[Buddha-l] Buddhist ethics and genetic engineering

[S.A. Feite]

On Nov 27, 2008, at 11:37 PM, Richard Hayes wrote:

>>  It probably wouldn't hurt to take a
>> class in Bioethics while you're at it...
>
> What light would a course on bioethics shed on GMO? That is quite  
> simply
> not an ethical issue. Getting excited about genetic modifications is a
> profound failure to grasp the fundamental essenceless of things. It  
> is a
> matter of clinging to old views that God gave everything an essential
> nature and that it is evil to tamper with God's work. It is also a
> matter of clinging to a false dichotomy between human activity and
> nature. Sorry, but Buddhists have no time for superstitions about  
> God or
> for fallacy of false dichotomy.

Taking an absolute POV and ignoring relative distinctions is falling  
into an extreme, and thus not the Middle Way.

Since sentience of some sort or another is the very basis for  
awakening, sentience--esp. human embodiment, with it's unique self- 
reflective capabilities, is vitally important. In extenso, other  
sentient forms as well. Such capabilities did not arise through the  
egoic, greed-driven intervention of gene splicers, they came into  
being by a process of natural selection over millions and billions of  
years of simple trial and error. We are suddenly wise enough to  
assess this billion year old database which we still don't fully  
understand, esp. in regards to the interdependent relationships in  
this relatively closed ecosystem of Earth? For genetic engineers to  
manipulate the very basis of this sentience is potentially the most  
dangerous development in not just human history--but because all  
sentient life in inextricably linked--it may represent the greatest  
danger to all sentient carbon-based life-forms and collective awakening.

Most people are not even aware that patented genetic life-forms can  
be patented by corporations.

It really has nothing to do with an imaginary creator god at all.

Steve