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The biotechnology culture clash

Why East and West dier in response to genetic engineering and stem cell research
By Lee M. Silver

n the year 2000, my family and I spent nine

months traveling across Asia. Since then I have
traveled across most other areas of the world,
most recently sub-Saharan Africa, talking to
people about their spiritual beliefs and what they
think about biotechnology in particular. I will describe my interpretations of what I saw and heard.

Dierences in religious perspectives

If you look at the national law/political climate of

embryonic research, you will notice three different areas:
America, Europe (Mendocino, Calif., I include with
Europe) and Asia. Asia, including Singapore, has a very
liberal political climate when it comes to embryo research
in contrast to the other two regions. Conversely, you get a
very different picture in Europe and America on genetically engineered crops. In America you have positive national laws and political climate for genetically modied
(GM) crops, whereas Europeans reject GM crops. And in
Asia they accept GM. So you have these three different
categorical responses to these two different technologies.
Europe and America are essentially inverse, but Asia accepts everything.
All of Western culture is inuenced greatly by JudeoChristianity. The general idea we learn as children is that
there is a master of the universe and there is a master
plan. Thats what directs our future. If you reject the
church, it is not uncommon, judging from people I have
talked to, to transfer this belief in a higher power from
a material God in the sky to the material Earth below.
Mother Nature becomes the master of the universe with
a master plan, which is what has happened in Europe.
Some polls show that 78 percent of Americans believe
in a Christian version of God as presented in the Bible.
Europe has become very different in its religious beliefs,
in a very specic way. The number of people who have
traditional Christian beliefs and attend church is way,
way down. Instead, what is rising is a belief in a higher
power. And so Europeans answered, Yes to the statement, I dont believe in a personal God, but I do believe
in a higher power of some kind.
Asian culture and traditions are completely different
from those in the West. Western spirits are discrete and
static you are given a soul, you die, you go to heaven as
a distinct individual. On the other hand, Eastern spirits
evolve. The idea is that all spirits start off in the simplest
organism and then, during each life, a plant or animal
gains karma. When the body grows old, the spirit leaves
the worn-out body behind and jumps into a new one.
This is a very different perception of the world.

Human or not human

My colleague Robert George, a politics professor at

Princeton University and member of the Presidents
Council on Bioethics, says in The Clash of Orthodoxies:
Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis: The scientic evidence establishes the fact that each of us was from conception a human being. Science, not religion, vindicates
this crucial premise of the pro-life claim.
Is this really science? Or, is this just hidden theology?
If early embryos are human beings, embryonic stem cell
derivation is not only unethical, its murderous, because
youre taking a human being apart and growing cells out
of it. If early embryos are just a bunch of cells, embryo
10 | S C I E N C E & T H E O LO G Y N E W S | J U N E 2 0 06

research is not really human research, its cell research.

I would call it ethically innocuous as opposed to murder.
(See pages 19 26 for more trends in embryonic stem
cell research.)
The claimed scientic evidence works as follows: At
any moment during development, theres no substantial
change in the biology of the organism. Development is
a continuous process we know that. If we look at a
baby, and then step back a nanosecond, she wouldnt be
substantially different. Then go back another nanosecond, and theres no substantial change. Its all continuous
change. If you accept that, then any cutoff for dening human beings is arbitrary, because if you draw an
absolute line, on either side of that line are going to be
organisms that are substantially equivalent. Therefore,
all lines are arbitrary. And since a baby is a human being,
an embryo is also.
The problem with this argument is that it is based
on an unstated assumption. We instinctively believe
that a thing either is or is not a human being. We have
this either/or perception of life. And if something is
either a human being or not, then this argument stands,
because any line you draw arbitrarily is going to separate
two organisms that are biologically equivalent. So how
could one be a human being and the other one not be a
human being?

The theology of embryos

This assumption comes from an interpretation of

Genesis made by certain religious groups that strictly
follow the Bible. Genesis 1:27 says, God created man
in His own image. And that is interpreted by some as
meaning that God created man instantaneously. There
can be no such thing as gradual creation, because then
you have partial man, and man would not be in the
image of God. There is no such thing as a partial God.
God is absolute.
Embryonic stem cells can develop into an actual
person. So, based on the denition of the U.S. National
Academy of Sciences, embryonic stem cells are equivalent
to embryos. Yet based on the molecular signals that you
give the cells, the cells can change from embryonic to
nonembryonic and back to embryonic. You can do this
very, very easily.
So then you can ask, How many human beings are
there in a dish of embryonic stem cells? If there are a
million cells in the dish, and you separate all the cells,
then you have a million human beings. But you can
then put them back together to form a single organism.
What happened to the 999,999 human beings? Robert
George would say they all died. Scientists would say
that this is not a scientic question, but a theological
question. Science cant answer the question because it is
theological not scientic.

Genetically modied beliefs

Genesis 1:2829 says, God gave man dominion

over every sh, bird, living creature and every seed-bearing plant. What does that mean? It means that plants
and animals exist for our benet and that belief extends
into the idea that genetic modication of plants and
animals is not inherently unethical. It doesnt mean that
you might not worry about the effects on health
or the environment, but that you use rational costbenet analyses to determine the legitimacy of any
use of the technology.

Six of the top 10 countries producing GM crops

in the year 2004 were in the Western Hemisphere,
which is a very traditionally Christian hemisphere.
Europe has rejected GM crops, and so has Mendocino,
Calif. China has rapidly advanced beyond the rest of
the world.
The European proclamations all say, We want to preserve Mother Nature. We dont want your American genetically modied crops. We dont want to harm Mother
Nature. Genetic engineering is seen as a violation of
Mother Natures master plan.
The Europeans I have talked to couldnt care less
about human embryos, but dont touch their crops,
they say. The problem with this picture is that it is 99
percent artice. There is almost nothing in Europe that
is natural. Take the Loire Valley in France, for example.
The corn growing there comes from Mexico; it doesnt
belong there. The weeds growing along the side of the
elds werent growing there 1,000 years ago. They were
selected by nature because they are able to grow alongside
elds like that. None of the meadow trees were growing
when Europe was forested those trees cant grow in
the forest. All of this happened because of agriculture.
Wild cattle, wolves, bears and all the other wild animals
in Europe went extinct.
Western spirits are tightly bound to the material, either
Jesus or the Earth. Eastern spirits are detachable. I went
to cremation services all across India. The idea is that in
this process, the spirit is going up to heaven and comes
back down into another organism. In Buddhism, there is
no single God and no master plan. As a consequence, the
idea of playing god is meaningless.
China, India and Singapore which is so tiny that
people there dont grow crops upset the Western
mindset entirely. Singapore would grow crops if it could.
But embryos are tiny and the country has a huge embryo
research effort going on. Moreover, theyre stealing a lot
of scientists from America.
A woman I met in Sumatra, Indonesia, calls herself
a Muslim, but her beliefs are purely Eastern. She says
that she is reincarnated in her grandchildren. A quarter
of her spirit goes into her grandchildren and other
quarter portions of their spirits come from the other
grandparents. And when I heard this, interpreted
through her son, I realized that what she called spirits
I would call genes.
Playing god only makes sense in the context of the
traditional monotheism that prevails in America or the
post-Christian monotheism of Mother Nature common
in Europe. In Asian culture it doesnt make sense, which
is the reason why theres no grassroots opposition there
to either embryo research or genetically engineered crops.
Western humanitarians and environmentalists who oppose the current reigning policies on biotechnology and
hope to benet humanity and the environment need to
take a place at the discussion table. It can happen only if
they can separate subliminal spiritual beliefs from scientic evidence and theory. n
Lee M. Silver is a professor of molecular biology and public
affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and
International Affairs at Princeton University.
This article is adapted from Challenging Nature, remarks
delivered at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken,
N.J. Used with permission.