Genetics and ethics
Genetic manipulations with the embryos let move up from the sphere of the simple, slave imitation to the nature into more fascinating world of the human’s inventiveness where “we are providing and adapting, and forming” the readiness to the life of people in made by us “castes” and simultaneously cultivating love towards their inevitable, chosen by us social destiny.
Scarcely it is possible to talk about the emptiness, hopeless obsoleteness and dead-end irreality of these historic-cultural evidences, especially being in the reality of the “explosion-like progress in the sphere of the human’s genetics”.
At the end of the 20th century, the scientists-geneticists, philosophers, politicians, sociologists are facing the necessity of decision of the whole complex of the ethical problems of the genetic technologies.
Can the person (scientist, researcher-geneticist, politician) become the co-author of the biological evolution?
Can or must the reality of the biogenetic inequality (abilities, health) become the basis of the social inequality?
Can the science change the principles of the democratic government by the society?
Can the state and society regulate the process of the scientific researches, and if “yes”, then “how”?
Must the genetic examination become accessible to everybody and cover all population?
Must this examination become obligatory for people who want to marry and during the pregnancy?
Is it possible to consider the genetic diagnostics as a basis for abortion?
Is it ethically to inform a person about some his aptitudes to this or that illness? Especially, if the medicine cannot prevent its development?
Is it permissible for the insurance companies and employers to use the data of the genetic examination (“genetic passport”)?
Is it ethically to create the “spare parts/organs” for the market of organs, tissues, genes, using intrauterine embryos?
Are such procedures permissible, in general, with the embryo material?
Can the criterion of the personality assessment become gene?
How is it possible to guarantee and provide the confidentiality of the materials of the genetic testing?
Must the information about genetic examination be told to every member of the family?
Must all the people know their genetic future?
Do the people have a right to choose – to know this or not?
Is it necessary to inform people about this in the compulsory form?
Can the genetic testing of the population become the basis of the classification of the population groups and the basis for the government in limitation of freedom of the “problem” people?
Will the science be restricted by the decoding of the pathologic genes or will it go further towards the search of genes which are responsible for the human’s behavior?
Is it possible to improve or “harmonize” a person or mankind by the way of apolegamy of the certain individuals?
All these questions make the essence of the ethical problems of the genetic technologies. Are they tightly connected with each other, and every of them is not an arbitrary construction of the inventive human’s mind but it is the consequence of already existed scientific practice?
