Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture and faith from the Antipodes.

Bioethics/Biotech, Transhumanism

Bioethics after Posthumanism

Just working through Elaine Graham’s paper Bioethics after Posthumanism: Natural Law, Communicative Action and the Problem of Self-Design for a second time. Some good, thought provoking material there. For example,

Socio-economic inequalities may thus represent as profound a threat to human dignity as biotechnologies.

I think this gets forgotten in all the heated discussions. That some who are vehemently anti-biotechnology, especially in focusing on defending the sanctity of the (abstract) individual, don’t see that technological practices they do approve of may be discriminating against whole communities already in existence. That those people’s human dignity and value as persons is being denied.

I’m also pondering her question,

But does our concept of human nature have to be fixed and immutable in order to have moral substance?

Depending on your view of the image and likeness of God in human beings different answers might be given.