On Prometheus and Playing God

In my last post, I discussed opposition to GMOs based on a mystical belief in the natural. A related reason for opposition to GMOs and all genetic technology is that we are "playing God". This is by far the most common objection that I hear from students. I think it is the most common objection in the general public. The academic debates may revolve around risks to health or the environment and gene flow and similar objections, but the real reason for much of the opposition to it and the reason it produces an emotional reaction is the belief that it is unnatural and is playing God.

This is an objection that I actively argue against in the classroom. I don't argue that it isn't necessarily valid. Instead I argue that most people who use this argument have no real idea what they mean, or it is so poorly defined that they can't defend it. Generally, when the argument is brought up, it crumbles under minimal scrutiny.

What is meant by "playing God"? I think there is an echo back to myths of humans angering the Gods. There is the story of Prometheus who stole fire for humanity, but angered the Gods. He was punished, and the Gods unleashed the evils of Pandora's box into the world. The Biblical variation of that story is the story of Adam and Eve. They dare to eat of the fruit of knowledge, anger God, who punishes mankind with evils. A more recent version, and the form that I think it takes in most people's minds is the story of Frankenstein (subtitled The Modern Prometheus). Dr. Frankenstein works with the nature of life and in so doing he creates a monster that he cannot control. The Hollywood versions played up Dr. Frankenstein's pride and the deadly consequences.

So "playing God" means something about playing with forces that we shouldn't, having too much pride, angering the Gods. But that is basically a description of all of technology. When we build a damn, we create a lake and modify the course of a river--certainly that is playing God. The old saw "if God had meant for us to fly he would have given us wings" is just a variation on saying that flight is "playing God".

The reaction is much stronger when our modifications involve living things. Frankenstein and his monster is seen as worse than Prometheus with his fire. But we modify life all of the time as well. All domesticated species have basically been created by humans. The job description of a doctor is to play God. The doctor's goal is to prevent death, to change the normal course of events.

We manipulate creation all of the time. We have genetically modified plants and animals so they no longer resemble their wild relatives and belong to different species. Blood transfusions were opposed as playing God. Certainly organ transplants are playing God--we take an organ from a dead individual and put it into a living one. We take someone who perhaps was "meant" to die, and let them live.

In what way is genetic modification different from these examples? The only way that I can see is that many people feel that genes are more of the "essence" of an individual. At one time, people felt that blood was the essence of an individual, and blood transfusions were seen as an abomination. Now the gene is seen that way. This view of genes is seen in popular fiction. In Spiderman, genes from a spider make Peter Parker take on some of the essence of spider. The truth is that there is nothing about a spider gene that is more "spidery" than human genes. In fact, we share many genes. We can transfer a gene that controls eye formation in humans into a fly, and it forms an eye--but the eye of a fly, not a human (1). Genes are no more our essence than is blood or an organ.

"Playing God" might mean something. It might mean there are some limits beyond which we shouldn't go. If that is the case, the person must make a case about what kinds of changes are OK and which are not, and be able to defend them. It cannot just be an arbitrary feeling about what seems OK and what is not, based mostly on what we grew up being comfortable with. Why is changing the genetic makeup of a plant with radiation acceptable but doing the same thing with a genetic vector not OK? Is taking insulin from a pig and injecting it into human different from using human insulin genetically engineered into a bacteria? Maybe genetic modification to cure disease is acceptable but for cosmetic reasons is not. How do you define the limits?

Playing God might mean acting without consideration of the possible consequences of our actions. Humans have often had too much pride in our technology and have failed to realize the consequences of our actions. When we built those damns, they often had unforeseen consequences on the ecosystem. An attempt to solve one problem, such as insect pests using DDT, can lead to other problems. This is a reasonable objection. If playing God simply means acting without realizing the limitations of our knowledge, it is a valid warning. But even then we must understand where to draw the line. We can never have perfect knowledge. If we need absolute certainty that our actions would have no harmful consequences, we never would have taken Prometheus's gift of fire, especially since fire is dangerous and has had harmful consequences. So I agree we should proceed with caution, but we cannot be so cautious as to be paralyzed.

What I tell students who use the "playing God" argument isn't that it is wrong. I tell them to think about what they really mean. They need to take it beyond a gut feeling. They need to define what playing God means and to apply it consistently. My goal is to get them to reflect and to refine. When that happens, generally fewer things fall within "playing God."

I also make clear I have a strong objection to one meaning of playing God. I have seen people basically say that if someone has a genetic defect, that it was meant to be. That if people are dying of hunger or disease, that is God's will and there is a reason for it and we should not do anything about it. They use that to argue against genetic technology, yet somehow I don't think they would use it to argue against taking antibiotics because the disease is God's will. Should we leave people to die because it is God's will? Or more trivially, should we not give glasses to people because it is God's will for them to have poor vision? Would they be willing to tell someone whose child is dying that we have the means to save them, but we can't do that because they were meant to die and we would be playing God? I cannot see that. It sounds a lot like Ebeneezer Scrooge saying that hunger will "decrease the surplus population." If playing God involves saving the surplus population, I am all for it.

1 G. Halder, P. Callaerts, W. J. Gehring. 1995. Induction of Ectopic Eyes by Targeted Expression of the eyeless Gene in Drosophila. Science 267:1788