Genetic fix / by Amitai Etzioni.

  • Etzioni, Amitai.
Date:
1973
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Genetic fix / by Amitai Etzioni. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    An Overview: What Are They Brewing for Us? 41 So far, so good; Moltmann recognized the active nature of man, unlike some theologians who see us as subject to nature, which reveals God's will. Yet I was waiting. What implications would be drawn from his general metaphysical position? If the regulation systems of nature are more and more replaced by medical and social systems, he went on, we need ethical values in order to regulate our human systems in a truly human way. One cannot shift the responsibihty for hfe and death to nature any longer. It is not the ethical question of whether or not to use the Pill—or other treatments—but how to use the Pill in a responsible way. The same holds true for abortion, because up to now nature has been the greatest abortionist—by miscarriages. He had to be a Protestant, I thought, for his point was aimed directly at Catholics, who would oppose man making such decisions and intervening in God's work. Moltmann did not stop to allow me to finish my thought. Responsibility is indivisible and reaches so far as man's power reaches; more and more, man has to do what nature did earlier. This new situation causes many idle hopes regarding medical possibilities, and at the same time, great anxiety about manipulation. I think nobody can unburden the physician from the decision in individual cases concerning risks, sacrifices, life, and death. But patients, and the whole of society, have to share his responsibility. If today we see that the tradition of pubhc ethics is antiquated in the light of the new medical progress, there must be public discussions about the new questions and challenges arising from that medical progress, or there will be no progress of mankind at all. Right on! That's the way to do it! Values must reassert their primacy over technical decisions, and medical decisions are tech¬ nical. But would he leave the new responsibility only in the realm of public education, or also invest it with a new institutional force? Moltmann did not disappoint me. He added: Perhaps we need a kind of medical parhament on the national, or better still, on an international level, to make the decisions in a fair and honest way. As with legal and political decisions, we must gain a social consen¬ sus about ethical criteria for the new decisions which have to be made: What is human? What is inhuman? Now my heart was cheering him; this one was on the side of the angels! A parliament on medical issues was indeed what we needed.