Totality: A Fictional Catholic Approach to Bioethics

Deep Reading #4

The news, the media, and the internet are full of “buzzwords” or “hot topics.” Meant to quickly grab and hold our attention, this can be anything from “racism” to “left-wing” to “traditional Catholic.” Others we might see—especially recently—are “biotechnology,” “biological warfare,” and “bioethics.”

Usually, these words are used to evoke one of two reactions in us. The first is pride in the advancements of modern medical science, and the second is skepticism and fear about those same advancements. Both reactions have some foundation: medical science does indeed have many great achievements, and, on the other hand, some of those achievements have implications we’d rather not think about.

It’s no wonder that there’s a lot of confusion about how these topics are supposed to be approached, especially with two very opposite views being presented. In his recent novel Totality, Brendan Lyons, an editor at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, has presented a lens through which to properly view these issues: the moral teachings of the Catholic Church. Foundationally based on the teachings of Pope St. Pius XII—from which it borrows its title—the story seeks to portray both the fundamental problems with modern medical science and how we, as Catholics, should approach these problems.

Totality is set in the near future, where America can be crossed in a matter of minutes with vacuum-powered transportation and the US Government has taken the Freedom of Religion clause to its logical end and denied “exclusive” religions the right to use public amenities. But other than that, everything looks pretty much the same—except that you can exchange your body for a new one. Termed “the switchover,” this process is advertised as the solution to all major medical problems. If you’re dying of a chronic illness, just order a clone of your body without your chronic illness and then “switch” your brain over.

Sounds like a great idea, right? And if that wasn’t enough, there’s more: the “plurals,” professing themselves to be from the future, are hunting down and attempting to assassinate their past selves—but it only happens to those who haven’t swapped their bodies.

The narrative focuses on two men: Nick, an electrical engineer who lives in New York and works for a company in Philadelphia, and Tim, the co-founder and poster-child of the “PBG,” the company that created and popularized the switchover. Nick becomes sucked into the action when he saves his friend from a plural attack, fights off his own plural, and becomes involved in the mysterious “FRTT” or “Frotters”—a secret-agent-type organization that investigates the plurals in a seemingly nonsensical way. When his wife Hannah begins to experience the effects of the switchover on her acting industry, she and Nick resolve to find answers to the problems they see around them.

Tim, on the other hand, experiences something a little different. Having himself undergone and subsequently popularized the switchover, proving that it was able to save him from his fatal cancer, he begins to suspect that there’s more to the process than he thought. He senses “intrusive” thoughts and suspects that his “new body” might not be his own. This, added to his Catholic wife’s concerns about the moral standing of the switchover, induces him to dig into the shady story of how it all was developed and popularized.

True to its intention, the narrative addresses numerous medical and biotechnological aspects as it progresses. But actually, none of the issues we see in current society are confronted by name—instead, they’re implicitly approached through the fictional problems of the story.

Let’s take a look at one. When it’s discovered that one of the side-effects of the switchover is reproductive sterilization, the characters respond like this:

They want to tell you it’s not the right time to have children. And as far as they’re concerned, there is no right time to have children. And it’s damned clear they want to make sure you and other people in your position don’t ever have children again.

Page 255

Sound familiar? This could very easily be a complaint against abortion—even though most people wouldn’t go that far. Nevertheless, it casts a light on the immoral way that medical technology is used to regulate procreation, turning the relationship between husband and wife into a consumeristic affair. While the situation in Totality isn’t exactly the same, there are some obvious parallels.

Here’s another one. After a bit of digging, Tim discovers that the body he switched into actually belongs to someone else, and that certain parts of his brain were merely grafted onto the brain of the new body. When he publicly accuses the switchover corporation, here’s what they say:

Before [the switchover], in terms of neurotypical development and organic system integration, the bodies are not ever truly alive until the appropriate parts of the existing person’s brain are grafted onto the parts needed for regular bodily function.

Page 284

Again, this is something we’ve heard before—albeit applied to a different circumstance. A common argument that apparently justifies abortion is that the fetus isn’t “truly alive” while in early stages of development. Anyone who looks into the progression of an unborn infant from conception to birth knows that this is obviously false, but it’s a widely held view anyway. 

Similarly, the “bodies” that people are being switched into in Totality are also obviously alive. Tim hears somebody else’s thoughts, and a character who witnessed the early development of the switchover says that the “test subjects” of the process also heard voices in their heads, starting out as screaming and progressing to the way young children vocalize. These “people” are alive, but they’re still being subjected to exploitative medical procedures—just like in abortion.

Despite the obvious parallel, abortion isn’t the only bioethical critique of the narrative. It doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to say that “the switchover” is a blatant manifestation of transhumanism. Early on in the narrative, when Hannah asks her protestant pastor about the process, he says

These bodies are earthly vessels, Mrs. Jeffrey. Our souls inhabit them but our souls are of the primary concern, not these fallen bodies . . . Don’t be overly concerned about what happens to your body.

Page 59

The author uses this issue as the main moral message of the story. Obviously, he doesn’t agree with what’s said above, and he refutes it through a Catholic priest character.

We are not souls piloting bodies or piles of cells animated by a brain. We are a body and soul in union with one another—with each part of our body containing the entirety of that soul.

Page 158

This is coherent with Catholic doctrine, as the priest goes on to point out by quoting the teachings of Pius XII. 

But how does this apply to modern day medical practices? The most obvious one is transgenderism. According to the “anti-sacramental” argument, you can alter your body to how you think it should be without the least moral culpability. But as Catholics, we reject that: we recognize that we are body-soul composites, a doctrine that reaches back to the philosophy of Aristotle.

But it doesn’t end with transgenderism. This could also be applied to anything from cyborgs to addictive video games to homosexuality. Throughout it all, the same truth stands. We cannot change our nature, physically or spiritually, because this is the way God has created us.

Despite these forceful themes, the narrative isn’t exclusively focused on the morality of biological practices. One in particular has slightly more political connotations. Let’s take a look.

Through the priest character’s evaluation of the switchover, the author says

It’s offered to those who are isolated, who appear to be more disposed to taking what previously seemed desperate or foolish. Soon it’s no longer just rare cases. It becomes a common need and then the pressure is on. They imply you need it, push you towards it, and slowly but surely more people give in. Next thing you know, the question isn’t why would you do it or why wouldn’t you—it’s why haven’t you and how dare you?

Page 241

While this can be connected to abortion—or even transgenderism—let’s consider it in a different light. Earlier in the story, one of the characters who volunteers at a women’s shelter discovers a massive propaganda outreach for the switchover. But there’s something interesting about it: it’s only targeted towards lower class citizens, leaving the rich and wealthy untouched.

So there’s a severe cultural and political push to undergo a biomedical process. That seems a little too familiar to be solely the creation of the author’s imagination. I don’t think many of us have forgotten the back-and-forth of masks and vaccination—it would be hard to, especially considering that they’re still taking place.

Let’s reconsider the switchover and see what we find. It’s a medical process that’s supposed to solve chronic illnesses and keep your evil clone from the future from killing you. Doesn’t seem too different from a vaccine that’ll build your immunity against an infectious disease that’s sweeping across the country. But in Totality, it’s discovered that the creators of the switchover actually created the plurals using the same cloning technology to threaten anyone who opposed them.

Hmm . . . given the uncertainty of the origin of the Coronavirus, that doesn’t sound too far off. Further, the switchover turns out to not even effectively heal chronic illnesses. Does the Coronavirus vaccine effectively build immunity, or is it just an underhanded biomedical “experiment”—like the switchover? That’s an open question, but it’s pretty clear what the author’s trying to do here.

Let’s examine one more aspect. When switched-over people start dying from their unhealed ailments, the switchover creators bribe the police force to record the deaths as “accidents.” And outside of this fictional narrative, when vaccinated people started unexpectedly dying. . . . You fill in the rest.

How do these parallels come together? Is the point of the story just to critique abortion, transgenderism, and the pandemic, or is there a unifying theme? We can, again, look at what the priest character has to say.

What we are seeing now is the endgame of over a hundred years of medical misdirection. Over a hundred years of believing we can solve all human problems with a medical procedure and then slapping a price tag on it.

Page 174

How exactly is medical science supposed to fix these “human problems”? Let’s return to the fact the switchover causes sterilization. When talking about the scientist who both developed the entire process and intentionally created this side-effect, the narrative says that

In her mind, by disallowing natural reproduction, no ill-conceived children would ever again be brought into the world. Instead, only children engineered in her labs—ostensibly free of congenital defects—would be gestated, born, and raised to be perfectly compatible with the switchover process.

Page 239

This presents the end of modern medical science: to create the “perfect human” without disease, pain, and death, without “messy,” natural life, without religion, and without God. Because who needs God when we can be our own gods, determining who we are and creating and destroying people as we see fit?

Totality recognizes this and acknowledges what an enormous problem it is to human society as a whole. The roots of culture are destroyed from the foundation up, until all that’s left is an empty husk constructed in the names of “progression” and “science.” Human life is no longer seen as something naturally valuable, but rather as a commodity to be sold and purchased, tailored to fit the preferences of the consumer.

These are lessons we can learn from the narrative of Totality. Or maybe we already knew them, but the story gives us a stark portrayal of what it practically means. But be warned: the book isn’t a conventional novel. It seeks to expose rather than to entertain, and it might be easy to lose the meaning amid the sometimes laborious storytelling.

Nevertheless, it opens up numerous topics—religious, moral, political, and scientific—that are well worth contemplating. It challenges us to discern how we should approach the ever-advancing field of medical technology in light of Catholic moral teaching within the engaging context of a fictional setting. It’s not a light read, but we might find ourselves brought to a greater understanding of the serious issues that surround us.