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Abstract
Increasing understanding and awareness of our genetic makeup has led to confusion between genetic predispositions that influence our health and behavior and genetic determinism that attributes all of our actions to such factors. The Christian and classical view of human nature attributes virtue to overcoming biological factors that may lead to irrational actions. Current discoveries in the field of epigenetics have only strengthened the importance of pursuing virtuous actions as they affect the genetic health of our progeny.
Advances in genetic research have been hailed in many quarters as harbingers of a new Golden Age, an age in which cancer, congenital diseases, and the sometimes drastic treatments that accompanied them will be a dim memory of a brutal age-much the way we think of the practices of blistering and bloodletting in the eighteenth century. Indeed, we are already beginning to see the benefits of advances in genetics in the treatment of many diseases. Still, there are many who find genetic advances-from cloning to gene therapies-to be unsettling. And these questions are far from theoretical, as can be seen in Kevin Davies' description of genetic pre-selection in his book on Cracking the Genome:
News that a woman with an early-onset hereditary form of Alzheimer's disease screened her embryos using in vitro fertilization to prevent her newborn child from inheriting the faulty genes sparked fears of the "slippery slope" to designer babies. Today, the technology is being used to screen non-fatal, adult-onset diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's. Tomorrow, could it be used to screen personality, physique, or sexual orientation?1
As this incident reveals, genetic science is rapidly moving from the science fiction of Huxley's Brave New World to the reality of genetic selection and alteration.
Leaving aside the issue of genetic manipulation for the moment, how does our awareness of genetic information call into question the very notion of what it means to be human? Are we more than the sum of our genetic information? Humans have traditionally attempted to define themselves through their origins. The book of Genesis attempts to find a higher purpose in human life through its divine beginnings: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and...