On the ethics and dignity of plants…
June 18th, 2009
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Thanks to Markus for this story. It’s a bit old and I had meant to post it a while back…
I don’t even know where to start on this one, but there are apparently Swiss “Ethicists” who believe that it is important to consider…. well… you can just read the story.
Swiss Ethicists Consider Plants’ Feelings
What does wheat want? That’s a question scientists in Switzerland have to ponder now that the country is mandating that geneticists conduct their experiments with consideration to a plant’s feelings, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“Unfortunately, we have to take it seriously,” Beat Keller, a molecular biologist at the University of Zurich, tells the newspaper. “It’s one more constraint on doing genetic research.”
In order to obtain government permission to do a field trial of genetically modified, fungus-resistant wheat, Keller had to spar with university ethicists over whether his experiment would impugn upon the plants’ dignity and then explain in a written application to the government why his experiment wouldn’t “disturb the vital functions of lifestyle” of the plant.
In April, a panel of philosophers, lawyers, geneticists, and theologians formed at the behest of the Swiss Parliament published a 22-page report on “the moral consideration of plants for their own sake,” stating that vegetation has inherent value and that it is morally abhorrent to harm the plants “without rational reason.”
Writes Gautam Naik in The Wall Street Journal:
On the question of genetic modification, most of the panel argued that the dignity of plants could be safeguarded “as long as their independence, i.e., reproductive ability and adaptive ability, are ensured.” In other words: It’s wrong to genetically alter a plant and render it sterile.
While Switzerland protects lab animals and plants from genetic modification, snails and drosophila flies, commonly used in genetic experiments, have been offered no such sanctuary. Some critics of the new ruling also wonder where the line will be drawn?
“Where does it stop?” asks Yves Poirier, a molecular biologist at the laboratory of plant biotechnology at the University of Lausanne. “Should we now defend the dignity of microbes and viruses?”
Yes, it seems just plain insane, but the Swiss government is apparently taking this seriously. They “protect” animals and plants from generic modification (well, except for the kind that happens due to oxygen free-radicals, cosmic rays and that kind of thing). No word on whether they protect fungi, but apparently the dignity of microbes is preserved.
The Swiss Parliament has already issued a “Bill of Rights for Plants.“ The document on the ethics and responsibilities of humans toward plants and other forms of life is not law (not yet), but is a recommendation for an ethics framework on how humans should regard other forms of life. It goes so far as to state “living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive.” According to the Weekly Standard’s analysis of the document, it’s okay for a farmer to mow a field of crops (presuming he does it in a way that acknowledges the dignity of the plants) but it’s not okay to carelessly swat the tops off of flowering plants.
Yes, there are scientists being brought before an ethics committee because their experiment might violate the dignity or life functions of … a wheat plant.
DO I EVEN NEED TO GO INTO HOW CRAZY THIS IS?
Perhaps this is just what happens when someone choses the job of “ethicist” because based on my experience, when someone spends their entire life in accademia, mulling their own philosophies without ever having to deal with the practical realities of the world, they tend to lose touch with reality. Perhaps it is also a symptom of a country that can stand and preach about how peaceful they are for being “neutral” even as they launder drug money and smelt the gold teeth of holocaust victims.
(okay.. that last one might have gone too far… BUT NOT AS FAR AS THIS DOES)
Still: Wake up. Take a step back and think about this. It’s sillier than a Monty Python skit. It’s so absurd it’s amazing a single human being can deal with this with a straight face!
As far as I can tell there are two possible motivations for this ridiculous concept:
1. The belief that nature is inherently sacred and somehow magically perfect and that anything man does to modify anything is an abomination. Yes, it’s true that if you actually follow this, you end up living naked in the woods and eating tree bark, but the point is there are some people who actually cling to this idea that everything mankind does is inherently corrupt and that there is some kind of magical property bestowed on DNA or Proteins that makes it untouchable. It is a religious-like belief that the very existence of something makes it worthy of revering.
2. A last ditch attempt by the nutty anti-genetic engineering groups to find an excuse for opposing a viable and highly useful technology. They’ve run out of sound scientific arguments, so they fall back on this lunacy.
DNA is special and sacred and magic and we have no right to tamper with it. If you must kill something to survive, please be sure to be respectful. Have a moment of silence for the memory of the noble streptococcal bacteria you are about to put to death before taking that antibiotic for a sore throat. Remember that all things living are good and dignified and have the right to be treated as such as you clean the mold out from between your shower tiles. Don’t do anything disrespectful, like mutilate the bodies of a helpless culture of polio viruses in the name of creating a “vaccine.”
Excuse me while I vomit.
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 12:11 am and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Enviornment, History, Just LAME, Not Even Wrong, Obfuscation, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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June 18th, 2009 at 1:32 am
Wow. So pretentious to think that they can dictate what organisms have dignity and to what level and who needs to respect them and how. It’s one thing to say it’s immoral to hurt a human or even a higher order animal. But respect and dignity of a plant? Jesus christ! I’m sure these idiots haven’t actually the understanding to realize that their immune system is always slaughtering helpless bacteria or that man has harnessed natural organisms to do all kinds of things like make cheese and beer and that every modern breed of dog was invented by selective breeding. This is insane.
I’m ready to vomit as well.
I think the worst person to give ethical advice would be someone whose job is “ethicist” they would be the first ones to completely lose sight of the forest for the trees and go bonkers by sitting in their ivory tower and pondering ethical philosophy for years. Every really good professor I have had has had experience in applied work outside of academia. Nothing against education, but you have to get outside the educational institutions occasionally to get a good dose of reality.
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June 18th, 2009 at 1:40 am
Wow, those crazy Christians and other religious “nutters” who believe in things like the special and privileged position of human beings and their dominion over the “creation”.
Funny how they never came up with an idea this idiotic.
This sort of thinking is the inevitable sort of outworking that follows from taking seriously concepts like “specisism” and all the associated clap trap.
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June 18th, 2009 at 1:56 am
Well I feel enlightened by understanding these ethical issues and I assure you I will take them to heart. No longer will I heartlessly take a crap in a toilet. From now on, every crap I take will be escorted by an honor guard and buried with full military honors to pay my respect to the noble and dignified gut flora that are being sentenced to death by being expelled from the warm sanctuary of my bowls.
Yes, I shall fly the flag at half staff and play taps on a bugle as the flag-draped coffin of my crap is lowered into the hallowed catacombs of the tomb of the unknown ****. We shall shed a tear but remember the crap not for how it died but for how it lived in my belly, helping me consume various nutrients that I would otherwise be unable to break down on my own.
Because all living things deserve that kind of respect.
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June 18th, 2009 at 4:48 am
It is well known that many plants are able to release chemicals when suffering from an aggression and that neighbor similar plants will use those chemicals as an advance warning and activate deffensive mechanisms. Is this a form of communication? Technically yes. An evlotionnary advantage? Obviously. But a ground for equal rights? Come on, the most extremist tree-huggers refuse to eat anything that comes from an animal but understand that we, as animal, need to eat organic (and therefore recently living) materials.
The fact that this comes from Switzerland is not that surprising, first, they had Rousseau, somewhat precursor of the hippie movement, then, as a french who had to spend a few days in Zurich for work reasons, I can tell you that many of the people I met there would surely grant more rights to the anthrax germ thant to people who can’t speak german.
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June 18th, 2009 at 8:37 am
The source document is a perfect example of a group grandstanding in an attempt to justify its own existence. Read carefully it would appear that several of the members thought the question ludicrous to be considering.
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June 18th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Franck said:
It is in some sense a form of communication, but it’s a mindless and basically automatic response. It’s not as if a plant senses the chemicals released from another plant and thinks “Gee what should I do now?” It just triggers a chemical reaction within the plant. This most certainly does not make it a thinking, feeling being.
Communication can be found in plenty of simple man made devices. My thermostat communicates with my heating system to tell it when the temperature drops to a certain level. The NIST atomic clocks in Colorado communicate with a clock on my wall to tell it what time it is. This does not mean that the clock or the furnace or the thermosthat or even the national time transmitter require any kind of respect for their dignity or humanity.
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June 18th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
More evidence that western civilization has lost the will to survive.
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June 18th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
I know you may not agree with this Buzz, but I feel this is a logical outcome of secularism. People need a belief system (religion). Take away the belief of a mysterious god and they will replace it with a “mysterious nature” – which is essentially pantheism. They will be just as fanatic in their belief as those who believe in a god. The rich history of the major religions prevents this sort of nonsense, but because the rise of secularism is recent and without established rules, this sort of nonsense can flourish. The troubling aspect of this issue is that there were enough politicians that went along with it.
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June 18th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
leg said:
To some extent you have a point in that ethicists are the theologians of secularism and as such are expected to deliberate over matters like this.
However if you read the report and strip away the moral/ethical framing, most of the conclusions are commonsense.
The first concussion is arbitrary harm to plants is morally reprehensible – and indeed one should not destroy plants without reason.
The second is that the use of a plant or a species requires justification – which is somewhat of a tautology I suppose but is hardly a crazy idea.
The third is that plant species should be excluded from absolute ownership – we can argue about this, but it is essentially a restatement of the patented DNA issue that is being debated in other domains.
The fourth is that genetic modification is NOT moral or ethically suspect if the plant is permitted to keep its reproductive ability – again put this in context with the issues that have come up over Roundup Ready plants which only produce sterile seed.
The fifth conclusion states that the patent issue is also an issue of social ethics, not just plant ethics
The sixth is that steps should be taken to maintain genetic diversity in those species that are subject to GM work – commonsense I would think
And finally the seventh and last states that any action with or towards plants that serves the self-preservation of humans to be morally justified, as long as it is appropriate and follows the principle of precaution. Hard to argue with.
This exercise is stupid because it is unnecessary and a waste of time, but most of the conclusions it comes to are reasonable (or at least pointless) even if we can’t agree with all of them.
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June 18th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
leg said:
I can’t say that I’m entirely in disagreement with you on this. Religion fills certain needs and in some cases it may be a natural desire of humans to have some kind of structure and even feel that there is certain symbolic or ritual signifficance to things. People cling to many of these feelings and principles, associated with religion, even if they formally have given up the underlying beliefs.
This can be seen in the Soviet Union, for example, where religion was abolished in favor of secular communism. Stalin took some of the harshest steps to abolish religion but he also seemed to have an understanding of a need to fill the void with a kind of state-worship and with pseudo-religious symbolism and idols. The body of Lenin was preserved in a tomb where people could come to visit it like a shrine and there were many statues and structures which invoked a religious-like spirituality to the concept of the State and society.
DV82XL said:
Okay, I take issue with that. I don’t know that it is justifiable to destroy anything for no reason, but to call harming a plant morally reprehensible? No. I don’t care if someone takes out their anger by tearing a dandelion to shreds because they just feel like it. I am not going to consider it “reprehensible” for someone to destroy a blade of grass with no just cause. That’s idiotic.
Sure, it might be “pointless” or “kinda a waste of time” or something but “morally reprehensible” Absolutely not.
DV82XL said:
Again I have a problem with this, because it implies that there must be some significant need to use a plant. the only justification I’d consider would be as simple as “because I felt like it.”
For example:
“Why did you pull up that bush in your yard”
“I didn’t like the look of it”
or even
“None of your damn buisiness. it’s my yard”
I see this as being something that really takes a few common sense ideas (Like genetic diversity should probably be preserved) and turns it into a completely manufactured moral delima that instills a ridiculous belief that we need to somehow justify each time we yank out a weed or use a plant as a test subject.
There’s no need to justify an experiment preformed on a plant! Even if the experiment does not return any valuable data, it’s only a damn plant! Why should they even have to consider defending the morality of it? How about leaving the ethics committee to work on the stuff that is actually important like experimental and potentially lifesaving but potentially harmful treatments on the terminally ill and so on.
This frames things in a manner that is far more grandiose and foundational than it needs to be.
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June 18th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
DV –
I hope to get time tonight to argue some of your points as these things are fun to argue. However, I recorded the US vs Italy soccer game this morning and its my priority to watch it tonight. I hope they are not playing on GM grass, nor kill too many of the blades. 
Freudian slip or a typo? I know you meant “conclusion” in your first point, but I thought “concussion” was quite apropo.
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June 18th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
leg said:
I trust my spell-checker too much…
These are not my points, they come from the report in question and indeed I was illustrating what Doc said that is that this frames things in a manner that is far more grandiose and foundational than it needs to be. So I’m not going to defend them.
What I was trying to show was that your contention that this sort of thing was a form of ’secular theology’ was right on the money, but we should note that this is to be expected if we we are going to move away from religious based ethics.
As it happens most of these results are, from the Abrahamic traditions point of view, tautological but considered from the Dharmic traditions (like Jainism for example) they are rather revolutionary, and in essence a rejection of that ethical system as it applies to plants. When we talk of moving towards a secular world we have to consider that this does not only mean away from the Christian ethos only.
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June 19th, 2009 at 4:01 am
Okay, so there is some practical value in the idea of maintaining genetic diversity, but to say it is ethical? To make it an ethical, moral, philosophical idea on how to treat a goddamn plant? Their damn dignity????
I’m sorry, but with all the problems in the world, this is so anti-humanist and so ****in stupid and highbrow it makes me want to puke. I’d love to have a moment alone with anyone who took this report seriously.
The ethics experts should have returned a paper that said simply “Plants don’t have feelings. This is idiotic”
This is so repulsive.
Chuck said:
Yeah
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June 19th, 2009 at 8:20 am
I was going to start with WTF!!! But on reflection I agree with a previous comment that ethicists are suppose to discuss this sort of thing. BUT the wheat they are discussing WOULD NOT be here without the messing around with genes that has already been done. Plants have feelings??? Animals too???? Well it does not matter much as they are talking about playing with genes. So playing with genes means lots of sex and lots of reproduction! What’s the problem?
As far as killing the plants?? I’m hungry–they die! Don’t like it? Find gOd and complain supposedly its his fault! Besides LIFE sucks–then you DIE!! Deal!!
Don’t like the idea of slowly cutting into a plant and slowly slicing away small parts!!! That describes what most chefs do in the swiss kitchens!!! Tough! Deal!!
I’ll pay you some serious thought when you start dying of starvation because you respect other life forms.
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June 19th, 2009 at 10:30 am
OK, I’m going to play the Devil’s advocate here, but understand I do think this paper is a silly waste of time.
As silly as it seems, this position paper was commissioned to provide a guideline for interpreting a section in the Swiss Federal Constitution that protects the ‘dignity of all living beings’ which itself grants the government the legal authority to pass legislation such as that prohibiting animal cruelty for example. It is the wording of that constitutional clause which forces the use of the pompous term ‘dignity of plants’ but the authors are quick to define ‘dignity’ as ‘inherent worth’ for the purposes of the discussion, which again brings this a few steps back to the practical.
However consider that one of the criticisms routinely levied against secularism in general and atheism in particular is that it lacks moral compass because it has no guidance from scripture, which divinely inspired or not, has survived the test of time.
The response to this criticism has been that morals and ethics can be determined by reason founded on our innate sense of right and wrong. Now I have used this argument (maybe even on these pages) but I have always known it is flawed, because like it or not Western civilization’s cultural sense of right and wrong is of course grounded in Christian moral theology. If we really wish to move away from that dogma (or any other religiosity) in these matters, we are going to have to start from scratch.
This being the case one would expect to see treatments of certain issues with the sort of approach we see here in this document.
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March 8th, 2010 at 1:18 am
[...] Of course, despite this, you can still legally kill animals and eat them in Switzerland. You could catch a fish, yank it into your boat and wack it over the head then fry it up. However, you can’t keep a “social fish” alive in a bowl by itself – it could get lonely. Seems a little inconsistent, doesn’t it? This is the country that came up with the idea of plant rights, however. [...]
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