ABSTRACT
The revolution in biotechnology, especially – but not only – in its medical applications, doubtlessly generates a host of particular questions of moral and legal interest. In this chapter, the author concerns something more general: the whole moral psychology, one might say, which is indicated by the anxious and hostile responses which many people display towards genetic engineering and other interventionist biological procedures. Much effort is devoted to educating a suspicious public about the nature of and prospects for biotechnology, in the confidence that, thus educated, suspicion and fears will be allayed. To indicate the superficiality of the diagnoses and to prepare for a less superficial one, the author invokes a name that has invariably been invoked in debates about interventionist biology during the century just passed – that of Frankenstein. Frankenstein does not simply intervene in nature, but specifically in the generative process of (human) life. He creates a creature by artificial means.
