CRISPR: The Gene-Editing Tech is a Demonic Implement

The bioethics of CRISPR are an issue of existential proportions. However, even the well-meaning and well-guided Catholic ethicists fall into the same traps as secular ethicists: they are so lost in their own definitions and internal logic that they fail to see the bigger picture. Fr. Austriaco’s talk on the bioethics of CRISPR was illuminating but nevertheless fell short on accurately capturing the full breadth of the moral crisis we face.

The Talk

On October 5, Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, Professor of Biological Sciences and Sacred Theology at the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines, gave a seminar about the ethics of CRISPR and gene-editing technology. The seminar was hosted by the Thomistic Institute, which exists to promote Catholic truths and intellectualism at universities. Fr. Austriaco completed his Bachelor’s in Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in Biology at M.I.T, where he became a Catholic. Since then, he has been ordained as a priest. As a scientist, Dr. Austriaco has worked on shelf-stable vaccines delivered through genetically engineered yeast as a delivery vector. Given his illustrious background in the domains of both Catholicism and bioengineering, the talk was centered on Catholic moral reasoning around the use of gene editing technology.

For the first half of the talk, Fr. Austriaco surveyed the capabilities of CRISPR technology, from its discovery as a tool in 2012 by Charpentier and Doudna to its modern in-vitro therapeutic applications. Now and then, throughout the complicated science talk, Fr. Austriaco would make subtle jabs at China, which stood as the enduring highlights of the entire seminar. For example, regarding the scientist He Jiankui—who in 2018 modified the embryos of two twin girls, supposedly inoculating them against HIV—and his mysterious imprisonment, Fr. Austriaco joked about the lack of Chinese transparency.

Ethics of Gene Editing

The central tension in Fr. Austriaco’s ethical argument lay between the ethics of dignity and the ethics of autonomy. The ethics of dignity assume that humans have infinite worth, whereas the ethics of autonomy are based on what we can do without harming others. As a Catholic, it is remarkably easy to derive why humans have dignity: God has infinite value; humans were made in the image of God; therefore, humans must have infinite value. However, there are ways to derive intrinsic worth without the assumption of God. In the Western tradition, we used to believe in the existence of a spirit or a soul, which provided an easy God-less justification for human dignity: spiritual beings are worth more than any merely material thing. However, as the West becomes increasingly secular and materialistic, both justifications have lost their ground.

The prevailing counter-theory is the ethics of autonomy, which state that one is free to do whatever he wishes so long as it does not infringe on the autonomy of others. While there are various formulations, most autonomy theorists claim that human dignity is conceptually no more than respect for personal autonomy. Without any further grounding, this claim allows others, like the Chinese, to question why respect for autonomy is valid. The Kantian response would be to appeal to our ability to reason. However, this is an evolutionarily arbitrary answer. Our ability to reason has no significance other than the fact that it was not selected against. Fr. Austriaco pointed to an example of a polar bear: if you were stranded in the arctic tundra, would you much rather be a polar bear than a naked man with reason and will? He snarkily added, “you wouldn’t want to be a polar bear in the middle of Hanover either; you would simply be a dead polar bear.”

Given this philosophical grounding, Fr. Austriaco arrived at four principles for preserving the dignity of humans: the safety of persons, the commodification of persons, the marginalization of persons, and just access for all persons. While he did not delve into the details due to time constraints, Fr. Austriaco shared his conclusion that somatic gene editing for therapeutic purposes would be permissible. In contrast, germline editing would be impermissible because future children will not be able to give informed consent. In the interesting case of somatic non-therapeutic uses, Fr. Austriaco claimed that certain cases of enhancement for the common good could be permissible depending on the scenario. For instance, if an air-traffic controller wanted better eyesight and believed that being an air traffic controller is his life’s duty, eyesight enhancement might be permissible.

While Fr. Austriaco brilliantly presented the ethical theory and the science, due to the time constraint he couldn’t fully explain the connection between the two and how the ethical theory implied his practical conclusions. I am sure Fr. Austriaco has a more nuanced position on gene editing that could not be presented in an hour-long talk. Still, the final slide was an anticlimactic 2×2 table indicating the moral permissibility of somatic, germline, therapeutic, and nontherapeutic editing cases. Also, aside from being philosophically uninteresting, Fr. Austriaco’s analysis simply didn’t consider the full picture and the broad consequences. It was rather self-involved and enclosed.

Not Far Enough

The main issue that philosophers and ethicists confront when conducting their analyses is that they become so engrossed with the self-enclosed logical structure of their own ideology that it becomes unconvincing and often untrue to anyone who has not drunk the kool-aid. This is particularly true of secular ethicists who, as Fr. Austriaco rightly pointed out, become so engrossed in their ideology that they fail to see their ideas cannot stand without belief in God-granted human dignity or spirit. Unfortunately, Fr. Austriaco’s argument fell into a similar trap: once he outlined the principles of human dignity of which he is convinced, he lost the broader picture.

As a secular agnostic STEM major, the position I put forth is almost a heretical one. However, if we see the broader picture and the impact that CRISPR has on our psyche, we can see that its proliferation in any capacity, even somatic therapeutic cases, represents an existential pandora’s box. This civilizational crisis is not one that I would want to go through in my lifetime, let alone my future children’s.

Argument from Common Sense

The comparison between DNA and computer code is one that has been thoroughly disproven by both sides of the analogy. That said, some parts of the analogy are still applicable. For example, we commonly write three kinds of tests in software engineering: unit, regression, and integration. The unit tests ensure that individual components do what we expect them to do with high reliability. Regression tests ensure that our changes to pre-existing code do not break anything. Finally, integration tests ensure that the entire system operates as expected. The three, in combination, make us pretty confident that the code we write includes minimal errors and bugs (mind you, these tests are also human-designed and fallible).

With CRISPR, such analogous tests are currently impossible. For example, 2.9 billion base pairs in our DNA encode about 725 megabytes of information (4 base pairs encoded by 2 bits). However, our genes can be losslessly compressed to roughly 4 megabytes (representing the actual information content or its Kolmogorov complexity). Now, this is not that much information. Some modern web pages take up more space than 4 megabytes (the 2017 average was about 3MBs). However, we face unfathomable complexity when we start looking at the expression of these genes and the molecular and cellular interactions that arise. Even with recent advances in protein folding with AlphaFold2, we are still very far from understanding how genes operate within a living organism. 

This presents a very clear problem for our “good practices” testing methods. If we cannot even understand how new code influences the program’s operation, how are we to even begin testing our changes? Even for therapeutic uses, we cannot guarantee that there won’t be some unforeseen effect. Realistically, the only way to conduct systems tests is to run experiments on live humans, given that we cannot replicate complex emergent interactions of our newly edited DNA in a host body. Adherence to sound testing principles not only seems impossible with our current understanding (and possibly for a long time), but the only way to safely conduct them would violate the human dignity outlined by Fr. Austriaco. 

The issue is much broader than just on the genetic level. Editing our genes has potentially massive influence at a cultural, societal, and civilizational level, meaning that regression and systems tests at those levels would need to be ideally performed. You can quickly see how this is impossible to do, even in an ideal world. There can be no “isolated sandbox testing environment” unless you’re willing to sideline human dignity, which defeats its purpose in the first place. Even if you could somehow create a sandbox testing environment without violating dignity and freedom, mere public knowledge of such experiments has wide-ranging implications (as it did when He Jiankui performed his exploitative experiments on the embryos of two girls). This defeats the purpose of these testing practices.

The old computer science adage “never test code in production” holds in this case. But, unfortunately, there are no “development branches” for humans, there are no “ testing environments” for society, and there are no “integration tests” for our civilization.

Argument from Self-Perception

The most dominant view of technology across political and religious views is that it is neutral and its morality is determined by those who wield it. This is a dangerous view. By virtue of its existence, technology fundamentally alters how we experience and interact with the world. The particular views to which CRISPR disposes us cause cracks in the foundation of society and, eventually, an identity crisis within the West (if it has not happened already).

Science views the world from a neutral, mathematical perspective. This mathematical, ‘objective’ representation of the world provides a layer between our daily lives and the world. It used to be the case that, in our daily lives, we directly engage in the world with concern. However, with the abstracted lens of science filtering the world, we can no longer experience the world in this fundamental way. Science, in a way, flattens our world experience through the objective lens. While this seems counter-intuitive to the cultural consensus that science unlocks a deeper understanding of our world, it becomes so obviously true once you get used to the idea. The normal way we experience the world is … through experiencing the world, and not by experiencing an abstracted conceptual representation of the world. 

Technology is the vessel through which science’s flattening lens gets inserted into daily life. As we invite technology into our society and lives, we become less and less able to experience the world in a concerningly fundamental way. The world increasingly appears technological. This is also obviously true; Heidegger observes that we treat the world around us as a “standing reserve.” The world turns from something to be experienced to something that should be ordered, assembled, and extracted. Even a human turns into something to be used as a mechanical instrument. Technology obscures the world from what it fundamentally is, as much as it reveals. 

Now, this progress isn’t necessarily ‘bad.’ Science and technology have opened our eyes to possibilities that undoubtedly improved our quality of life. For example, if we had not experienced uranium deposits as something that could be extracted, we would never get clean and safe nuclear energy. However, it dismantles the popular conception of technology as necessarily morally neutral.

So, if industrial technology during Heidegger’s time made us view the world as something to be extracted from and organized, how does the bio-informational technology of our time make us view the world? Once you understand that the same code which dictates our development and, to a large extent, behavior can be analyzed, understood, and edited, there is only one conclusion: we begin to view ourselves as something to be tinkered with, then something to be experimented with, and then something to be designed and eventually constructed. The underlying assumption of all of these acts is the categorization of humans as essential objects. Objectification of peoples becomes the new foundation of our civilization.

We already see this manifest: “Biohacking,” while still nascent, embodies the mindset that humans are objects to be tinkered with. Biohackers implant themselves with unregulated microchips and inject homemade penicillin and genetic treatments for lactose intolerance into their own bodies. Some thoughtful members of this group already accept objectification as the theoretical grounding for their work. If CRISPR and genetic editing become mainstream, even if non-therapeutic and germline editing are outlawed as per Fr. Austriaco’s prescriptions, the idea that humans can be edited and changed to our liking will slowly sublimate into our societal consciousness. Eventually, it will become the majority opinion that our bodies are objects and that our minds, too, are objects. 

To those who are willing to accept these assertions, be aware that it implies the falsehood of human dignity and rights completely. Once you accept that our minds and bodies are simple computers and mechanical devices, there is no room for autonomy or dignity. Both sides of the debate lose. This is not a world in which I would want to live. This is not a world in which I would want anybody that I remotely care about to live.

The Solution

If you are convinced at all, the next natural question is: how do we prevent this from happening? Unfortunately, our current legal, political, and mainstream philosophies are not equipped to convince most of us that we should avoid CRISPR. At the current rate, the self-destructive course of our civilization seems inevitable. What we need is a course correction. This course correction will need to be drastic and potentially destructive. We must all ask ourselves: what are we ready to sacrifice in order to prevent collapse? When the time comes, will we abandon our future to save sclerotic ideals of autonomy, or will we choose humanity?