The Biotech Century: Harnessing the Gene and Remaking the World
Reviewed by Robert P. Mills, February 1, 1999
The new genetic engineering technologies being introduced into society will intimately affect our lives, writes Jeremy Rifkin, “requiring each and every one of us to become engaged, at some level, in a discussion of the values at stake.”
Through the first six chapters of this enormously informative book, Rifkin engages his readers in this discussion through a methodical, detailed, occasionally troubling and sometimes downright scary tour of the potentials and pitfalls facing humanity in the next 100 years, as science hones its newfound abilities to manipulate plants, animals and people by altering their genetic structures.
Rifkin weaves together seven strands that form “the operational matrix” of the Biotech Century: 1) the ability to isolate, identify and recombine genes; 2) the patenting of genetically engineered tissues and organisms; 3) the emergence of giant “life” companies in the global biotech marketplace; 4) the mapping of the human genome; 5) a new sociobiology that favors nature over nurture; 6) the use of computers to manage and communicate genetic information; and, by far the most significant, 7) a “new cosmological narrative” that “is beginning to challenge the neo-Darwinian citadel … suggesting that the new way we are reorganizing our economy and society are amplifications of nature’s own principles and practices and, therefore, justifiable.”
Devoting a chapter to each strand, Rifkin offers some enlightening examples.
For example, did you know that a company could, without your consent, manipulate cells taken from your body, patent the resulting “invention,” then successfully defend in court the claim that you have no property rights to your own body tissue?
Or have you noticed the eerie parallels between the eugenics rhetoric of Margaret Sanger, patron saint of pro-abortion ideologues, and claims of current social engineers that existing biotechnologies not only can but should be used to breed out of the human race certain “undesirable” elements?
Reinventing Nature
As instructive as the first six chapters are, it is Chapter 7, “Reinventing Nature,” that makes this book so valuable for Christians. For while Rifkin does not write from an identifiably Christian perspective, his language here is often (unavoidably?) theological. And his perceptive analysis helps Christians identify the competing worldviews undergirding the debates now swirling around such issues as cloning.
Rifkin shows Darwin’s evolutionary theory to be “just the English bourgeoisie looking into the mirror of nature and seeing their own behavior reflected there.” He also shows how Darwin’s “economic, social, and political environment provided the imagery that he used so artfully to sketch his ‘creation.'” He warns that the Biotech Century is on the verge of repeating Darwin’s mistake; imposing socio-economic theories on biological “discoveries,” then claiming biology, the very order of nature itself, justifies its socio-economic theories. (The theological equivalent to this circularity is the search for “the Jesus of history,” that is, the Jesus “behind” the accounts we read in Scripture, which inevitably find a Jesus who looks just like the historians engaged in the search.)
Tellingly, Rifkin here makes a very non-scientific statement: “The fact is, we human beings cannot live without some agreed-upon idea of what nature and life are all about. When we ponder what our own personal fate might be after the last breath of life is spent, or when we try to imagine what existed before existence itself, we are likely to become paralyzed with doubt. Our concept of nature allows us to overcome these ultimate anxieties.”
Rifkin’s articulation of the human dilemma is superb. But his answer only goes as far as science can take him. He can only find salvation in “our concept of nature.” As Christians, we can address all the questions he raises, all the concerns he expresses, yet without “these ultimate anxieties.” For instead of “Reinventing Nature,” it is our privilege, and our calling, to point all people toward the Inventor, in more traditionally theological terms, the Creator.
The questions raised by biotechnology, that which already exists and that which is still being developed, are many and profound. The failure by Christians to engage, as Christians, in the public discussions that are sure to come would be an abrogation of our responsibilities to be faithful stewards of creation, to be salt and light in a dark and decaying world.
Reading The Biotech Century as a primer can help all who would like to be conversant with the questions. Christians, of course, will look for ultimate answers by reading another Book.