Page 157 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

134 B.D. Rowe

because the fact remains that human beings – persons – would still be manipulated
as objects and tools, mere instruments for some other goal. Hence, scientists would
not be honoring the inherent value and self-determination of the human person,
which is morally required by nonconsequentialist ethics.
With that said, those who claim that biogenetically growing human beings is
fundamentally wrong because it may one day violate personhood, must address the
practicality of their position. Relatively all human cultures have a long history of
keeping a very rigid and conspicuous human/animal divide, treating nonhuman
species very differently than fellow members of our own species. For instance, here
in the USA, the vast majority of us deem it natural and acceptable to rear, confine,
slaughter, and eat approximately ten billion animals annually. There is little evidence
that this will change; and to exclusively base one’s case on breaking what at times
looks to be an insurmountable human/animal barrier may constitute tenuous
reasoning. The point is that advancing the notion that we might someday allow the
genetic control of human beings because we do so now with plants and some animals
does not hold enough persuasive strength to convince me that genetic modification
is prima facie wrong.
Yet again, notice how we have returned to consequentialist thinking by exploring
what may come in the future. Even though the consequences that we are predicting
– lack of respect for persons – are undesirable for nonconsequential reasons, we are
still predicting future outcomes, and this is prototypical consequentialism. It seems,
at least in the case of GMOs, that I cannot help but to adjoin these two ethical theories,
and in the next section we will look at why this is important for the socioscientific
movement in science education.
To end this section, I believe that Mueller and Zeidler are certainly right to focus
on the ecological consequences associated with releasing the transgenic species
GloFish into the wild. However, I hoped to demonstrate that, for educational
purposes, we should not overlook the possibilities in deontological theorizing,
which allows for a different moral angle. I have examined bioengineering through
a nonconsequential paradigm in order to bring to light some of the broader ethical-
educational questions couched in socioscientific issues. Because genetic technology
is too significant a matter to go unchecked by a complacent, uneducated public, in
what follows I hope to illustrate the educative value of synthesizing the two different
ethical theories.

Fusing Two Paradigms

The interplay of both consequentialist and nonconsequentialist theoretical lenses
widens the scope of ethical thought and helps generate the multifaceted analysis
and discourse that ecojustice requires for the formulation of a “more humanizing
science and science education.” To this end, students identify the known and poten-
tial consequences of their behavior. But in addition, they are in a better position to
be cognizant of the inherent moral worth of their actions and also learn how to