By Dov Fox
That’s what CNN called yesterday’s report with science writer Emily Anthes about her new book, Frankenstein’s Cat, which examines “genetically modified this, or cloned that,” as she put it, or “creatures that combine electronic bits and biological ones.” Wrestling with the ethics of such cases, Anthes explains, “reveals that we’re deeply conflicted about the role that animals play in our lives.” Yet she laments that this tension supplies no satisfying answers to underlying questions like “Is this unnatural?” and would “that make it wrong?”
Our confusion lies, I’ve suggested, in the failure of animal welfare discourse to capture the sense many of us share that animal “nature” has value apart from its happiness or well-being. If its welfare were all that mattered, then we shouldn’t be troubled by animals designed to experience less frustration living in the conditions for which they’re destined. Consider three examples of designer animals that are currently being developed: cows with stunted sentience, less apprehensive of going off to slaughter; chickens that lack nesting instincts, more satisfied to a life confined to laying eggs in a battery cage; and pigs without legs, better suited for a sedentary existence as ham and bacon in potentia.
The dominance of the animal welfare view obscures a reason to resist such creations: to preserve animal integrity. Cows should be able to fear danger, pigs to play in the mud, and chickens to peck about in the sand, according to this view, less because those capacities make the animals happy than because they are integral to an intrinsically valuable way of being. To deprive a cow of its responsiveness, or a pig of its limbs, or a chicken of its proclivity for pecking would, on this account, violate its essential “cowness” or “pigness” or “chickenness,” even if those animals were perfectly content in their designated roles.
For thoughts on why animal nature may indeed be worth preserving, and implications for conventional breeding (e.g., dogs for companionship, or horses for racing), and what all of this means for designer children and embryonic stem cell research, check out the article.
