Page 152 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

Chapter 9
What’s Wrong with Genetic Engineering?
Ethics, Socioscientific Issues, and Education

Bradley D. Rowe

In “Moral-Ethical Character and Science Education,” Michael Mueller and Dana
Zeidler ground their ecojustice ethic mostly within a consequentialist theoretical
framework. Consequentialism is the philosophical theory that determines the
morality of an action by looking at the various consequences or effects that the action
produces (Troyer 2003). One does not judge an action as morally defensible or
indefensible by critiquing the action in of itself, but rather the good or bad effects
that follow. For the authors, it is not the immediate act of biogenetically transforming
the species Danio rerio into the ornamental, fluorescent-glowing pet fish, “GloFish,”
that is morally suspect. It is, instead, the various social and environmental conse-
quences and risks that might, and in fact have, ensued from this act. For this
response I will primarily focus on the ethics of what is clearly a forceful socioscientific
issue – genetically modified organisms (GMOs) – and extend the ethical-educational
conversation started by Mueller and Zeidler.
As a socioscientific issue, the authors are more concerned with GloFish as a
transgenic species – that is, the fish as it exists, post-genetic modification, outside
science’s controlled environment – than they are with moral questions concerning
the actual practice of genetic engineering. Yet the conceptualization of an ethic that
focuses solely on the aftermath of a human action necessitates further development
if it does not isolate and examine the action itself, apart from its consequences. As
Mueller and Zeidler discuss, ecojustice relies on a diversity of perspectives to provoke
the multifaceted dialogue needed for the socioscientific movement to gain momen-
tum in the science classroom. So how can we diversify and broaden our ethical
analysis of GMOs in general and of education specifically? I contend that we
employ a nonconsequentialist theoretical approach by concerning ourselves with the
very act of genetic modification, in addition to the ecological risks or problems of
this act. This approach, it seems, will invite another mode of ethical thinking and
enliven a discussion that is typically dominated by talk of implications, not of the
intrinsic morality of transgenic technology. By the end of this essay, I will have not

B.D. Rowe
Ohio State University

D.J. Tippins et al. (eds.), Cultural Studies and Environmentalism, 129
Cultural Studies of Science Education, Vol. 3, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3929-3_9,
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010