Pope John Paul Ii Lecture Series in Bioethics the Biological Revolution and the Myth of Prometheus

Next to the scientific revolution itself, the biological revolution is the greatest of all the purely human revolutions thus far. I say "purely human revolutions" because the greatest of all revolutions was that affected by Christianity. But since the latter consisted of Christ entering human history, it was revolution by Divine intervention and therefore belongs in a class by itself. I shall, however, have occasion to advert to the significance of Christianity for the biological revolution later in this presentation. The magnitude of the biological revolution originates in the fact that it signals a decisive breakthrough in our mastery over internal nature. While the other revolutions, such as the Industrial Revolution, were confined in their influence to man's environment, advances in the biological sciences bring with them the promise of manipulating his own being even unto the point of manufacturing human beings in his own image. The generation of human life by in vitro fertilization will soon be a commonplace as well as will be the storage of frozen human embryos. Although other projects frequently discussed, such as recombining DNA, other forms of genetic engineering, and cloning remain very far from application to human beings, their very prospect confronts us with the question, “What Sort of People Should There Be?” Speculations, however fantastic, such as the creation of computers with human brains (cyborgs) and computers with biological parts capable of replacing themselves, are “thought experiments” sufficiently fascinating to challenge our conception of human nature.