There are several concerns involved with genetic modification. The most important ones are, firstly, the question of the risks as weighed against the benefits of the technology and, secondly, the dominance of a handful of large companies. There are also more philosophical arguments such as the intrinsic value of life in general and the idea that genetic modifications are wrong because they are not natural.
One of the risks of growing GM crops is that the crops can cross breed with the neighbour’s non-GM crops.[1] The farmer growing these crops is then no longer able to claim that his crops are GMO-free. This question of coexistence became a major issue because, according to the EU policy, farmers must have the choice between conventional and modified crops. There is also the fear that a farmer can be sued when he accidently receives GM material. In this situation, a farmer’s crop is unknowingly crossed with GM material, or a seed from a GM field lands on a neighbouring field. The fear of being sued for unknowingly having GM material on a farm field comes from the case Monsanto vs. Schmeiser (1998), where Monsanto won because their patented seeds were found on Schmeiser’s fields. However, this was not just one seed, but 95% of a field. In the appeal ruling it was stated that it was very unlikely that Schmeiser was unaware that he used Monsanto’s seeds, and that he most likely deliberately grew the seeds. If it was the case that an accidental contamination had occurred, a different ruling would have been possible.
There are concerns about the irreversible effects of GM. Once a GMO is introduced into an environment, it is practically impossible to remove it again. This is especially the case with plants that are able to cross breed with natural variants, making them GM too. The agricultural industry came up with a solution for this problem; making plants that cannot reproduce themselves. The problem with those plants is that farmers traditionally harvest seeds to plant them the next year. These farmers now have to buy seeds every year, making them dependent on the seed producers. This forces farmers to adapt their business model, or go bankrupt. Such bankruptcies have dominated the media, with several Indian farmers committing suicide.[2] These cases are still highly debated, and it seems that the stories, which received a lot of attention, may not have been based on reliable figures.[3]
It is not clear how irreversible the release of GMOs is in the long run. It took plants millions of years to evolve to the specific niches, and each plant is well adapted to its own environment. When plants are modified today, it is mainly done to increase the cultivation opportunities. It does not mean that a GM plant has a higher survival rate in the wild. A lot of the crops that we use today, which were bred without GM techniques, cannot survive without human help. Wheat, for example, now has such heavy seeds that they just fall on the ground next to the mother plant. The wild varieties are much more able to spread. Cultivated corn is not able to grow at all without human intervention – the seeds need to be planted or the corncob just rots away. Crops are designed for very specific environments, like greenhouses. It is likely that these varieties will not survive in the wild. So, in the long run the GM plants will probably all be outcompeted in the wild. But that does not make the concerns over the short term future less grounded. Some species might become extinct because of large scale farming, which is an irreversible effect.
Changes in farming techniques, without the use of GMOs, can have more effect on the yield than is reached today with genetic modification.[4] The benefits of GM lie today in the possibilities of lesser use of pesticides, the production of high value chemicals and the abilities of plants to grow under drought or other extreme conditions. A specific kind of genetic modification is cisgenics or intragenics, a technique by which genes are transferred between related varieties. These genes could also be exchanged naturally through breeding, but this approach would be considerably more time consuming and less precise. The result of cisgenics could still be considered a GMO; there is no regulatory difference, although lobby groups are pushing for a jurisdictional reform. Most people see the technique as “more natural” since the species barrier is no longer crossed. Europeans are more supportive towards cisgenic than transgenic apples. They are considered less unnatural, less risky and harmful for the environment and are more encouraged than transgenic crops. It must be remarked upon that the general public then is more sensitive to what happens to e.g. apples than to plants not meant for human consumption.[5]
Some objections against genetic modifications are not directly based on rationality but rather upon emotions. One such objection is that by using genetic modification, the species barrier is often crossed, which is by many people seen as an unnatural thing. It might be that this feeling fades away as people get used to the technology, although the moral issues around life itself are very sensitive because in general living organisms are accorded intrinsic value;[6] most people agree there are entities that have a value beyond their direct instrumental use. This form of value is called intrinsic value, or the value of something in itself. An example of this is parental love; parents love their children because they are what they are – their children – not (only) because of their utility. There are three fundamentally different interpretations of the meaning of intrinsic value, all with their own problems.[7]
1: Value that is innate to the object and independent of the perception thereof
2: Value, independent of external causes
3: Value, independent of the object’s instrumental value
The problem with the first two definitions is that if intrinsic value is completely independent from its perception or other external links, it is impossible to say anything about it without going against this same definition. The question thus becomes: can something have value without someone who attributes this value? One could imagine that something has a value even if the observer is not there. Someone might believe that a rainforest is valuable to the animals that live in it. However, that would still be a projection of the perception of these animals, and therefore not in accordance with the definition. The third interpretation becomes problematic when using a broad understanding of the concept of instrumental value. Beauty for instance, increases the pleasure of the observer. This means that the object is not valued for itself, but for what it means to the observer. As proposed by Wissenburg, intrinsic value can also be understood as a form of dignity.[8] The dignity of others is not deniable without denying one’s own dignity. People see their own value as more than instrumental because of specific qualifications. Seeing these qualifications in other leads to a projection of this same value to these others. But what are the qualifications we see in ourselves and others that leads us to attach dignity? People dignify several different entities besides humans for different reasons. According to pragmatists, seeing dignity in others is evolutionary selected for, with an important role for empathy.[9] In the secular United States and Europe, the concept of dignity is now deracinated from its Christian origin. According to Kant, the reason why humans have dignity and therefore should not be treated as a means to an end, is because of their capacity for making free, moral choices. Fukuyama argues that this has become an untenable vision, since most natural scientists now agree that free will is merely an illusion.[10] He then avoids the incompatibility between neuroscience and ethics by describing the reasons to attribute dignity to humans as “Factor X”. This factor is irreducible, and contains all human key qualities together: Human emotions, human moral choice, reason, language, sociability, sentience and consciousness. The human aspect in this is important:
It is not sufficient to argue that some other animals are conscious, or have culture, or have language, for their consciousness does not combine human reason, human language, human moral choice, and human emotions in ways that are capable of producing human politics, human art, or human religion (Fukuyama 2002, p.170)
These qualities cannot exist in absence of the others. When a human lacks these qualities, they can still biologically be regarded as human, but their rights are constrained, even in every liberal democracy. Children and mentally retarded people are not allowed to vote, or free to choose where they go. Criminals are deprived of their freedom and in some states in the U.S. even of their life. Seeing such a hierarchy in human culture, it is easy to extend this to the non-human world; seeing dignity in animals, and giving them rights in accordance to the key human characteristics they possess, seems logical in this light. But seeing intrinsic value or dignity in abstract entities such as ecosystems or species cannot be explained in this way.
Long term conservation projects such as national parks are usually not only valued in themselves, but also for future generations. However, someone could still imagine that a national park is valuable in itself, even if humans no longer existed.
Intrinsic value seems to be a tool to express and realize a gut feeling. But a gut feeling alone is not enough to attribute a value (positive or negative) to. Gut feelings should even be approached with extreme care as there are also negative gut feelings such as xenophobia, hate and aggression. The ontological status of moral intuitions is highly contested. When an ethical claim is proved by defining it in terms of natural properties it can be seen as a naturalist fallacy – something is good because it is more desired, pleasant or natural. If intrinsic value is purely a gut feeling, it should therefore be avoided.[11]
Would it be better to abandon the idea of intrinsic value, inner good or dignity, and to live in a society solely based on rationality? Wissenburg argues that this is not the case:
Consequentialism does not answer the questions about the highest goals – happiness, utility, pleasure, the unity of the people or the pureness of the race. And that is the biggest flaw of the Enlightenment: ultimately everything is allowed, ultimately everything is arbitrary, because there not a single highest goal in life, better than another: there is no measure for it. (Freely translated from M. Wissenburg, 2005, p.11)
According to consequentialism only the results of actions count, not the intentions leading to the actions.[12] Utilitarianism, a movement within this class of ethical theories, looks for an objective way of measuring good and bad. This is done by looking at the utility of an action and the amount of harm or pleasure it would produce. ‘Good’ is that which produces the largest amount of pleasure, ‘bad’ is that that which leads to more harm. This system seems to work well until it stumbles onto the limits of objectivism with the notion of intrinsic value. For example, would one sacrifice humans for the pleasure of the majority? If someone is feeling already miserable, why not help him out of his pain if others are helped with it as well? When an isolated, depressed person in agony is painlessly killed in his sleep, and his organs are used to save four people with a lot of friends and family, the total amount of pleasure is increased. Still, this rational point of view is widely condemned as immoral, at least for people who would not act according to the utilitarian moral framework. The difference between deliberately killing someone and letting someone die might not matter from a consequentialist point of view, but it does make an enormous difference in most moral and legal frameworks.
The reason to attach value to all life can also be seen as an anthropocentric and even egoistic one; by giving value to life itself, and therefore also to nature, the value of every living person will increase, including the value of the person who is giving it. By reducing life to purely chemical and physical reactions, the value of the person’s life is lowered, and people can fear for their protection. Who makes the decision about which life is valuable, when not all life valuable in principle? However, even if it could be concluded that life has intrinsic value, it is unclear how the technology of genetic modification would lower this value. Overall, the concept of dignity seems hardly applicable to plants and microorganisms. This is perhaps only possible when applying “the right not to be degraded”, which lies close to intrinsic value and dignity. But even then, the human desire to alter the organism would easily outweigh this value.[13]
Intrinsic value is a human feeling about particular entities, which logically speaking is a contradiction. It is however important not to confuse logic with emotions – this seems to be one of the reasons that debates around the use of GM stagnate. Sabine Roeser proposes to include emotions in societal debates, not because they give counterweight to rationality, but because they are necessary in the rational decision-making process. This is especially the case when making decisions around moral acceptability.[14] Apart from religious arguments (which I will not cover here) there is the argument that GM is wrong because it is not natural.
The question as to what nature is and what is natural is crucial when trying to understand the issues around sustainability and some ethical issues around biotechnology. A lot of people reject activities because they are unnatural; this feeling seems to be deeply rooted in our system. So, what does nature and the term natural mean?
The Oxford English Dictionary defines nature as (definition a):
“The phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations”
And (definition b):
“The physical force regarded as causing and regulating the phenomena of the world”.
Definition (a) does not include humans; it defines nature as completely apart from humans, while in definition (b), there is room for humans to be understood as part of nature, in that they are driven by the same forces as the rest of the world. The word “nature” can also be used to describe all living things, or more specific, “green matter”. Anything unnatural is seen as being opposed to nature, in the sense that it is opposed to the driving forces of life itself. The exact nature of these forces is usually not specified. People can see these ambiguous forces as sacred and therefore something that should not be altered. This would then make “going against nature” immoral.
According to definition (b), nature is a regulating force, for all phenomena. One cannot change these forces, but it is possible to use them by understanding the mechanisms driven by these forces. Natural scientists can reduce life to its chemical and physical components.[15] They then see the same physical forces that make up the core of the simplest living systems as they see in other non –living systems. Life is still special, but not a mysterious force. In this view, there is nothing immoral about altering life, although it stops being natural according to definition (a).
Bob Goodin describes nature in his book “Green Political Theory” (1992) as something with the quality of the original naturalness. In his view, it is crucial that nature is untouched by human intervention. But he does not specify how long it has to be untouched for. The world is changing, by itself and under the influence of human development. Ireland is with its green meadows is often seen as a prime example of unspoiled nature. But until the 17th century the land was covered in dense forests. These were taken down for the wood, and the land is now used for agriculture to raise sheep. The Netherlands hardly has any nature as it is defined by Goodin; the land is completely carved by human hands. The Veluwe, the largest natural reserve of The Netherlands also used to be a primeval forest but it was chopped down in the Middle Ages. Still, most people who visit the reserve would think of it as nature. In this sense the perception that something is untouched by humans seems to be enough even if people actually know that it was created, or at least influenced by humans. According to some scientists the human influence on the planet has become so significant that it should be considered as a major geophysical era: the Anthropocene.[16] According to this theory, the whole world is under influence of humans, in one way or another.
In the food industry, natural is often seen as another word for healthy.[17] This is mostly a marketing tactic, but the word natural in a food context falls under strict legal definitions.[18] Natural products are produced with a minimum of physical, chemical or biological changes. Natural processes include concentration, fermentation, smoking and emulsifying, as long as there were no chemical additions. Sometimes natural additives are allowed when a product is called natural. For these additives only the source is looked at. But the process of extracting the natural additives is often far more complex than the chemical synthesis, which makes the use of the word “natural” in this context dubious.
People are attracted to the idea of natural products, while in fact they are not natural at all according to most definitions. Vegetables and fruit have selectively been bred for a better taste and nutritional value. Otherwise there would hardly be anything else to eat other than sour apples the size of berries and tiny pale carrots.[19] These changes in nature have always been celebrated, for they have mostly benefitted society. People have always changed the world around them. As “Homo Faber”, humans necessarily change the world around them.[20] There is no objective nature; there is only a human projection of a feeling of longing for a pre-Anthropocene world. Naturalness is not a moral category and although changing life by means of genetic modification may seem weird and unnatural to some, this cannot be a valid moral argument.[21]
[1] Described by Binimelis 2008
[2] See for example Sahai 2005
[3] Gruère and Sengupta 2011
[4] Landeweerd, Surette and van Driel 2011
[5] This research was published in “Eurobarometer ‘Biotechnology’ 341/Wave 73.1” 2010
[6] Although there seems to be hardly any difference in views towards science between religious people and non-believers. See Gaskell and et al. 2010
[7] As described in Wissenburg 1998
[8] Idea taken from Wissenburg 2005
[9] This can for example be seen in De Waal 2006
[10] Fukuyama 2002, 151
[11] Proposed by Wissenburg 2005
[12] Described by Brink 2006
[13] Balzer, Rippe, and Schaber 2000, 25
[14] See Roeser 2006
[15] Nelson, 2008 describes these biophysical forces in detail
[16] Steffen, Crutzen, and McNeill 2007; Steffen et al. 2011
[17] See Bender 1989
[18] “Criteria for Use of the Terms Fresh, Pure, Natural Etc. in Food Labeling” 2008
[19] The cultivation beautifully described by Diamond 1997
[20] Wissenburg 2005
[21] Read Plastic Pandas by Bas Haring (2011) for more about morality around nature