From: hal@finney.org
Date: Sun Jul 29 2001 - 20:23:45 MDT
Today's Los Angeles Times has an editorial sounding a cautionary note
on germline engineering, and it mentions the Extropy Institute.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-000061697jul29.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcomment
(that link may not work after today):
Americans might be surprised to know that germline engineering is
supported not only by fringe think tanks like the Los Angeles-based
Extropy Institute (mission statement: "Incubating Positive Futures")
but also by some top scientists. MIT economist Lester Thurow says
"biotechnology is inevitably leading to a world in which plants,
animals and human beings are going to be partly man-made." James
Watson--the co-discoverer of DNA, the former head of the National
Institutes of Health and a Nobel laureate--is the most blunt of
all. "No one has the guts to say it," Watson says, but "if we could
make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't
we?"
It's great to see ExI rising in prominence enough to be mentioned as
one of the prominent advocates of technology, even though it is done in
a disparaging manner here. It's also good to see respected names like
Thurow and Watson quoted as agreeing.
As another Nobel laureate, College de France genetics professor
Francois Jacob, said, techno-eugenics is troubling when its "point
is no longer to heal someone but to modify him, to mold him. ... on
no account is it for scientists to decide questions of this magnitude."
I fully agree with this. It is not for scientists to decide. But it
is not for governments or societies to decide, either.
It is for parents to decide.
Only in extreme cases where the proposed changes would be clearly
detrimental to the child, tantamount to child abuse, would society be
justified in stepping in.
Hal
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