Any adequate ethical framework for dealing with genetic engineering must be based on our contemporary understanding of the relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world. Our evolutionary history makes it very clear that humans are not separate from the rest of nature. Rather we are an integral part of the community of living beings and non-living reality. Thomas Berry, an American priest who has reflected on ecological issues for decades writes that contemporary ethics must focus its concerns on the larger community of the living. The ecological imperative is not derivative from human ethics.
Human ethics is derivative from the ecological imperative.
The earth is a single ethical system, as the universe is a single ethical system. This is the first principle of an ecological ethic. Such an ethic would demand a legal framework where the rights of the geological and biological as well as the human component or the earth community are protected. Before examining the ethical issues involved in genetic engineering it might help to briefly, and in a very simplified way outline what is involved. Genetic engineering is a by-product of the relatively young science of genetics.