Bioart

One day I'm researching a topic for my english class, the next I'm contemplating my career as an ethicist. If you haven't heard (and I'm sure you haven't) bioart is a very new art form that clashes with our current ethical standards specifically in medicine, animal testing, and property values of genetically-altered beings.

How cool is that?

Think about it- a new species is made in a petri dish when an artist comes along and jabs some dye into it and videotapes the process. Heard of the fluorescent cat idea? It was first pioneered by Eduardo Kac, who showcased the GFP Bunny, a live rabbit named Alba, which means white matter (and can specify different white things, like plants or brain matter). There are some artists who get tattoos then remove the inked skin with a laser and showcase it in a jar- others take the DNA code, transcribe it to Morse code, then translate to english. Interesting? Some artists will take live skin and manipulate it in labs for the cells to grow into lattices and odd shapes- and some people think that this isn't art?

Bioart creates new subjects instead of objects, which raises alot of questions pertaining to private property, such as condoning the use of a human's body for art and circumventing the need for organ transplants. There is also a debate concerning animal rights, which is still fuzzy even without the addition of bioart. I personally believe (and can logically argue) that animal rights activists as well as morally repugnant animal abusers are both flawed, but since animal rights activists are so "good" it is ignored the implications that they are making.

Animals exist regardless of humans, and they also will die regardless of humans. Yes, killing an animal is a direct action, but to make that a moral blunder because the animal was more vulnerable than a human is a lot like saying that no matter the circumstance, animals are lower than humans. It seems that either animal rights activists ignore this stance or they strategically use it to manipulate the rest of the population since it is such a common idea that humans are superior to other species. Granted, harming animals is wrong, but not because they are helpless or unwilling- rather, it is the act of the human agent who is the only factor because at least then a person is held accountable for their reasoning instead of relying on animals to be inferior.
Here's where the strength of animal rights activists fall apart: Relying on this moral vagueness of humans' treatment of animals allows for animal abusers to simply say that killing or harming the animal OUTWEIGHED any alternative. See? It becomes an argument where the more extreme the circumstance, the more you are right, which is the kind of thinking that leads people to believe that quantifying morals is not only possible, but preferable. Personally my view on animals holds up pretty well and while I have some problems with the treatment of animals, it's not because I imagine seeing their tear-filled eyes at the slaughterhouse.

Well, it's a long and controversial topic nonetheless. The animal rights bit shows that ethics can be manipulated with feelings, but that ethics can and should be reflective of a society's conscience-the decent parts, anyway. I'm thinking that there could more to bioart and bioethics if it were readily available to the younger generation, such as placing bioart and ethics curriculums starting in high school (which only a few have implemented some bioethics courses). Heck, if it were financially feasible universities could combine their labs with research made by Fine Arts majors- which may actually give an incentive to improve upon the technology currently available in the universities. Yes, it would be circumventing (I like that word) the planted ethical ideas about bioresearch, but haven't we come a long way from the Nazis? Or the Tuskegee experiments? The social implications are fascinating- imagine elementary schools with labs that allow children to make their own species and learn responsibility by not just being liable for an animal, but actually being its creator. Class hamsters could have purple skin or amphibious tendencies, something that someone has created to feed their head with curiosity... well, that's an optimistic view. From personal experience I know how children treat the class hamster and I don't think that there is hope to improve upon a child's cruelty by giving them more to play with- but for those who would choose to be responsbile for another life I could see how science, philosophy and art would definately take them places unimaginable by the rest.