Rev Dr Stephen Goundrey-Smith
What does good biomedical innovation – the process of developing and marketing medical technologies – look like in our society? A brief look at the history of research-based pharmaceuticals and bioscience over the last fifty years suggests that, for good innovation, medical technologies must be safe, cost-effective to use – and, above all, have a positive and sustained impact on human health.
But why do we need a theological vision for good innovation? We live in a secular world where many people believe science is opposed to religion, and where there are many vested corporate and personal interests in the biomedical innovation process. However, the bioscience industry ignores religious values at its peril for three interrelated reasons. First, despite popular belief, science and technology are not truly objective but are value-laden. Moreover, in its infancy in the seventeenth century, science was deeply entwined with its religious context. Second, biomedical technologies are there to benefit real human beings, and affect the lives of many people. In future, enhancement technologies that extend human abilities, rather than simply treat illnesses, will theoretically be relevant to all human beings. Third, religious belief is a widespread human phenomenon, and beliefs affect cultural attitudes to technology.
And where might we look to for a Christian theological vision of biomedical innovation? While the goal of biological health is important for biomedical innovation, health is more than the absence of disease – it concerns human flourishing. And theology has had much to say about human flourishing over the centuries. The Hebrew word shalom is about holistic wellness, and has a corporate element as well as an individual one, an important corrective in an individualistic modern world.
Human flourishing is the goal of Thomas Aquinas’ natural law, and this finds a focus in more recent Catholic social thought. From a Protestant perspective, Karl Barth has stressed relationship with God as a key factor in flourishing. However, I would suggest that Augustine’s City of God is a key theological resource for biomedical innovation. Because it is value-based, technology use is unavoidably political. Moreover, we know that biomedical innovation must be regulated in order to be safe, cost-effective and transformative of human life. In City of God, Augustine argues that, although limited by human sin, governments can ensure that all human endeavours – including biomedical innovation – are directed towards goodness and justice in society.
