Things have moved on since Frankenstein’s monster made his debut in 1818. We know a lot more now than we did then about the problems involved in creating new life-forms. We are still on the threshold when it comes to coupling human genetic material with cells from elsewhere but significant steps on the way cannot be ignored.
The latest of these opens Pandora’s box, to quote the director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. He was referring to the successful mingling of human and non-human elements achieved by researchers in California. ‘The key ethical question is: what is the moral status of these novel creatures? said Julian Savulescu.
We are reminded, too, of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s quotation from the Bhagavad-Gita: ‘I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.’ We face more than an ethical question. We find ourselves as human beings being auditioned for the role of creators. The questions we face take us far beyond what we have envisaged as distinctive God-like animals occupying a place in the created order that makes us different from our animal neighbours.
With Pandora’s box opened we have to consider new perspectives. Made in God’s image, as we believe ourselves to be, we have to overhaul inherited assumptions and recognise the momentous changes impending in our world-view.
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