Gene editing–should we and can we? I have to say that I am a proponent of gene-editing and I am not a proponent of playing God. As I understand the matter, we do gene-edit in medicine. We gene-edit with regard to the vaccine for babies who are likely to inherit Alzheimer’s. The M.S. vaccine which is in test trials at this very moment also involves some gene-editing. We save lives when we do this and we save money. On an ethical level, this is both utilitarian and Kantian. I would go even further and say that we approach a certain level responsibility too. This is to say, we have spent millions on DNA research and when we find a genetic technique that can save lives and money, we are obligated to follow through  with the new medicine as long as we do no harm in the process.

What are the possibilities for gene-editing where a species or the environment is concerned? Jonathan Pugh in “Driven to Extinction” and Megan Scudellari in “Self-Destructing Mosquitoes and Sterilised Rodents” discuss the possibility of gene-editing for the sake of eradicating pests like malaria carrying mosquitoes or disease infested rats. My question is, ‘Why can’t we just gene-edit the diseases they carry?’ Why do we need to eliminate mosquitoes when they feed whole reptile-based ecosystems including some of the birds. (I love frogs by the way and they often feast on mosquito larvae.) Why would we eliminate rats when they too feed various species in some ecosystems. (Birds and Snakes eat them–I don’t know why. They are not my favourite food…) What is more, if we are successful in gene-editing the illnesses mosquitoes and rats carry we might have more luck with other species like the Blackfooted Ferret. This Ferret is dependent upon medicinal peanut butter balls that are laced with a plague eradicating vaccine that we feed them for survival. I mean, to put the matter baldly, if we had a way to safely gene-edit these species, the species themselves would not change at all except for becoming malaria resistant, plague resistant and whatever else is in the rats. The Prairie Dogs might not thank us where the Ferrets are concerned but just about every other species will.

Where else do we gene-edit? The Quaga project which involves back breeding zebras has an element of gene-editing to it. The Quaga are keystone creatures and all zebras carry some of their genes. This is a humane project and will likely yield a creature that is Quaga mostly and a bit zebra too. We can’t bring back what was but we might get close. This kind of project is called de-extinction and we are attempting to right the wrong that humans have done to Quagas. I know this sounds radical, but we back breed all the time with birds. We mate hawks to eagles to form an eagle-hawk. Then we breed in more eagles to make an eagle that is genetically fortified and we never mention that they will always carry a few Hawk genes. We can even go so far as to breed phoenixes back to life this way and eventually take them off life support. Again, there is an element of gene-editing in this and we wind up with more birds too.

I guess I am stumped: why are we talking about eradicating a species when we might finally arrive at a point where we can gene-edit Galapicos turtles or White Rhinos to save species so endangered that they are at the end of life-support? I realise that crisper as a technology is easy medically speaking, but introducing the gene edited embryo in something more than a mosquito is complicated. In truth, we are half way to torturing rats if we do gene edit and implant their embryos. Both Pugh and Scudellari call for some kind of ethic to guide any venture into the realm of what is still experimentation, but I would suggest that we begin such a venture with the medical ethic–the oath to ‘do no harm.’ We do not have the right to really alter a species and we do not have the right to cause their extinction. We do not have the right to ignore the delivery of aid when we have the aid to bring to them. We are not responsible at all if we have harmed a species and then refused aid. The onus is on us and not the species to save themselves. They often take care of ecosystems by doing their part and we are offensive on this count.

I realise I have raised the issue of animal rights and those so-called rights are ill defined in law if they are there at all. But maybe we might want to take what is ostensibly a human-centred way of thinking and ask ourselves what do we really have rights to here? Maybe medical ethics, starting with the statement ‘Do no harm!’ is really the beginning of evaluating what it is we are doing. This might be a Kantian approach or a Utilitarian approach or even an Ecocentric approach. I doubt it matters that much where harm is concerned. To have an ecological conscience you cannot harm a whole ecosystem or even an eighth of it. To be Kantian, you cannot harm a whole species if animals and ecology are an integral part of beneficence (and when do we really know who is who anyway?). How is destroying a species ‘of utility’ to an ecosystem–we all live in an ecosystem or several of them and we all have a purpose these systems even if our purposes are not always apparent.  So, while we can debate animal rights or what we think is right for humans, what we really need to ask is when did we have the right encroach so far on a species that we can harm them for all time.

Tammy (Juniper 8)

William Cronon’s article, entitled “The Trouble With Wilderness; Or, Getting Back To The Wrong Nature,” speaks of how we discursively construct the concept wilderness without considering that this might really be a conceptual category that we have created that enables us to define the boundary to an urban civilised existence as opposed to being something that might really exist out there (…and certainly not too far out there). I do love this article though and I write nothing but exclamation marks beside what he says. On the other hand, I must concede also that Cronon’s essay to “rethink wilderness” made me cliche a bit too but with a small difference. I do go far out there but only as a tourist and never to the wilderness.

Cronon writes that if we are to get out of ‘othering’ the wilderness vis a vis constructing it as the negation of us and civilisation–that other way out there where we do not live–we must learn to “honor the Other within and the Other next door as much as we do the exotic Other that lives far [far] away […]. In particular, we need to discover a common middle ground in which all these things, from the city to wilderness, can somehow be encompassed in the word ‘home'” (19). I could not agree more–yes!, let us realise that we are never outside the space or spaces we call wilderness. The wilderness, really nature, is in the city and outside of it. On the other hand, when do we really get outside spaces we home categorically and thus discursively? We can’t. How else will we know?

Cronon asks us not to be the happy campers that go out into the wilderness and feel as though we have escaped civilisation and thus have entered that antithetical place, that virgin wilderness, from which all life has sprung.  O.K.  I will not do that again. But I will still go camping and I will still feel free of the city even though I have graduated to RV’s and find tenting to be the worst bet especially when I am in bear country. Yes, I do jog and can out run a bear. I have been made that scared by these gorgeous animals and I still donate to save the bear funds too. My point, here, is that I am not sure that I am as guilty as Cronon would have me. I have spent more summers than I will admit too (I hate telling people how old I am) going camping in the summer time. My favourite areas are mountains with lakes or wild rivers in the mountains. I do not need a campground, just a place to park and set up camp. I am quite at home for awhile. I am so used to knowing where I am in part from knowing how fauna and mosses grow in relation to trees and and the sun that really I have to be intoxicated to get lost. Perhaps Cronon would not mind if I up grade to tourist in his conception of the wilderness. I mean I am not as bad as some people who equate camping with bugs and the uncivilised.

True, I have brought civilisation with me in the form of an RV? I am ambivalent on this point where Cronon’s conception is concerned. But after reading Kyle Powers Whyte’s essay, “Food Sovereignty, Justice, and Indigenous Peoples: An Essay on Settler Colonialism and Collective Continuance,” I think…maybe…I am not that (un)civilised. Much of Whyte’s essay concerns itself with the concept of “collective continuance” so as to “describe the overall degree of adaptive capacity a society has when we take all its collective capacities into account, from food systems to gender systems. Collective capacities contribute to collective continuance because they consist of relationships that have certain qualities, two such qualities being trustworthiness and ecological redundancy” (3). While Whyte largely addresses what colonialism did by infringing upon Indigenous food systems as well as outlawing customs like the “Potlatch,” Whyte, nevertheless, makes clear that how we collect food, hunt food, and even distribute food has everything to do with who we are and not just how we sustain ourselves. Indigenous people(s) live in the wilderness, right? No. Some Indigenous persons tend to inhabit land and home the land just as much as urban dwellers do but often with a greater degree of reverence even if some of these populations are migratory. In short, home is home and how we procure, share, and maintain ourselves vis a vis food is a big part of what homes us.

Whyte takes matters to a spiritual, institutional and occupational level. He writes, “the ways the land and waters are cultivated also involve the creation and repetition of stories and ceremonies that endow the entwined human institutions and food systems with sacredness” (11). Whyte is speaking of ‘ecological redundancy’ here, where relationships are established with food sources that define one and one’s culture repeatedly. An example of such a food source would be salmon and taking up residence near water sources that provide an abundance of salmon. His point is that Indigenous populations often take up residence near food sources such as these and in turn they are homed by the salmon and all customs around procuring and sharing this food source. Given that this is the case, should I say that Indigenous people(s) live in the wilderness? No, clearly that would be a gross faux pas, but Whyte makes a point about custom that should not be overlooked. I may be Caucasian with a mixed heritage and clearly I indulge in camping, but maybe this is a custom, a way for me to come to know more about the world around me. Maybe, I am still a tourist in this but there is no chance I would not go and learn from Native inhabitants of the lands I visit about how to be there and take part in what is around me. In sum, I have never been to any wilderness that I know of. I am a tourist though and I am committed to continuing my education. Indigenous inhabitants with whom I might befriend or animal inhabitants that I always try to befriend before the run away or maybe it is just the trees and the mountains in the distance…I am quite at home here (there) and I know that I am away from the city. These journeys are my summer custom and it takes me away every time but never to the wilderness and always to a home away from home for a short time.

Tammy

In Dane Scott’s “The Technological Fix Criticisms and the Agricultural Biotechnology Debate, ” the question of whether genetically modified food contributes to well being is raised. Scott raises the question within the context of instrumentalism wherein science is put to work on the premise that science is  primarily “‘an activity which produces knowledge with predication power and capacity for control’’’ (Scott 5). Scott’s concern following critiques of instrumental knowledge is that science is put to work to solve problems that are primarily social such that science must solve the very problems it has in part fostered. Scott uses the example of the “The Golden Rice Bowl Experiment” and he notes that putting vitamin A in rice did in fact go a long way towards addressing a malnutrition problem in highly economically deprived areas but that really the solution to nutrition is one of economics and social activism. On the level of logic, I could not agree more.  We need not look far back into history to see how World powers have influenced economic situations all over the world only to cause immense starvation and poverty. We still witness the nightmarish legacy of colonialism and imperialism in our day to day lives every time we pick up a newspaper. With that being said, just what answer does Scott have in mind for this part of the world. Malnutrition happens quickly and it can devastate whole populations in relatively short time periods.

On the other hand, like Scott, I agree that with moments of successful genetic modification like these, we have more than opened the door to something I am not at all sure of. Chiasmus. We have significantly modified all sorts of agricultural plants all over the earth. We do this, of course, in the name of science and we do do it to solve social problems we cannot solve. Whether we modify corn to increase profit yields only to negatively impact ecosystems that require the worms that we destroy in the process or we modify rice simply to cut back on methane and damage to the atmosphere, we do modify plants at genetic levels, and we do for all sorts of reasons. There is no question instrumentalism is a big part of genetic modification and it is often a band aid solution for much bigger social problems. I wonder though if this kind of thinking isn’t part of the larger social process though. Saving lives is important. Saving ecosystems is really important too. If we act instrumentally to save one or both even though we (as in economically and politically) are really the problems is that a bad thing?

I return to Kant again his categorical imperative to act for the beneficience of society and I agree that he left the plants out of this imperative and certainly that was not for the beneficience of society now that I think of this. Maybe he had eating disorders, I don’t know, but if he could rewrite his some of his thinking I am certain the plants would make it in there and so would ecosystems. Kant also wrote that the simplest approach was usually best from the point of view of making rational decisions quickly. Saving lives and appreciating nutritional needs may be only instrumental but there is a social, ethical side to this. A quick and immediate solution buys time to work on economic priorities as well as a plan to resource a population further. If there was thought put into how these rice plants in modified form thereby impacted the environment as well as saved human life…well that is to the beneficience of all (as in including the environment). Should that thought be there we are now instrumental, social, and ecologically more aware. Not bad.

On the flip side, I can hardly deny that genetic modifications of plants have done damage. Bananas are a genetically modified food, even an over cloned food. Whatever bananas were…we haven’t a clue now. Bananas are genetically degraded now nor will they be restored. We have very nearly used up this plant and food. When we consider how many people bananas help to feed yearly, the loss of this food source is serious. Genetically modifying this fruit was not to our advantage in the long term nor was it to its eco-regions. This time we have not acted for the beneficience for all even if this food source in the past (especially during the depression years) has saved more lives than we will ever count. Genetic modification was clearly instrumental and ultimately thoughtless with regard to subsequent damage to the plant species.

With these thoughts in mind, I am ambivalent but not entirely. I do not have an answer to a debate that pits instrumentalism against a need for social change. In fact, my thinking leans towards instrumentalism in service to larger agendas for not only social change but changes that secure and promote ecosystem health and well being. Ethical approaches help to think these issues through further even if we cannot solve the problems outright. A Kantian approach that centers upon ecosystems and our roles in them seems best to be. Banning genetic modification during the Rice Bowl Experiment would have killed more people than I dare count but this does not mean that we have the right radically alter our environments in the process. We really don’t know what we eat all the time. There are ingredients in food that aid human digestion processes and there are ingredients in food that aid animal digestion processes, and I am certain we do not know what it all is yet nor are we likely too. Therefore, we must consider the well being of all and not just ourselves but we should not be afraid to save life in the process.

Tammy

Scott, Dane. “The Technological Fix Criticisms and the Agricultural Biotechnology Debate.” J Agric Environ Ethics (2011) 24:207–226

Aldo Leopold’s essay, “The Land Ethic,” queries how we might begin to think about eco-centrism and eco-communitarianism and our role in such biotic communities. Conversely, Chaone Mallory in an “Introduction: Leopold and the Foundations of Environmental Ethics” (60) asks us to think about humans hunting game for sport within an eco-centric and eco-communitarian ethos. I am personally struck by my inability to take a position between Aldo and Mallory on the issue of hunting and whether we should include such activities in biotic communities.  In this blog, I will sort out this issue of hunting and its relevance to an eco-ethic.

Aldo Leopold notes that “a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such” (1). To this conception of community where all members have a place without hierarchies ordering one’s place and relevance in the community, Leopold notes that a land-community is also much like an electrical circuit wherein energy must flow. Energy must return, store and even recycle to enable continuance of biotas. Humans affect this flow and often cause the land to evolve and flow differently such that the evolutionary paths of the members of this community alter and even end. Leopold asks, “‘Can the land adjust itself to the new order? Can the desired alterations be accomplished with less violence'” (5)? While this is certainly not a question that can be answered, the question itself calls attention to what conservation must engineer and that is a profound sense of conscience and subsequent responsibility therein and not withstanding. Leopold states baldly that “A land ethic, then, reflects the existence  of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land. Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity” (6).

Mallory, on the other hand, questions the relevance and especially the significance of hunting in a biotic community where humans are no more important than any other member except from the point of view in that they can radically alter a biotic landscapes and its inhabitants and thus have a profound responsibility where conservation is concerned. Mallory notes that hunting is an “elite activity” practiced by those with “privileged cultural and economic” statuses (62). To her mind, Leopold is of this class and kind of hunter, thus his own activities have fundamentally distorted his conception of a land ethic that is communitarian, even eco-centric from the point of view of privileging the entire biotas rather than some of its members. She notes that class, race, and gender, often intertwine in ways that privilege only a few and have thus been instrumentally involved in environmental oppression(s).

So what of Leopold’s notion of hunting for sport? Is this really an elite sportsman’s activity? Does it really participate in a kind of masculinist racing, or gendering, or even a promotion of classicism within the biotic landscape(s)? Leopold sees the biotic world as an energy circuit that copes well with minimal change. What is more, he sees himself as very much apart of this landscape and, I would argue, would see his own hunting endeavors as a stable factor here too. I will not argue with Mallory’s point that racial, gender, and class oppression do indeed oppress the environment. This is a really important point. But to say that hunting is a factor of these forms of oppression might be going a bit far–at least some of the time. We are apart of this energy circuit and we do hunt to live. (No, I do not think that raising livestock or birds is separate from this concept and nor does Mallory). On the other hand, exploitation, waste, a lack of reverance for that which we take is something else and certainly may and does play into the exploitation of the environment. But is Leopold one of those exploiters? There is no evidence that he is and there is no evidence that he is not. On the other hand, the call to have a conscience and to be responsible to the point of actually conserving a whole biota (which could be the ocean by the way) is a radical and weighty call to awareness. If we do not follow through on such efforts we truly are destroyers and conquerors, or so Leopold argues. So what constitutes responsibility and what is conscience exactly? I mean a lone hunter who might actually turn around and make sure he did not hunt out of season, who may have avoided female deer anyway just in case her young were still dependent, who took care not to break up herds so as to ensure they were not vulnerable to further predation, is not really a conqueror or a destroyer. S/he is a lone hunter of but little. But, one who hunts out of season, who goes into regions that disturb migration routes and so forth, well, that might be a destroyer and of course an oppressor.

I might add that even traditional hunters that might be classed as Aboriginal or Inuit might be caught up in this black and white idea of the hunter. I cringe to think that it is ceremonial and environmentally responsible to further activities that involve whale hunting or further endanger nearly destroyed species of seals (and this could include fur seals to sea lions). I won’t name or pick on any group here, and I won’t argue that for many groups this is often a deeply spiritual endeavor. I will add that often such hunts play into a different conception of conservation that is one that is native centered and it is often one that might benefit most of the world to conserve the biotas they live. But, I still have to ask if these moments are not still exploitive. My answer again will be yes and no.

Having thought about hunting in this light, I have to return again to Leopold’s notion of the energy circuit and the call to not radically alter it and thus the subsequent call to conserve the biotas. I agree. Hunting is a choice we make and there are a lot of ways to obtain meant/protein differently. I guess my conclusion in this matter is exactly the same as Leopold’s: we do need to grow a profound sense of conscience and we must diligently pursue a stance of responsibility. We should not radically alter biotas and we should always put back what we have taken. But that being said, I have to add that part of the issue of land oppression where gender, race, and class is concerned is not being swayed by stereotypes. To say hunting is only ever exploitive is a problem. To say that it never is is an even bigger problem. Perhaps Leopold’s point, again, shines through. We must demonstrate conscience when we hunt and we must be utterly responsible so as to not alter the biotas and that would include examining how complexities of gender, race, class, and even age, sex, and so forth play into exploitive practices.

Tammy

Works Cited

Leopold, Aldo. “The Land Ethic.” A Sand County Almanac. Ed. Welchman, Jennifer. U of Alberta EClass. Accessed 09/29/2020@9:38 AM.

Mallory, Chaone. “Acts of Objectification and the Repudiation of Dominance: Leopold, Ecofeminism, and the Ecological Narrative.” Ethics and the Environment. 6:2 2001. 59-89.

Robin Attfield in “Biocentrism Talk” writes that “a biocentric stance is a life-centered one. It rejects the view that humanity alone matters in ethics, and accepts the moral standing of (at least) all living creatures” (1).  Attfield, upon defining biocentrism, then explains that biocentrism can apply to all sorts of species from flora/fauna to sophisticated mamals like whales and dolphins. Biocentrism, because of its emphasis on valuing “the good of all living creatures” over and above humans while considering at all times the impact of human behaviour on nonhuman creatures, is thus an a consequentialist ethic. He notes finally that biocentrism despite being consequentialist is also Kantian from the point of view that the beneficience of all species is in sight but with the difference that this is not a contractarian theory in which the utilitarian motive shines through with a consideration of the right of all species to that of happiness Attfield is interesting on this point because he has juxtaposed beneficience and well being of a species against that of the equality and happiness of all species. However, I wonder what beneficience looks like so I will trace his logic through with an eye towards the beneficience of ecosystems.

From an anti-anthropocentric point of view, I liked Attfield’s notion of biocentrism since he suggests that ecosystems containing many species may well have priorities over and above that of one species’ happiness. But I was left to wonder how a biocentric point of view would help us to define priority in an ecosystem of many species. Attfield notes that one way to define priority would be to consider a species rights in terms of self-defence and thus in terms of the harms that species is up against. In this sense biocentrism is further defined as a consequentialist ethic in that right of consideration goes to those who need it most. Last but not least Attfield then says if we pursue a consequentialist agenda then we must finally give way to the idea that all species are indeed equal and must be equally considered where harm is concerned. If we do pursue such an ethical valuation then the final conclusion is that we must all become vegetarian since one species’ rights cannot prevail over that of others as all are harmed if we elevate some species rights over that of others. I liked Attfield up until that moment. This takes me back to the issue of an ecosystem and I can’t but concede that in an ecosystem all species have equal rights, at least in theory, but real life and environmental issues dictate that some species rights must take priority over others to preserve the better part of the balance of the system. Some members of a species will die and their deaths may well enable others of the same and different species to live. On, the other hand, as I said agenda is everything here. Decisions can not always be left to mother nature because we lose the lives of all sorts of species everyday and needlessly. We cannot de-extinct those that we lose except in only a few rare cases. So, while biocentrism is at least a bit more hopeful as far as addressing the ills of the environment in its egalitarian and consequentialist approach, a generalist ethic concerned with beneficience that makes a claim for consequentialism and egalitarianism will not be enough without a notion of priority when life is held in the balance.