Genetic Knowledge: a Gift or a Curse?

Abstract

The origins of genetic research in the molecular era are discussed along with the prospects for development of the system of the values underlying their legal regulation. Heredity and variability are included into a historically defined worldview as socially significant values respectively occupying alternate leading positions in archaic and modern societies. The article substantiates a connection between ideas about heredity and variability and the social structure, institutions and social practices of the two main types of the pre-molecular era societies. The article also discusses the significance of pre-scientific ideas concerning blood as a special substance ensuring biological, social and legal inheritance in the system of social action of the archaic society. Analysis is given to the conceptual foundations of the strategy of overcoming the ‘right of blood’ in modern societies, where the value of heredity is replaced by the value of variability to serve as a value-system basis for development and progress. Examples of coexisting worldviews and values inherent in both archaic and modern forms that still interact in present-day societies are presented and generalized. The example of the parascientific blood-type theory prevalent in today’s Japan is used to illustrate the ability of collective consciousness to integrate scientific ideas into deep underlying layers of pre-scientific thinking. The postmodern mixture of worldviews and values gives rise to ambiguity and uncertainty with regard to values in the era of discovery of the genetic mechanism of inheritance, creating additional difficulties for rule-makers (legislators) in course of forming a system for the legal regulation of genetic research. Finding a balance between prohibitions and permissions in the corpus of laws and by-laws regulating genetic knowledge development is all the more important given that the demarcation between representing and intervening in the research carried out by molecular biologists is losing its certainty (definiteness) even faster than in the physics of the microworld, let alone other subject areas of the modern science. Bioethics, which is currently providing a philosophical basis for the legal regulation of genetic research, requires theoretical elaboration and conceptualization. As one of the substantiation options, the article proposes the concept of supplementing instrumental rationality with social communication put forward by Jürgen Habermas within the framework of his theory of communicative action