MODERN UTILITARIANISM AND GENETIC ENGINEERING IS IT WRONG TO INTERFERE WITH NATURE? CAN WE JUSTIFY THE SACRIFICE OF A FEW LIVES TO SAVE MANY? DO ANIMALS HAVE RIGHTS? ARE EMBRYOS WORTHY OF MORAL CONSIDERATION?

PETER SINGER: BIOCENTRISM In his 1975 book Animal Liberation, Peter Singer argues that all living things have inherent value because of their ability to experience suffering, in a variation on an ethical position known as biocentrism. He believes that the interests of all beings capable of suffering should be valued identically, not only the interests of those beings with intelligence. Essentially, this can be summed up as the belief that animals have a right to have their interests considered; as their interests will invariably involve living and avoiding pain as much as is possible, they can be considered as having these rights. While Singer does give value to all beings with preferences, he nevertheless remains a utilitarian who aims to achieve the greatest good. For instance, if one asserted that a gorilla has 1 percent of the value of a normal human being, Singer would authorise the sacrifice of 99 gorillas to save one human being – and would sacrifice one human being to save 101 gorillas. This is a perspective that allows for the sacrifice of a few lives to save many, as well as the other way around. Singer mentions that in some communities of disabled people, the idea of aborting foetuses with disabilities is akin to saying that people with disabilities have no value and that we should go against what is natural to create a super-race. He combats this viewpoint by saying that going against what is natural to prevent suffering is not wrong - for instance, it is not wrong to carry out embryonic stem cell research to beat diseases.

BRYAN NORTON: DOMESTICATION The American philosopher Bryan Norton, in Caring for animals: A broader look at animal stewardship, believes that as a consequence of having domesticated wild animals, we have implicitly taken on an obligation to care for the needs of domesticated animals and we should not, therefore, sacrifice the domesticated animal individual for the good of animal populations or species. But in the case of wild animals, he argues, we should respect the struggle of wild animals to perpetuate their kind, as well as to protect their own lives. Respect for this struggle may permit us to sacrifice the interests of the individual wild animal for the good of the animal population. Norton therefore would believe that genetic engineering is acceptable, as it is the sacrifice of a few for the good of many – but only under specific conditions, i.e. that the animal is wild and we do not owe any obligation to it as we would to a domesticated animal, and that any engineering that may cause harm to an animal is for the benefit of other animals only, not humans.

BONNIE STEINBOCK: EMBRYO INTEREST Bonnie Steinbock, in her essay The Question of Abortion – subtitled Morally Acceptable – argues specifically against Don Marquis’s statement in Why Abortion is Immoral that killing a foetus deprives it of “a future like ours”, which has value, and is therefore morally wrong. Steinbock responds that a foetus has no future of which to be deprived – and by extension no right to life – because it is pre-human and is potential, not actual. Steinbock argues that the possession of interests is required for a being to have moral worth, focusing on what is important to the being itself rather than on the secondary value of the being to others. As embryos are not sentient, or even capable of experiencing pain, they do not have interests. Therefore, they have no intrinsic value or moral status and may be used to further human interests – namely, genetic engineering and experimentation. Steinbock’s view may lend itself to the idea that animals with the capacity for interests have moral worth, and perhaps a right to life. However, her overall views do authorise genetic engineering of animals – as engineering is something that occurs before implantation of the embryo in a womb, at which time it has potentiality for having interests rather than the actuality of having them, the embryo is not worthy of moral consideration and can have its nature “interfered with” at the leisure of those with more pertinent interests (i.e., adult human beings).

CARL COHEN: CLAIMING RIGHTS Carl Cohen states, in his 1986 paper The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research, that “we must not infer […] that a live being has, simply in being alive, a ‘right’ to its life”. In fact, Cohen does not believe in the objective existence of rights at all; humans exercise rights because they are “members of communities governed by moral rules”, and these rights help to bring about the greatest good. As animals do not live in moral communities, Cohen argues that “in conducting research on animal subjects […] we do not violate their rights because they have none to violate”. Cohen does not only believe that sacrificing a few to save many is justified, but also that the sacrifice of as many animals as needed to save human lives is justified, as humans possess moral worth where animals do not. In fact, “the ends sought [by abolishing animal experimentation and genetic engineering] may be worthy, but those ends do not justify imposing agonies on humans”. Genetically engineering an animal to be different from its biological nature also poses no problem for Cohen: according to him, “we do have obligations to animals, but they have no rights against us on which research can infringe”, and we therefore cannot be obliged to refrain from genetically modifying them.

JAMES RACHELS: DARWINISM James Rachels, in his groundbreaking 1990 book Created From Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism, states that “traditional morality depends on the idea that human beings are in a special moral category: from a moral point of view, human life has a special, unique value, while nonhuman life has relatively little value. Thus the purpose of morality is conceived to be, primarily, the protection of human beings and their rights and interests”. However, having taken into account the evidence provided by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, Rachels comes to the conclusion that we are not intrinsically different from animals, and that humans are not “special” in comparison. Rachels also offers the view that “how an individual should be treated depends on his or her own particular characteristics, rather than on whether he or she is a member of some preferred group – even the 'group' of human beings”. This leads to the conclusion that no individual, whether human or animal, has objective rights.

RICHARD D. RYDER: PAINISM Richard D. Ryder – who coined the term speciesism to describe the exclusion of nonhuman animals from the protections available to human beings – posits that those beings which can feel pain have moral worth. Therefore, as they have moral worth, animals have rights. He says that “happiness is made easier by freedom from all forms of pain and suffering”; animals have a right to this. However, Ryder does not believe that the suffering of a few can be justified. He says that “we should concentrate upon the individual because it is the individual - not the race, the nation or the species - who does the actual suffering. For this reason, the pains and pleasures of several individuals cannot meaningfully be aggregated”, as “consciousness, surely, is bounded by the boundaries of the individual. My pain and the pain of others are thus in separate categories; you cannot add or subtract them from each other. They are worlds apart”.