c. 1998 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Bald guys, joked Dr. Nelson A. Wivel, are rooting for that new baldness gene, adding, with a reference to his diminished hairline,”I’d love to have a better rug for my scalp.” Wivel, deputy director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Human Gene Therapy, invoked the humor during a recent one-day conference Wednesday (Feb. 18) called”The Moral Boundaries of Genetic Technology.”It was sponsored by the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, and designed to demonstrate one pole in the complex debate over genetic screening and testing.

Unlike Wivel, however, others at the conference told horror stories.

Dr. Robert F. Murray Jr., professor of pediatrics, medicine and genetics at Howard University College of Medicine here, reminded participants of the problems screening for the sickle cell anemia gene posed for African-Americans in the 1970s. “An inaccurate test was developed which said that people who were carriers of the sickle cell gene had sickle cell anemia. Children were tested and those who carried this gene had this noted on their records. Confidentiality wasn’t protected.”After several years, Murray said, a suit was filed when the Air Force wouldn’t accept an applicant with the gene.

Leon R. Kass, a professor at the University of Chicago, told a different kind of horror story: A father, learning his 10-year-old daughter carried a breast cancer gene, had the child undergo a mastectomy.

Whether using horror or humor, however, the symposium’s participants, as well as other ethicists, agree that genetics are playing an increasingly prominent role in society. As such, it raises difficult moral issues because of the potential for both good and evil, as the techniques are used to identify diseases and possibly aid in their cure or to identify”defective”humans and deny them their place in society.

Murray, for example, even while criticizing programs gone awry, said genetic screening can give people invaluable information about diseases.

The Washington conference was just one of a number of independent such sessions that have been held or are being planned as scientists and ethicists seek to grapple publicly with the implications of new gene therapies, cloning, genetic research and other bioethical problems.

And most ethicists and many policy-makers see both good and bad in the future and are seeking to build barriers against the bad.

In January, Vice President Al Gore, for example, called on Congress to pass legislation banning workplace discrimination based on genetic information and earlier this month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit set a precedent by ruling that genetic testing of employees without their knowledge or consent is unconstitutional.

Many people have visceral responses that make them shy away from the idea of genetic engineering, said ethicist Daniel Callahan, senior associate for health policy at the Hastings Center in Hastings, N.Y., and author of”False Hopes,”a book on bioethics to be published in April by Simon & Schuster.”Religious people are concerned about the potential for dehumanization (in genetic research),”he said.

Others, however, stress the potential positives.

Daniel C. Maguire, professor of ethics at Marquette University in Milwaukee, said in a telephone interview,”There’s nothing wrong with discovering and finding cures for genetic illnesses. The Judeo-Christian ethic encourages us to be co-creators with God _ to work to make our lives healthier.” Maguire, co-author of”Ethics for a Small Planet”(State University of New York Press), however, said he is not a pie-in-the-sky optimist concerning genetics.”The effort to fix problems caused by genetic diseases could lead to a lower tolerance of defects,”he said.”And uninsured people won’t have access to new genetic technology,”adding that such costs are”the price of progress.” For some, like Callahan, such a price is too high.”To me, the relief of suffering is an open-ended, impossible quest. We can declare war on cancer and on infertility: two forms of suffering used as argument for fetal research and cloning. But, as with any war, there will be moral casualties.” (BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM _ STORY MAY END HERE)

For many clergy, trying to understand the science involved in the debate is a constant challenge.”Scientific discoveries happen so quickly, it’s difficult for religious leaders to react,”said Rabbi Gerald Wolpe, director of the Jewish Theological Seminary’s Finklestein Institute in New York City, a bioethics center.”One minute you read about a baby born from an embryo frozen five years ago. Next, you hear that Russia has developed an Anthrax gene that’s resistant to antibiotics.” The Rev. Philip Hefner, director of the Chicago Center for Religion and Science, said there are no absolute heroes or villains in genetic research.”It’s too easy to think that biotech companies are bad because they’re out to make a profit. Making money motivates them to make discoveries that help people.” But Murray has no ethical empathy for those making a buck from genetic research.”Scientists are like athletes,”he said.”They go where the money is”and that, too, is an ethical problem.

DEA END WOLFE