Contemporary Bioethics: The Promethean Challenges of Reprogenetics

Abstract

Contemporary bioethics presents to us major challenges in several fields of knowledge. The
ever-increasing technological power to interfere with the nature of things (including human
nature) demands our increasing ethical awareness and considerations. How are we going to
respond to these demands? Our proposal is to address this complex issue by revisiting one of
the founding myths of Western civilization, that of Prometheus. Among numerous variations
of this myth, we will address in the first part of the paper: Goethe’s poem “Prometheus” (1772),
Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), and Franz Kafka’s short
piece entitled “Prometheus” (1918). Our understanding of this myth will help us to narrow
the pathos involved in the current bioethical dilemmas and give us a chance to reflect on the
scope of human actions in the fields of recent scientific-breakthroughs. In the second part
of the paper we will consider the implications of the creative power involved in the process
of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), which present a version of the post-modern
Promethean challenge. The fast development of reprogenetics creates significant concerns
dealing with the evolution of our human condition and the erosion of the foundations of the
traditional family model. Through the analysis of certain scenarios, in which science, law, and
ethics are intertwined, we will at the end revisit an etching of the Spanish painter Francisco
Goya, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters” (1799). The symbolism of Goya’s work is
multiple, but we will explore the one most related to the complex relation between bioethics
and biopolitics.