The American Journal of Bioethics

ISSN: 1526-5161 (Print) 1536-0075 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uajb20

Does Obsolescence Matter? The Real Questions of

Genetic Enhancement

Nikolai Münch & Norbert W. Paul

To cite this article: Nikolai Münch & Norbert W. Paul (2019) Does Obsolescence Matter? The
Real Questions of Genetic Enhancement, The American Journal of Bioethics, 19:7, 47-48, DOI:
10.1080/15265161.2019.1618958

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2019.1618958

Published online: 25 Jun 2019.

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Greene, M., and Z. Master. 2018. Ethical issues of using CRISPR
technologies for research on military enhancement. Journal of
Bioethical Inquiry 15 (3): 327–35. doi: 10.1007/s11673-018-9865-6.
Habermas, J. 2003. The future of human nature. Cambridge, UK:
Polity Press.
Hirsch, F. 1976. Social limits to growth. Revised edition. London,
UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.
Ranisch, R. 2019. When CRISPR meets fantasy: Transhumanism
and the military in the age of gene editing. In Transhumanism –
Does Obsolescence Matter? The Real
Questions of Genetic Enhancement
€ nch , Johannes Gutenberg University Medical Center Mainz
Nikolai Mu
Norbert W. Paul, Johannes Gutenberg University Medical Center Mainz
In his article, Robert Sparrow (2019) builds his argu-
ments on a precondition of rapid technical progress in
gene-editing technologies on one hand and on the impli-
cation that that gene-editing technologies will become
obsolete in a short period of time due to novel and dis-
ruptive ways to control our very own biology.
Interestingly, the obsolescence of gene-editing technolo-
gies is linked to notions of an “obsolete human genome.”
According to the article’s definition, “obsolescence affects
things that are produced or used.” In this regard the
author’s vision of a genomically outdated, “yesterday’s”
child biologically determined by an obsolete genome
takes for granted what the author suspects to be an
“ontological consequence” of technologically induced
obsolescence, namely, that the “distinction between peo-
ple and products” is getting more and more blurred. The
metaphor of the “obsolete genome” implies that in the
near future the human genome is primarily a product of
gene-editing technologies or other technologies vested to
rewrite the biological basis of human life. A closer look,
however, reveals that the blurred distinction between
people and products is not so much an outcome of rapid
technological progress but much more a consequence of
the descriptive focus on instrumental aspects of the given
context. It is not a given that the observation of obsoles-
cence lends plausibility to the intuition that human
beings would become technological products; it is in turn
the suspicion that genetic enhancement is instrumental in
character and the intuition that people may become
technologically co-constructed through genetic enhance-
ment that facilitate the idea of the obsolescence of
genomes. Thus, the more interesting questions are
whether genetic enhancement is substantially different
Address correspondence to Nikolai M€ unch, Nikolai M€unch, Institut f€
Gutenberg Universit€at Mainz, Am Pulverturm 13, 55131 Mainz, Germany. E-mail: nimuench@uni-mainz.de
July, Volume 19, Number 7, 2019
Gene Editing to Produce Obsolescence
the proper guide to a posthuman condition or a dangerous idea?, eds.
W. Hofkirchner and H.-J. Krowski. Berlin and Heidelberg:
Springer.
Sparrow, R. 2019. Yesterday’s child: How gene editing for
enhancement will produce obsolescence—and why it matters.
American Journal of Bioethics 19(7): 6–15.
Wilkinson, S. 2010. Choosing tomorrow’s children. The ethics of
selective reproduction. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.
from other interventions in the biological underpinnings
of human life, whether genetic enhancement would in
any way be linked to an instrumental stance to future
persons or to oneself so that they might become more
means than ends, and of course which fundamental eth-
ical problems would be raised from such a position.
Indeed, there is a major but often only implicitly dis-
cussed issue in the debate about genetic enhancement in
how far it poses new challenges in the long lasting
nature–nurture debate. In this debate the ethical assess-
ment of genetic enhancement is (at least partly) depend-
ent on fundamental views about the human subject, its
relation to the world, and what constitutes its well-being.
As Sparrow rightly indicates, J€urgen Habermas dis-
cusses these aspects in his book The Future of Human
Nature, together with fundamental philosophical ques-
tions, in order to come up with an argument against gen-
etic enhancement. Both Sparrow and Habermas borrow
the concept of embodiment and the distinction between
“having a body” and “being a body” from the phenom-
enological tradition: “A person ‘has’ or ‘possesses’ her
body only through ‘being’ this body in proceeding with
her life. … The primary mode of experience, and also the
one ‘by’ which the subjectivity of the human person lives,
is that of being a body” (Habermas 2003, 50). This being a
body or the identification with one’s own lived body for
Habermas is an indispensable prerequisite for what he
calls “being-able-to-be-oneself” and for the capacity to
“see ourselves as the authors of our life history”
(Habermas 2003, 29). Genetic enhancement could under-
mine this identification with one’s own lived body because
the makeup of one’s own genome then would reflect the
decisions of others. Notwithstanding the question of
ur Geschichte, Theorie und Ethik der Medizin, Johannes
ajob 47
The American Journal of Bioethics
whether Habermas’s argument is convincing (for a discus-
sion see, e.g., M€
unch 2018), the point here is that it rests on
certain philosophical claims about human subjectivity and
the role of embodiment. Without the existential primacy of
the lived body and its consequences for human subjectiv-
ity, the concern about a perceived objectification through
genetic enhancement would become pointless. Some pro-
ponents of genetic enhancement, however, hold—albeit
often implicitly—a primarily instrumental view on the
human body (e.g., Bostrom and Roache 2007; for a discus-
sion see M€ unch 2014) and rightly point out that science
and technology have also to be understood as cultural
practices shaped to—at least partly—control contingencies
brought about by the materiality of personhood, the
human body. In an even more radical notion, human
embodiment is not necessarily exceptional and the body
not essentially an integral part of human subjectivity but
legitimately could be described as a kind of “external”
tool. Here, an objectification through genetic enhancement
produces neither a logical flaw on the descriptive level nor
an ethical challenge on the normative level since genetic
enhancement would be just another cultural tool to deal
with the contingencies of biological existence. Particularly,
the fact that there is no need of a person’s identification
with one’s lived body and therefore no ground for any
objectification through genetic enhancement helps to cir-
cumnavigate most normative challenges. In this more rad-
ical notion one could even find a positive normativity. If
anything, the material (bodily) resources of leading a good
life can be multiplied in a pragmatic, instrumental way by
technologically controlling our genes.
The adopted concept of obsolescence in the article
seems to require that persons (at least implicitly) under-
stand their genomes primarily as a technological product
to be used for one end or a set of ends. This implies a
disruption between a person and her genome, which in
turn constitutes a normative problem because the gen-
ome is (and should remain) an integral part of a person,
as Sparrow claims in the article. While it would be
appropriate “to speak of people’s ‘skill sets’ becoming
obsolete” without posing further ontological questions
because “skill sets are less integral to a person than their
genes,” this does not hold for the genome. Here the
material integrity of the person seems to be at stake.
Following Sparrow, it would be unproblematic to say
“Your computer skills are obsolete” while it is problem-
atic to say “Your genome is obsolete,” for this seems to
be tantamount to saying “You as a person are obsolete,”
reducing persons mainly to functions. As shown in the
preceding, it is the presumptive notion of an obsolete
genome that induces a functional notion of persons in
the first place. Notwithstanding the question of whether
skills are less integral to a person than her genome,
48 ajob
speaking of an obsolete genome as a potential problem
presupposes that there is and should be a kind of
integral relationship between personality and genome
(echoing Habermas’s notion of an identification with
one’s own lived body), which might be disrupted by
genetic enhancement. And it presupposes an instrumen-
tal description (or in the words of Sparrow: a teleological
description) of the role of the human genome and of
what it means to lead a human life. That’s why cultural
change, following Sparrow, renders things “just” old-
fashioned while technological change leads to obsoles-
cence. This of course would mean ignoring the fact that
science, technology, and biomedicine are cultural practi-
ces themselves and reducing them to functional aspects.
But if this is already a precondition of the concept of an
“obsolete genome,” neither the descriptive nor the nor-
mative consequences drawn from it will convince those
who share a broader perspective on science, technology,
and biomedicine. What really seems to be at stake are
slightly different questions: What role does the genome
play for the integrity of a person? Does genetic enhance-
ment threaten this integrity? What constitutes “human
flourishing” or “well-being”? Can these notions be
spelled out in an instrumental way or not? Are science,
technology, and biomedicine instrumental or cultural
practices? And can genetic enhancement contribute
plausibly to human well-being? 䊏
ORCID
Nikolai M€
unch http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0026-6389
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Habermas, J. 2003. The future of human nature. Cambridge, UK:
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American Journal of Bioethics 19(7): 6–15.
July, Volume 19, Number 7, 2019