Mark Wicclair
In order to answer the question, ?Is it OK to alter nature?? it is first necessary to address two preliminary questions. 1) What does it mean to ?alter nature?? 2) What is the standard to determine whether or not an action, practice, or policy is ?OK??
To begin with the second preliminary question, possible standards include the law, social conventions, and ethics. I will assume that the appropriate standard in this case is ethics. That is, I will interpret the question to be asking whether it is ethically permissible to ?alter nature.?
The second preliminary question is not as easy to answer. Do we alter nature if we trim a hedge, plant a tomato seed, bake bread, pull out weeds, cut our finger nails, or kick a stone in the woods? Surely, these morally innocuous actions cannot be what anyone has in mind when they ask whether altering nature is morally permissible.
But, then, what do people who ask that question have in mind? Might they be concerned about more dramatic (e.g., momentous and/or irreversible) changes? If so, then the answer to the question has to be, ?it depends.? It may be plausible to claim that some dramatic changes, such as human-induced global warming or species extinction, are subject to ethical criticism. Surely, however, no reasonable person would support a similar claim in relation to the eradication of polio or small pox, no less dramatic changes.
People who question whether it is ethically acceptable to alter nature may have a specific kind of alteration in mind. One likely candidate is genetic alteration. But are all genetic alterations unethical? Puck, my toy poodle, is the result of indirect genetic alteration by means of cross-breeding. I challenge anyone to convince me that the alteration of nature that was required to produce Puck was unethical. Moreover, I doubt anyone would object to genetic engineering to eliminate or replace the genes that produce diseases such as cystic fibrosis and Alzheimer?s on the grounds that it is wrong to alter nature.
Another specific kind of alteration that is sometimes subject to moral criticism is assisted human reproduction. There are a number of methods that physicians can employ to produce human embryos. One of the earliest methods is in vitro fertilization (IVF). With IVF, an egg is removed from a woman?s ovary and is fertilized with sperm in a Petri dish. (In vitro means ?in glass,? and a Petri dish is made out of glass.) The resulting embryo is then implanted into the woman?s uterus. IVF and other methods of assisted reproduction are sometimes criticized because they are ?unnatural? substitutes for ?natural? reproduction.
But is the mere fact that IVF and other means of assisted reproduction are ?unnatural? a good reason to conclude that they are ethically flawed? I think not. If an alternative means of reproduction such as IVF can help a married couple who have unsuccessfully tried to conceive for several years finally have a child, don?t we need to say something more to question it ethically than to say that its use ?alters nature??
In sum, the mere fact that a human intervention alters nature is not in itself a good reason for concluding that the intervention is ethically flawed. Rather, it is necessary to consider various morally relevant factors. Such factors include: 1) expected benefits (i.e., likely good consequences), 2) expected harms (i.e., likely bad consequences), 3) relevant ethical rights, and 4) relevant moral rules and principles. Morally relevant considerations such as these determine whether a particular alteration of nature is ethically acceptable.
