Institute of Jurassic Technology: You had me at "crafted"

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

You had me at "crafted"

The headline is "Human embryos crafted from three people." I stopped cold at "crafted." Is it clichéd to mention a 'slippery slope' at this point?

[photo credit in linked article]

Bp

5 comments:

Marty said...: A slippery slope covered with honey and vegetable oil. And other, ummm, slippery stuff.

And there was a ton of moral hand-wringing about cloning. That is child's play compared to "crafting".; February 6, 2008 at 8:24 PM
Stu Farnham said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; February 7, 2008 at 6:13 PM
Stu Farnham said...: Sigh.

Where does the boundary between "good" bioscience and "bad" bioscience lie? Was the eradication of yellow fever good or bad? Is genetic tinkering good or bad? How do we tell?

I'm appalled at the idea of "crafting"; in fact, the whole genome mapping thing has scary social implications on both the so-called good and bad sides.

On the good side, suppose you could use genetic engineering to prolong lfe to, say, 150 years. You think we have overpopulation problems now?

On the flip side, the notion that our genetic makeup could be known and decisions about us made based on that makeup is also frightening. You have the genetic marker for, say, heart disease and you can't get health insurance.

Leave nature alone -- it's way smarter than we are.; February 7, 2008 at 6:14 PM
Bpaul said...: To see this dystopia you speak of in film, see Gattaca with Ethan Hawke. Decent sci fi flick, and addresses these exact things as only overblown sci fi can :-)

T. loves dystopia's, so we have quite the list of them here.; February 7, 2008 at 7:42 PM
Bpaul said...: Marty -- I agree.; February 7, 2008 at 9:52 PM