Religious belief, perceptions of human suffering, and support for reproductive genetic technology

Reproductive genetic technologies are becoming more controversial as they become more ubiquitous. The opponents of these technologies are largely religious groups, a fact that leads to the question of why religious groups would be more opposed to these technologies than others. Since all of these technologies are justified by their ability to relieve suffering of some kind, it is hypothesized that the actively religious have a notion of suffering different from that of advocates for these technologies, and this different notion of suffering leads to opposition to the technologies. In this article I report on a qualitative interview study of the religiously active in the United States. I find that the religiously active do have views of suffering that are distinct from the medical consensus, and these views are related to people's conclusions about the advisability of reproductive genetic technologies.