Books, Journals, New Media - May 27, 1998
(JAMA. 1998;279:1664-1665)
Gay Science: The Ethics of Sexual Orientation Research, by Timothy F. Murphy, 268 pp, $29.95, ISBN 0-231-10848-6, New York, NY, Columbia University Press, 1997.
The publisher sends this book to prospective reviewers with praise describing it as "determinedly objective." Thankfully, Gay Science isn't anything of the sort. Bioethicist Timothy Murphy provides the reader with an argument in support of freedom of etiologic research on sexual orientation. There is nothing inherently wrong with such a strategy. Bioethics as a discipline would gain tremendously if its analytical philosophers would stop pretending to be objective, impartial academics trying to do a difficult ethical job. Gay Science is one of quite a number of books published in the United States trying to defend etiologic research on sexual orientation against its critics. Simon LeVay's Queer Science (reviewed in JAMA September 11, 1996) and Dean Hamer's The Science of Desire are other examples.
Differing from its predecessors, Gay Science deserves to be taken more seriously, because its author is a professional bioethicist, while LeVay's and Hamer's books are nonethicists' failed attempts at providing ethical justifications for their research on the causes of sexual orientation. Dr Murphy realizes that opponents of such research have a strong case because of the century old history of the abuse of its results. After providing a readable overview of scientific accounts of sexual orientation, Murphy analyzes the value and practice of sexual orientation research and therapy. He concedes that the possibility of the abuse of gains from genetic research on sexual orientation is real but insists essentially that the value of the freedom of scientific research is so great that it outweighs abuse-related concerns.
To him the question is not whether this sort of inquiry will go forward, but how. It should be noted, however, that at present the country where most of the research on the etiology of sexual orientation takes place is the United States. Leading German, British, and Australian geneticists I interviewed were unequivocal that they wouldn't touch this research with a bargepole. Research on sexual orientation in the United States, despite protestations to the contrary, is driven by a political agenda trying to establish homosexuals as some sort of Hirschfeldian "Third Sex" deserving Constitutional protection. The US Supreme Court's rationale for rejecting Colorado's Amendment 2 clearly has put this political strategy to rest.
Dr Murphy is good at creating thought experiments, sometimes even invoking alien visitors to the earth in order to illustrate arguments he wishes to advance, although his aliens seem to conflict with real-world facts that might not support his views. He speculates, for instance, that aliens might land on earth, discover that homoeroticism exists in humans, and want to know about the origins of homoeroticism in order to integrate its erotic potential into their own repertoire. Murphy points out that this would hardly qualify as ethically unacceptable heterosexism. This is a tautological truth resulting from the way in which the alien visitors' interest is constructed. Moreover, in the real world, use of screening devices predictive of sexual orientation will depend largely on individual and societal attitudes toward homosexuality. Western and other cultures vary widely in attitudes toward sex and gender; use in India of amniocentesis to detect the biological sex of fetuses is a case in point. Gay Science, like Queer Science and The Science of Desire, lacks any appreciation of cultural differences in the interpretation of such research results. Empirical surveys undertaken in the United Kingdom and in Russia show that there are tremendous differences in the societal interpretation of etiologic research on sexual orientation. Forty-two per cent of Russians favor gene therapy in order to "repair defective" (in this case "gay") genes, against 28% who are against such eugenic measures. A Singaporean medical journal discussed the "ethical" issue of offering a potentially forthcoming gay gene test, in the "absence of treatment" for homosexuality. Clearly, this is not what American sexual orientation researchers and their bioethics supporters like Murphy have in mind, but unlike Murphy's homoerotically interested aliens, that is the real world's response to the current US research.
It is disappointing that, with the exception of a few throw-away lines, no thought is spent in this "determinedly objective" book on issues that matter practically to the welfare of homosexual people outside the country where this research is undertaken. Ethical concerns in this regard led me to propose a moratorium on etiologic research on sexual orientation; Murphy rejects this as "censorius and counterproductive." He proposes to distinguish between research and its dissemination; freedom of research is defended by separating scientific inquiry from the use of the results it has produced. Thereby it is implied that scientific biomedical inquiry is some sort of end in itself rather than a means to achieve certain ends, ie, health and human happiness. The truth of this view is not self-evident, requires further argument, and remains contentious within the philosophy of science.
In a chapter on the practice of sexual orientation therapy, Murphy takes a closer look at different approaches to changing the sexual orientation of people and at the question of whether research to this end is ethically acceptable. In a nutshell his views are that as yet there are no successful means available to change a person's sexual orientation and that as long as basic research ethical guidelines (such as the requirement to obtain voluntary first-person informed consent) are adhered to, research with this objective is not necessarily ethically problematic. He argues that parents should be allowed to "use sexual orientation controls that are safe and efficacious prenatally and that violate no moral interest of a child" because "sexual orientation interventions do not appear to be in a position to produce objectionable harms so grave as to justify their restriction" (pages 105 and 211). Again, no serious consideration is given to the issue of the impact of the availability such devices would have on the societal standing of homosexual people in both liberal Western democracies and other cultures. He does grant that with some likelihood, the availability and use of such devices would lead to a decrease in the overall number of gay people.
What about the "gay gene" test, should it ever come into existence? Murphy discusses this possibility on the basis of case studies and demonstrates persuasively that such tests would not necessarily be used to the detriment of gay men and women. He concedes, however, that the only type of society in which a marker for sexual orientation could be beneficial to homosexual people is a society that makes a conscious effort to protect gay people. Given that Murphy admits that "there is no country on the planet that is free of anti-gay discrimination," I remain puzzled as to the point of this bioethical thought experiment. An extended analysis of the relationship between the findings of sexual orientation research, nature, and the law follows, in which the author discusses the already mentioned hopes of Drs LeVay and Hamer that a biological cause of sexual orientation might help gay people to achieve the standing of a group of people with special legal status/recognition. To his credit, Murphy rightly points out that biological findings have no normative implications for the question of whether homosexuality is desirable or undesirable.
Despite my obvious disagreement with most of the analysis and with many of the conclusions Dr Murphy reaches, Gay Science is well worth reading. The careful way in which the author explicates his arguments has helped me, a German born and trained philosopher, to achieve a better understanding of a view that is typical of US bioethical thinking.
Udo Schüklenk, PhD
Monash University
Centre for Human Bioethics
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia