Bioethicist Françoise Baylis asks why humans think 'they can just take everything'

"Why is it that we think we can just take everything, everything, and modify it for ourselves?" asks Françoise Baylis, a world leader in the field of bioethics.

"We're modifying mosquitoes so that they can't infect us. We're modifying cows so maybe they won't produce as much methane or they won't have horns that hurt us. We're modifying cats so that we don't have to worry about allergic reactions."

Baylis is the winner of the 2022 Canada Council Killam Prize for the Humanities — a $100,000 prize. The 'Killams' are Canada's most prestigious set of awards for scholars in each major area of research: humanities, social sciences, health sciences, natural sciences, and engineering. IDEAS will be speaking with other winners later this season.

Françoise Baylis is also on the governing board of the International Science Council and the planning committee for the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing, to be held in early 2023. Her most recent book is Altered Inheritance: CRISPR and the Ethics of Human Genome Editing.

Baylis spoke to IDEAS about her quest to put ethics at the heart of global politics.

Here is an excerpt of their conversation:

What got you started in philosophy?

I graduated from a French high school in Montreal, and at the time didn't have a lot of confidence that I'd be able to work in English. And so I applied to the only bilingual universities at the time — the University of Ottawa and Laurentian University in Sudbury.

Sudbury offered me a bursary. I didn't have very much money, and so I trundled off to Sudbury. And there I chose to take half of my courses in French and half in English. And so in and among the courses I took was a course in philosophy. It was one of my English courses, and they were talking about this old guy, Aristotle, and I was quite frankly bored silly. I thought, 'Oh my gosh, if this is philosophy, I can't do this.' I happened to be talking to a friend about that and they said, 'Oh, you have to take it in French. It's so much better in French!' And so I signed into the French philosophy course, and I went to the first class and they were talking about masturbation and whether or not the Vatican was right in not allowing masturbation for the purpose of in-vitro fertilization, reproductive technologies, test tube babies, etc.. And for me, as someone who had been brought up Catholic... somebody actually was inviting me to think for myself. 'Like, what? This is philosophy. I can do this!'

Humans have reached a point where we can manipulate genes in ways that could actually introduce changes for generations to come. Are we entering the genetic equivalent of the 'Anthropocene'?

I think one of the things that people need to be aware of is what is actually possible in terms of the science. In animal models, work done in rodents, for example, members of our community, scientists, have been successful in creating gametes — so, creating sperm and egg — from cells that were not sperm or egg.

And so in science fiction, people talk about what that eventually could mean, how it would work in humans... I could just go into a coffee shop, and if I like the looks of that person, I pick up their discarded coffee cup, I take it to my scientists and have them extract some DNA. I have them make, in my case, sperm, and then I have this person's child. Like, isn't that a strange world to live in? And that would be an example of a nefarious use of the technology, if ever it were to come to pass. But it's not outside the realm of possibility. It's not the kind of world I want to live in. 

The Human Genome Project started back in 1990. Why isn't more than 30 years long enough to resolve the ethical debates about this technology?

Well, one of the lovely things about philosophy is we hold on to all the questions to which there are no authoritative answers! That's really what you're looking at with ethics. There is no rulebook, so to speak, or cookbook, where you can just look up the recipe for the right way to make a decision. The world we live in is in constant flux. The things we care about is in constant flux. The people we listen to is in constant flux. We live in a very heterogeneous world. We don't all think the same way.

And so I think what's important is for us to figure out—how do we have a respectful conversation and where is it that we can or should be making compromises? In my own work, I talk a lot about the importance of decision-making by consensus and working towards consensus-building. Part of what I'm trying to advocate for is the responsibility of people to participate in those conversations so that we can move forward. 

How likely is it that humans can get together to have a grown-up conversation, let alone make good collective ethical decisions based on consensus?

Well, I think, to be very frank, that's a huge challenge. And I would say publicly, I'm very disappointed with the way in which the world responded to our most recent ethical challenge: the pandemic. We failed from a moral point of view. We failed miserably. We did not do, I would argue, what was best for us all. We made some very good individual ethical decisions, but we never succeeded with the challenge that was set for us by the World Health Organization to have a global response to a global problem. We stayed within our narrow silos. So, yes, you're absolutely right. It's a huge challenge.

But all of my work is ultimately about inviting people to step out of their comfort zones and to really embrace different ways of knowing and different ways of understanding that we're all in this together. There are wars … does anything I have to say have any meaning to somebody who is fighting for their life in the trenches? Probably not. But if they managed to get out of that war, it does matter what kind of world they're going to live in. And so I think it behooves the rest of us to keep trying to make this a better world for everyone. 
 

Guests in this episode:

Françoise Baylis is a professor of philosophy at Dalhousie University.

Frank Baylis is an executive chairman of the board, Baylis Medical.

Sureya Busuri is a writer for ByBlacks.com.

Jocelyn Downie is a professor of law and medicine at Dalhousie University.

*Q&A was edited for clarity and length. This episode was produced by Tom Howell.