Related articles and links |  1 of 3

"Odd but hopeful" is how C. Ben Mitchell, an assistant professor of bioethics and contemporary culture at Trinity International University, describes a coalition he's a part of. Feminists, environmentalists, and evangelicals—for different reasons—share the same concern about the potential of nanotechnology to alter the human species. Mitchell and C. Christopher Hook, author of this issue's cover story, strategize ways to prevent disaster with their strange bedfellows at the Institute for Bioethics and the Human Future at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Christianity Today associate editor Agnieszka Tennant talked with Mitchell about his ambivalence toward nanotechnology.

What does it mean to be human?

It's to be an imager of God. That term is not shorthand for capacities that humans possess, like reason, will, or awareness of self. Image of God is a status of being that we hold; it's ontological.

At what point might we be in danger of losing our humanity?

From conception through eternity human beings persist as human beings. It could only be through altering what it means to be an imager of God that you can alter what it means to be human.

I admit that I don't know entirely how or if one could alter the image of God, but I think that there are threats to that. I don't believe that everything that's important about being human goes on in the head. If, however, scientists could ever remove the brain and preserve the body, they will have violated the human. This may not mean that they have destroyed the human, of course.

Plenty of people attribute personhood status to nonhuman entities. It's already being done with apes and dolphins. At the same time, some question whether members of our species are in fact human persons—unborn fetuses for one, and people at the end of life, in a persistent vegetative state.

The Bible does not address nanotechnology, but does it offer any principles that should guide Christians as they think about it?

The Bible's message is about redeeming that which has been lost and about caring for those who are in need and those who are suffering. It seems to me that the biblical obligation is to care for those who are the least of these, rather than make an effort to advance our species.

Does the Bible prohibit enhancements?

I don't know of a specific prohibition that says we ought not to try to enhance human beings. I find a number of cautions. The tower of Babel story is a powerful cautionary tale against trying to usurp God's authority. It's a warning that at least ought to give us pause.

Who defines what an enhancement is? Who defines who a better human being is? It seems to me to require a godlike omniscience to determine that.

But why the concern about making people "better"?

Better is a morally loaded term. Who judges what "better" is? Is it truly the case that improved motor or intellectual capacity or eyesight is necessarily making us better? It's making us different as a species, but I doubt that just improving certain capacities makes us a better species.

There are always going to be tradeoffs. Some of our capacities make up for our diminished capacities. If someone lacks sight, often his hearing is more acute. Mightn't it be the case that if we enhance one capacity, we might diminish another?

My second concern regards those who either don't have access to "bettering" technologies or people who choose not to be enhanced. Will we view them as second-class citizens? Or will we see our responsibilities to them as increased, because they lack certain abilities?

next page... |  1 of 3

January 2004, Vol. 48, No. 1