This article originally appeared in the Volume 2, Number 2, Fall 1996 issue of Dignity, the Center’s quarterly publication. Subscriptions to Dignitas are available to CBHD Members. To learn more about the benefits of becoming a member click here.
The Christian mandate to be a healer is intricately related to the endeavors of the Human Genome Project (HGP). Healing is the theological justification for the HGP—it is a natural extension of our desire to heal the sick.
Because there is always the danger that potentially beneficial medical advances will be used in unethical ways due to humanity’s ever-present propensity to sin, all of us have the responsibility to ensure that these medical advances are used in a beneficial and moral, and not injurious and immoral, way. Abandoning the research of the HGP, however, would be the most unethical thing we could do. The seeds of healing are indeed embedded within this kind of research, and we are called to be healers.
Although an exclusively genetic cause for virtually every disease is not likely to be established—contrary to some media portrayals—studying the genetics of disease is far from fruitless. On the contrary, the identification and understanding of the genes that contribute to the development of certain diseases may well lead to the discovery of new treatments that would not otherwise have been found. Genetic testing will in the near future be growing most rapidly in the adult medicine arena, making predictions about an individual’s risks for future illness more accurate and allowing development of individualized preventive medicine. Moreover, when used in the prenatal arena, genetic testing most often reassures couples that their genetic risk of having a child with a severe genetic disease is low, thereby allowing births that might not have been risked in the absence of a test.
Francis S. Collins, "Genetics: The Power to Heal,” Dignity 2, no. 2 (1996): 3.