Page 59 - Applied Buddhism

not because there are no better ways of doing so, but because of a bacteria, and micro-organisms. They are not psychophysical lives
strong tendency to treat animals as a commodity, without a care (pāṇātipātā) in the Buddhist context. They do not have minds that
for their pain. This then becomes a strong ground for objection to have the potential for spiritual development, and they do not feel
biotechnology. Of course, proponents of biotechnology argue that pain, like human beings and animals do.
their treatment of animals is much better than that of conventional
breeding and farming but this should not be the justification to In more advanced medical biotechnology, where research
continue with such acts. and development is conducted at the molecular level, the ethical
issue of killing is less acute. Molecular human parts, such as
One of the major concerns of Buddhism is the destruction monoclonal antibody and cells are hardly seen as human beings. In
of lives in biotechnology and life sciences. In the Five Precepts nanobiotechnology that deals with tissue engineering at the atomic
observed by Buddhists, the first precept is, “I take the training level, (which is even smaller than molecular level), the problem is
rule not to kill any psychophysical life” (pāṇātipātā veramaṇī even less.
sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi). Buddhists observe this precept because
they view lives as precious and see the destruction of lives as an evil “Genes for Sale”
action that will bring about bad results. In observing this precept in
biotechnology, the major consideration is when life first begin. Assuming that biotechnology is perfectly safe and does not
involve violation of basic ethical principles like harming or killing
In the Buddhist canonical text, the Buddha gave a definition for living beings, the social aspects of the technology pose equally
the actual beginning of human life: “Monks, there are three factors, challenging ethical issues. One objection is that humans and animals
when fulfilled, pregnancy arises. They are, namely, the union who are subjects of experiments in biotechnology are viewed as
of father and mother, the mother is having her ovulation, and a commodities. It has been argued that biotechnology makes use of
gandhabba is present.” Gandhabba refers to the final consciousness living organisms or parts of the human body to produce goods or
of a dying being. Based on this definition, embryos are considered services. As this resembles trading in human parts, there is much
living beings. Although embryos are not fully developed, they hostility to what biotechnology is doing.
nonetheless have the potential to become fully grown living beings.
Therefore Buddhists would find it abhorrent to terminate these The hostility can be reduced if biotechnology is properly
embryos. Currently, many fertility clinics keep their overproduced explained to the layman. It can be defined as “Any technique that
embryos frozen under sub-zero nitrogen without any specific plan to uses living organisms, or substances from that organism, to make
deal with them. For that matter, experimentation and manipulation or modify a product, to improve plants or animals, or to develop
of genetic codes of embryonic cells are also considered immoral. microorganisms for specific uses.” (The use of yeast, a living
organism, to produce bread is an example of biotechnology.)
The ethical problem of killing is not applicable to plants, Nevertheless, such semantics is unlikely to repair the damage

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