Lutherans Author Book on Genetic Testing and Screening

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has a "reliable and accessible guide into Christian reflection on genetic testing and screening," wrote the Rev. Charles S. Miller, executive director of the ELCA Division for Church in Society, in the preface to a new book, "Genetic Testing and Screening: Critical Engagement at the Intersection of Faith and Science."
Genetic testing and screening are technological procedures that analyze samples of human body fluid or tissue for the presence or absence of specific genetic material. Currently the most common medical applications involve screens or tests that detect the heritable basis of disease, defect or abnormalities during pregnancy or in infants.=20 Criminal DNA testing is an example of a non-medical use.
"Our society needs a church and a people who greet the situation with informed thinking and with discernment for compassionate and just action. This book will have fulfilled its mandate if it equips the reader to join in such a critical engagement," wrote the Rev. Roger A. Willer in the book's introduction.
Willer, while engaged in doctoral studies at the University of Chicago, acted as director and editor of this writing project on human genetic testing and screening for the ELCA Division for Church in Society.
"Genetic knowledge can lead to preventative medical therapy, allow informed choice, set free the wrongly accused, and spin off whole new industries that respond to the ailments and misfortunes of life," wrote Willer. "While we may celebrate these new powers, their application also brings vexing personal crises and social dilemmas."
Different ELCA members wrote each of the book's nine chapters.=20 The first three chapters are organized into a section called "Understanding Genetic Testing and Screening."
Dr. Kevin Powell, a pediatrician for Carle Clinic and an assistant professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, Urbana, Ill., wrote the book's initial chapter, "A Basic Guide: Facts and Issues." Powell is a physician with an earned doctorate in medical engineering.
"Scientists are motivated by compassion to help others who are suffering from genetic diseases. These efforts increase social justice," wrote Powell. "The trade-off is that genetic technology also increases power and places that power in fewer hands, which may decrease social justice.
"Science continues to increase knowledge. Religion must increase wisdom of how to use this knowledge. These two functions cannot operate independently but must interact," wrote Powell.
Kirstin Finn Schwandt, a community-based genetic counselor in Bloomington, Ind., wrote "Personal Stories: Cases from Genetic Counseling." A former genetic research lab assistant, she is trained in medical genetics with an emphasis on counseling and ethical issues.
"While genetic counselors are key members of the medical care team, they are not usually trained to focus on the faith-related needs of patients," Schwandt wrote. "Spiritual issues often fall by the wayside because a counseling session is devoted to the exchange of information. Many patients are left with unanswered questions like 'Why do bad things always happen to me?'"
"Science and technology have brought us into an era which requires profound responsibility. For Christians, this is not an affliction but a gift from God," wrote Schwandt. "If the church chooses to be present to people struggling with genetic choices, it must become genetically literate in order to understand and respond."
John Varian, senior vice president for finance and administration, Elan Pharmaceuticals, wrote "Genetics in the Marketplace: A Biotech Perspective." Elan is a pharmaceutical company based near San Francisco.
"Genetic test development will occur and at an increasingly rapid pace. I hope that my comments here will aid the kind of conversation that we need to have in the church as these developments increasingly influence our lives. It is crucial that those of us in the church become better educated so that we can enter into and attempt to affect the ongoing debate," wrote Varian.
"While the genes God has given us are a gift, he transcends our genetic make-up. We must affirm that we are more than just the sum of our genes," Varian wrote. "We must affirm that there is more to life.=20 We must affirm the importance of God's plan for each of our lives even though we can never fully fathom it."
The book's middle section, "Engaging Worldviews and Proposing Alternatives," includes four chapters by ethicists and theologians.
The Rev. Philip Hefner wrote "The Genetic 'Fix': Challenge to Christian Faith and Community." He is a professor of systematic theology at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and director of the Chicago Center on Religion and Science.
The "prevailing worldview" is that all of nature is subject to a human "freedom to define and shape it," Hefner wrote. When it comes to genetic testing and screening this viewpoint tends to blur "the distinction between healing and 'fixing,'" and it "offers very limited personal and spiritual support."
As an alternative, Hefner called people "God's created co-creators." = Using Christian perspectives on humans as both creatures of nature and shapers of nature, he illustrated that being created in "the image of God brings with it possibilities and responsibilities."
"I propose the image of 'Christian friendship' as a challenge to our congregations as supportive communities," wrote Hefner. "Such a community will not be found in many places in our American society. It is the church's calling to be in fact this community."
Elizabeth Bettenhausen explored issues of the human body and the church as "the body of Christ" in "Genes in Society: Whose Body?" The social ethicist, theologian and author teaches courses at Hartford Seminary, Hartford, Conn., and the University of Massachusetts at Boston.
"Remembering Luther's insistence that a person is best understood as life in interacting relationships can help us in the church," Bettenhausen wrote. "The need within the church is not for increased specialization in conversations on genetic testing and screening.=20 Rather, the church can be precisely a corporate communion in which attention is always given to the specifics of a particular science or profession but explicitly in the larger context of human society."
"In terms of genetic testing and screening, how we analyze interests, resources, benefits, and burdens will be affected from the beginning by a strong bias in favor of 'the least of these,' meaning persons with the fewest benefits and most burdens in society," wrote Bettenhausen. "Conversation in society is an opportunity for the church to engage many more cultures and perspectives than exist within a particular denomination or congregation."
The Rev. Theodore F. Peters, a professor of systematic theology at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, Berkeley, Calif., said he wished he could have predicted a more optimistic future in "Love and Dignity: Against Children Becoming Commodities;" instead he forecast "free market eugenics."
"Eugenics was a movement to use family planning to improve the health and intelligence and productivity of the human race," wrote Peters, a research scholar at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, Berkeley, Calif.
"My theological and ethical concern is that free market eugenics will set us up economically and culturally to view future children as commodities, as merchandise. Genetic discrimination in insurance and employment will bring economic pressures upon families to eliminate future children with undesirable -- read expensive -- genes," Peters wrote.
Dr. Hans O. Tiefel, a professor of religion and ethics and chair of the Religion Department at the College o