JOSUGA: JOS JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES

This paper examines the ethical challenges posed by two developments in biotechnology, as well as the role that Christian Ethics can play in enabling the church and society to respond wisely to these developments. The first ethical problem is the separation of four aspects of motherhood that can arise from the donation of DNA, the donation of mitochondria, surrogacy, and adoption. The second ethical problem arises from the advances in genetic engineering, which allow the production of human proteins in sheep’s milk (which is useful in treating certain diseases). This paper argues that both these problems turn out to be problems of description. Drawing on the contributions of Oliver O’Donovan, Miroslav Volf, and Michael Polanyi, the paper advances an analogy from the study of fractals to help explain how descriptions can be true even before they are exact, and how descriptions can become progressively more exact without having to renounce their earlier iterations. These more exact descriptions form a prerequisite for an informed response to the ethical challenges of biotechnology. 

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