"Many people love their retrievers and their sunny dispositions
around children and adults. Could people be chosen in the
same way? Would it be so terrible to allow parents to at least
aim for a certain type, in the same way that great breeders…try
to match a breed of dog to the needs of a family?"
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Gregory Pence, Professor of Philosophy,
School of Medicine & Humanities, University of Alabama
at Birmingham, Who's Afraid of Human Cloning? (Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), page 168
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"Some
will hate it, some will love it, but biotechnology is inevitably
leading to a world in which plants, animals and human beings
are going to be partly man-made….Suppose parents could
add 30 points to their children's IQ. Wouldn't you want to do
it? And if you don't, your child will be the stupidest child
in the neighborhood."
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Lester Thurow, Professor of Economics and
Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Creating
Wealth: The New Rules for Individuals, Companies and Nations
in a Knowledge-Based Economy (New York: Harper Collins,
1999), page 33
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"And
the other thing, because no one has the guts to say it:
If we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes,
why shouldn't we? What's wrong with it?…Evolution can be
just damn cruel, and to say that we've got a perfect genome
and there's some sanctity? I'd like to know where that idea
comes from, because it's utter silliness."
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James Watson, President, Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory, quoted in Engineering the Human Germline:
An Exploration of the Science and Ethics of Altering the
Genes We Pass to Our Children, Gregory Stock and John
Campbell, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000),
pages 79, 85. Watson shared the Nobel prize for Chemistry
in 1962 for the discovery of the structure of DNA, and
served as first Director of the Human Genome Project.
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"The
first century or two of the new millennium will almost certainly
be a golden age for eugenics. Through application of new genetic
knowledge and reproductive technologies…the major change
will be to mankind itself…[T]echniques…such as…genetic
manipulations are not yet efficient enough to be unquestionably
suitable in therapeutic and eugenic application for humans.
But with the pace of research it is surely only a matter of
time, and a short time at that."
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Glayde Whitney, Professor, Department of
Psychology, Florida State University, "Reproduction
Technology for a New Eugenics," paper for The Galton
Institute conference Man and Society in the New Millennium,
September 1999, published in The Mankind Quarterly
(Vol. 40, No. 2, 1999), pages 179-192 and online at http://www.eugenics.net/papers/gw002.html
Whitney has come under fire for his racist
writings, including his forward to My Awakening:
A Path to Racial Understanding, by former Ku Klux
Klan National Director David Duke.
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"What
is called for here is not genocide, the killing off of the
population of incompetent cultures. But we do need to think
realistically in terms of the 'phasing out' of such peoples
. . . Evolutionary progress means the extinction of the less
competent."
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Richard Lynn, University of Ulster, Interview
in Newsday (January 9, 1994)
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"[I]f the cost of reprogenetic technology follows the downward
path taken by other advanced technologies like computers
and electronics, it could become affordable to the majority
members of the middle class in Western societies….And the
already wide gap between wealthy and poor nations could widen
further and further with each generation until all common heritage
is gone. A severed humanity could very well be the ultimate
legacy of unfettered global capitalism."
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Lee Silver, Professor, Department of Molecular
Biology and Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International
Affairs, Princeton University, "Reprogenetics: How
do a Scientist's Own Ethical Deliberations Enter into
the Process?" Humans and Genetic Engineering in
the New Millennium: How are We Going to Get “Gen-Ethics”
Just in Time? (Copenhagen: Danish Council of Ethics,
2000), and online at http://etisk.inforce.dk/graphics/03_udgivelser/
publikationer/genethic/kap02_8.htm . Silver lectures
widely on the social impacts of biotechnology.
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"The
right to a custom made child is merely the natural extension
of our current discourse of reproductive rights. I see no
virtue in the role of chance in conception, and great virtue
is expanding choice….If women are allowed the 'reproductive
right' or 'choice' to choose the father of their child, with
his attendant characteristics, then they should be allowed the
right to choose the characteristics from a catalog."
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James Hughes, bioethics consultant, sociologist,
bioethicist, health care policy analyst, producer of the
public affairs program Changesurfer Radio, and
Secretary of the World Transhumanist Association, in "Embracing
Change with All Four Arms," Eubios Journal of
Asian and International Bioethics (Vol. 6, No. 4,
June 1996), pages 94-101, and online at http://www.changesurfer.com/Hlth/Genetech.html
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"[In
a few hundred years] the GenRich—who account for 10 percent
of the American population—[will] all carry synthetic genes….All
aspects of the economy, the media, the entertainment industry,
and the knowledge industry [will be] controlled by members of
the GenRich class….Naturals [will] work as low-paid service
providers or as laborers….[Eventually] the GenRich class
and the Natural class will become…entirely separate species
with no ability to cross-breed, and with as much romantic interest
in each other as a current human would have for a chimpanzee….[I]n
a society that values individual freedom above all else, it
is hard to find any legitimate basis for restricting the use
of reprogenetics….[T]he use of reprogenetic technologies
is inevitable….There is no doubt about it…whether
we like it or not, the global marketplace will reign supreme."
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Lee Silver, Remaking Eden: Cloning and
Beyond in a Brave New World (New York: Avon Books,
1997), pages 4-7, 11
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"'Germline'
therapy…will force us to re-examine even the very notion
of what it means to be human [as] we become subject to the same
process of conscious design that has so dramatically altered
the world around us….Through this technology, we will seize
control of our own evolution….By the time recipients of
even the best engineered chromosome are ready to have children,
it will be twenty or thirty years after they themselves were
conceived. Their once state-of-the-art artificial chromosome
will be hopelessly out-of-date, and they'll want to give their
child the latest gene cassettes and artificial chromosomes.
It's not so different from upgraded software; they'd want the
new release."
"The
advertising pitch for inheritable genetic modification is called
"Organic Enhancement" because "the DNA molecules
added to embryos are totally organic [and] all-natural….[K]eep
in mind, you must act before you get pregnant. Don't be sorry
after she's born. This really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
for your child-to-be."
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Lee Silver, "Beyond 2000, " Time
(November 8, 1999), pages 68-69. Silver adopts a whimsical
tone to fantasize a marketing campaign for inheritable
genetic modification by the "St. Genevieve"
fertility clinic in the year 2025.
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"Like
atomic energy, cloning can be used for beneficial purposes—to
increase population and to open the window of genetic reprogramming."
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Dr. Severino Antinori, "Human cloning
project claims progress, " Gulf News (March
4, 2002). Antinori is an Italian fertility specialist
leading a project to create a human clone. He previously
gained notoriety when he helped a 62-year-old woman become
pregnant through IVF.
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