Bioconservatism is a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes caution and restraint in the use of biotechnologies, particularly those involving genetic manipulation and human enhancement.
Bioconservatism is characterized by a belief that technological trends risk compromising human dignity, and by opposition to movements and technologies including transhumanism, human genetic modification, "strong" artificial intelligence, and the technological singularity. Many bioconservatives also oppose the use of technologies such as life extension and preimplantation genetic screening.
Bioconservatives range in political perspective from right-leaning religious and cultural conservatives to left-leaning environmentalists and technology critics. What unifies bioconservatives is skepticism about medical and other biotechnological transformations of the living world. In contrast to bioluddism, the bioconservative perspective typically presents a more focused critique of technological society. It is distinguished by its defense of the natural, framed as a moral category.
Critics of bioconservatism, such as Steve Clarke and Rebecca Roache, argue that bioconservatives ground their views primarily in intuition, which can be subject to various cognitive biases. They consider bioconservatives to be unable to provide concrete reasons to justify their intuitions, contributing to stalled debate around human enhancement.
Advocates
Bioconservatives seek to counter the arguments made by transhumanists who support the use of human enhancement technologies despite acknowledging the risks they involve. Transhumanists hold that certain technologies have the potential to significantly alter current conceptions of what it means to be human and consider them essential for the future development of humanity. Transhumanist philosophers such as Nick Bostrom believe that genetic modification will be essential to improving human health in the future.
The three major elements of the bioconservative argument, as described by Bostrom, are that human augmentation is innately degrading and therefore harmful; that the existence of augmented humans poses a threat to "ordinary humans;"and that human augmentation shows a lack of acknowledgement that "not everything in the world is open to any use we may desire or devise." The first two of these elements are secular, the last derives "from religious or crypto-religious sentiments."
Michael Sandel Michael J. Sandel is an American political philosopher and a prominent bioconservative. His article and subsequent book, both titled The Case Against Perfection, concern the moral permissibility of genetic engineering or genome editing. Sandel compares genetic and non-genetic forms of enhancement, pointing to the fact that much of non-genetic alteration has largely the same effect as genetic engineering. SAT tutors or study drugs such as Ritalin can have similar effects as minor tampering with natural born intelligence. Sandel uses such examples to argue that the most important moral issue with genetic engineering is not that the consequences of manipulating human nature will undermine human agency, but the perfectionist aspiration behind such a drive to mastery. For Sandel, "the deepest moral objection to enhancement lies less in the perfection it seeks than in the human disposition it expresses and promotes." For example, the parental desire for a child to be of a certain genetic quality is incompatible with the special kind of unconditional love parents should have for their children. He writes "[t]o appreciate children as gifts is to accept them as they come, not as objects of our design or products of our will or instruments of our ambition."
Sandel insists that consequentialist arguments overlook the principle issue of whether bioenhancement should be aspired to at all. He is attributed with the view that human augmentation should be avoided as it expresses an excessive desire to change oneself and 'become masters of our nature.' For example, in the field of cognitive enhancement, he argues that moral question we should be concerned with is not the consequences of inequality of access to such technology in possibly creating two classes of humans but whether we should aspire to such enhancement at all. Similarly, he has argued that the ethical problem with genetic engineering is not that it undermines the child's autonomy, as this claim "wrongly implies that absent a designing parent, children are free to choose their characteristics for themselves." Rather, he sees enhancement as hubristic, taking nature into our own hands: pursuing the fixity of enhancement is an instance of vanity. Sandel also criticizes the argument that a genetically engineered athlete would have an unfair advantage over his unenhanced competitors, suggesting that it has always been the case that some athletes are better endowed genetically than others. In short, Sandel argues that the real ethical problems with genetic engineering concern its effects on humility, responsibility and solidarity.
Humility
Sandel argues that humility is a moral virtue that will be undermined by genetic engineering. He argues that humility encourages one to 'abide the unexpected, to live with dissonance, to rein in the impulse control,' and therefore, is worth fostering in all aspects of one's life. This includes the humility of parents regarding their own genetic endowment and that of their children. Sandel's concern is that, through genetic engineering, the relationship between parent and child is "disfigured:" The problem lies in the hubris of the designing parents, in their drive to master the mystery of genetics. Even if this disposition did not make parents tyrants to their children, it would disfigure the relation between parent and child, thus depriving the parent of the humility and enlarged human sympathies that an openness to the unbidden can cultivate.
Essentially, Sandel believes that in order to be a good parent with the virtue of humility, one needs to accept that their child may not progress exactly according to their expectations. Designing an athletic child, for example, is incompatible with the idea of parents having such open expectations. He argues that genetic enhancement deprives the parent of the humility of an 'openness to the unbidden' fosters. Sandel believes that parents must be prepared to love their child unconditionally and to see their children as gifts from nature, rather than entities to be defined according to parental and genetic expectations. Moreover, in the paper The Case Against Perfection, Sandel argues:
I do not think the main problem with enhancement and genetic engineering is that they undermine effort and erode human agency. The deeper danger is that they represent a kind of hyperagency—a Promethean aspiration to remake nature, including human nature, to serve our purposes and satisfy our desires".
In doing so, Sandel worries that an essential aspect of human nature—and the meaning of life derived from such—would be eroded in the process of expanding radically beyond humankind's naturally endowed capacities. He calls this yearning the "Promethean project," which is necessarily constrained by appreciating humankind's humility and place in nature. Sandel adds:
It is in part a religious sensibility. But its resonance reaches beyond religion.
Responsibility Sandel argues that due to the increasing role of genetic enhancement, there will be an 'explosion' of responsibility on humanity. He argues that genetic engineering will increase parental responsibility as "parents become responsible for choosing, or failing to choose, the right traits for their children." He believes that such responsibility will lead to genes become a matter of choice rather than a matter of chance. Sandel illustrates this argument through the lens of sports: in athletics, undesirable outcomes are often attributed to extrinsic values such as lack of preparation or lapse in discipline. With the introduction of genetic engineering to athletics, Sandel believes that athletes will bear additional responsibility for their talents and performance; for example, for failing to acquire the intrinsic traits necessary for success. Sandel believes this can be extrapolated to society as a whole: individuals will be forced to shoulder more responsibility for deficiencies in the face of increased genetic choice.
Solidarity Sandel points out that without genetic engineering, a child is "at the mercy of the genetic lottery." Insurance markets allow a pooling of risk for the benefit of all: those who turn out to be healthy subsidize those who are not. This could be phrased more generally as: individual success is not fully determined by that individual or their parents, as genetic traits are to some extent randomly assigned from a collective pool. Sandel argues that, because we all face the same risks, social insurance schemes that rely on a sense of solidarity are possible. However, genetic enhancement gives individuals perfect genetic knowledge and increased resistance to some diseases. Enhanced individuals would not opt into such a system or such human community, because it would involve guaranteed losses for them. They would feel no debt to their community, and social solidarity would disappear.
Sandel argues that solidarity 'arises when men and women reflect on the contingency of their talents and fortunes.' He argues that if our genetic endowments begin to be seen as 'achievements for which we can claim credit,' society would have no obligation to share with those less fortunate. Consequently, Sandel mounts a case against the perfection of genetic knowledge because it would end the solidarity arising when people reflect on the non-necessary nature of their fortunes.
Leon Kass
In his paper "Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls," Leon Kass argues for bioconservatism. His argument was first delivered as a lecture at the Washington D.C. Ethics and Public Policy Center and later published as an article in The Atlantic. Although it was written during the time when Kass chaired the President's Council on Bioethics, the views expressed are his own, and not those of the council.
In brief, he argues that for three main reasons there is something wrong with biotechnological enhancement. Kass calls them the arguments of "the attitude of mastery," "'unnatural' means" and "dubious ends."
Before he turns to these arguments, he focuses on the distinction between "therapy" and "enhancement." While therapy has the aim of (re-)establishing the state of what could be considered as "normal" (e.g. replacement of organs), enhancement gives people an advantage over the "normal workings" of the human body (e.g. immortality). On the basis of this distinction, Kass argues, most people would support therapy, but remain sceptical towards enhancement. However, he believes this distinction is not clear, since it is hard to tell where therapy stops and enhancement begins. One reason he gives is that the "normal workings" of the human body cannot be unambiguously defined due to the variance within humans: someone may be born with perfect pitch, another deaf.