering. Researchers have, in fact, sought animal models for this syndrome for decades and have created rats and monkeys who will self-mutilate when caffeine drugs are administered to them, though they do not have Lesch-Nyhan. It is thus not surprising that this was the first disease genetically engineered by embryonic stem-cell technology, in mice. But to the surprise of the researchers, these animals, although they lacked the HPRT enzyme, were phenotypically normal and displayed none of the metabolic or neurologic symptoms characteristic of the disease in humans. The reason for the failure of this transgenic “model” has been suggested to be the presence of a backup gene for xanthine metabolism in mice, though other research has cast doubt on this notion. Though an asymptomatic mouse is still a useful research animal, for example to begin to test gene therapy, clearly a symptomatic animal would, as a matter of logic, represent a higher-fidelity model of human disease, assuming the relevant metabolic pathways have been replicated. Presumably, too, it is simply a matter of time before researchers succeed in producing symptomatic animals—I have been told in confidence of one lab that seems to be close to doing so, albeit in a different species of animal. One may perhaps need to move up to monkeys to achieve replication of the behavioral aberrations.
The practical moral question that arises, then, is clear: Given that researchers will certainly generate such animals as quickly as they are able to do so, how can one assure that the animals live lives that are not characterized by the same pain and distress they are created to model, especially since such animals will surely be used for long-term studies of the development of genetic diseases? Or should such animal creation be forbidden by legislation, the way we forbid multiple uses of animals in unrelated surgical protocols in the United States or as the British forbid learned-helplessness studies?
A similar point can be made regarding genetic engineering of animals deployed in agriculture. An agricultural community willing to confine veal calves in pens where they cannot move so that the flesh stays devoid of muscle and is thus extremely tender will not cavil at using genetic engineering for profit, regardless of the effect on animal welfare. Actual research has been done to create animals by genetic engineering who will put on edible flesh more rapidly than normal. The attempts that have thus far been made to genetically engineer farm animals have generated serious welfare problems. For example, attempts to increase the growth rate and efficiency of pigs and sheep by insertion of modified genes to control growth, while achieving that result, have engendered significant suffering (Pursel et al., 1989). The desired results were to increase growth rates and weight gain in farm animals, reduce carcass fat, and increase feed efficiency. Although certain of these goals were achieved (in pigs, rate of gain increased by 15 percent, feed efficiency increased by 18 percent, and carcass fat decreased by 80 percent), unanticipated effects, with significantly negative impact on the animals’ well-being, also occurred. Life-shortening pathogenic changes in pigs, including kidney and liver problems, were noted in many of the animals. The animals also exhibited a wide variety of diseases and symptoms, including lethargy, lameness, uncoordinated gait, bulging eyes, thickening skin, gastric ulcers, severe synovitis, degenerative joint disease, heart disease of various kinds, nephritis, and pneumonia. Further, their sexual behavior was anomalous; females were anestrous and boars lacked libido. Other problems included tendencies toward diabetes and compromised immune function. Sheep with modified genes fared better than pigs for the first six months but then became unhealthy.
There are certain lessons to be learned from these experiments. In the first place, although similar experiments had been done earlier in mice, mice did not show many of the undesirable side effects. Thus it is difficult to extrapolate in a linear way from species to species when it comes to genetic engineering, even when, on the surface, the same sort of genetic manipulation is being attempted.
Second, it is impossible to effect simple one-to-one correspondence between gene transfer and the appearance of desired phenotypic traits. Genes may have multiple effects, and traits may be under the control of multiple genes. The relevance of this point to welfare is obvious: one should be extremely circumspect in one’s engineering until one has a good grasp of the physiological mechanisms affected by a gene or set of genes. A good example of the welfare pitfalls is provided by attempts to genetically engineer mice to produce greater amounts of interleukin 4 to study certain aspects of the immune system (Lewis et al., 1993). This, in fact, surprisingly resulted in these animals’ experiencing osteoporosis, a disease resulting in bone fragility, clearly a welfare problem.
Another example is provided by an attempt to produce cattle genetically engineered for double muscling (Gordon Niswender, personal communication). Though a calf was born showing no apparent problems, within a month it was unable to stand up on its own, for reasons that are not yet clear. To the researchers’ credit, the calf was immediately euthanized. Yet another bizarre instance of totally unanticipated welfare problems can be found in a situation where leglessness and craniofacial malformations resulted from the insertion of an apparently totally unrelated gene into mice (McNeish et al., 1988).
Thus welfare issues arise in research both on genetically engineered agricultural animals and, more drastically, in potential commercial production. The research-animal issues can best be handled with judicious use of anesthesia, analgesia, and, above all, early end points for euthanasia if there is any suffering. The issues associated with mass production of suffering genetically engineered animals must be dealt with in a different way. For this reason, I have proposed the Principle of Conservation of Welfare, raised earlier.
In summary, I have argued that an animal ethic based on telos does not preclude the possibility of genetically engineering animals in a way that changes telos, because it is not the animal’s nature that is sacred and inviolable. It is rather the interests that flow from the animal’s nature. It is certainly open to us conceptually to genetically engineer animal teloi in a manner that increases animal welfare, as long as the engineering in question respects the Principle of Conservation of Welfare.
It is not the possibility of genetic engineering in itself therefore that should occasion moral concern. It is rather the new possibilities of creating defective and suffering animals either for purposes of research or for commercial purposes. In the current moral landscape, there is no clear mechanism for preventing the creation of defective animals. Any attempt to prevent such creation should begin with the categorical rejection of bad ethics when discussing genetic engineering—for example, invoking God’s will—and instead focus attention on the suffering created, intentionally or unintentionally, in the course of genetically engineering animals. Alas, the public pays little attention to clarification of the issues, and the research community is ethically illiterate.