Ethics and the New Genetics: An Integrated Approach.

Alan Belk is a Ph.D. candidate in the Philosophy Department at the
University of Guelph.

On June 10, 2002, in Guelph, the newly formed Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute (CCBI) held a conference; “A Brave New World? Justice, Community and Biotechnology,” a multi-disciplinary epistemological inquiry suggested by the theologian/philosopher Bernard Lonergan. This book is a collection of the papers presented at that conference. The papers are short, focused, and organized into three parts.

Part 1 offers a good review of some of the major bioethical issues raised by genome research and associated industry. The contributors to this section are Robert Allore, Christine E. Jamieson, Anne Summers, and David Farrell and Eileen de Neeve. Ethical issues are presented for everyone, no matter what their religious predilection. For example, the ability to detect the presence of some disease-causing gene in one’s genome raises issues of eugenics: Is it right to create a line of people free from, say, Huntingdon’s disease?

Part 2 addresses how ethical responses to these and other issues might be formed. Within the religious framework of an acceptance of the church’s teachings there is little room for anything new in terms of how we discern right from wrong. Contributors to this section are Cynthia Crysdale, Gordon Rixon, and John Dool.

Part 3 discusses interesting philosophical issues, such as what is the nature of a gene and can it be patented. Contributors are Daniel P. Sulmasy, Joseph Boyle, William E. Sullivan, and Barry F. Brown and Russell J. Sawa.

It would be naive to ignore the political implications of the “Catholic” in CCBI, both within the Roman church and in the church’s place in Canadian society. A visit to the institute’s website suggests that it has become a strong voice for the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church. John Dool’s paper and Albert Moraczewski’s response to it show the difficulties of identifying a Catholic position on ethical matters given that individual conscience and theology may both be opposed to magisterial pronouncements. But adherence to the Magisterium seems to be the dominant position in the CCBI today.