Storm Over Biology
Davis, Bernard D.
O n April 24, 1987 in Brentwood, California, genetically altered bacteria were released outdoors for the first time. The 2,300 strawberry plants on which they were sprayed had been hastily replanted...
...The 2,300 strawberry plants on which they were sprayed had been hastily replanted the night before, after protesters had cut through a six-foot chain-link fence surrounding the site and uprooted the original plants...
...His colleagues at Harvard...
...Science for the People, for instance, has declared that its goals include "exposing the class control of science and technology" and helping scientists "ally with other progressive forces in society" in "opposing the ideologies of sexism, racism, elitism and their practice...
...While Davis refers to "ideological convictions" taking precedence over "considerations of scientific validity" in all these cases, he does not seem to be aware of the full scope of those "ideological convictions" and the ways in which they are expressed...
...ITS IDEOLOGICAL REPERCUSSIONS WILL BE FELT FOR DECADES" Read it now...
...For fastest service, call toll free 1-800/435-6850...
...Apparently the brainchild of John Rossen, a one-time U.S...
...Although Davis dedicates the book "to a multitude of friends, torn by tensions between the heart and the head," his own work is testimony enough that heart and head can work together...
...For a good discussion of growing criticism, especially from paleontologists, see Tom Bethell's "Agnostic Evolutionists," Harper's, February 1985...
...degree bestowed to make life and death judgments, medical faculties had a grave responsibility to make sure they produced reasonably competent physicians...
...Yet as Bernard Davis emphasizes in his careful analysis of the balance between risks and benefits in recombinant DNA research, the real danger lies in the demand "for virtually absolute freedom from risk...
...As Edward Shils points out in his introductory essay, the number of scientists involved in what he calls the "anti-science movement" is not large, but Rael Jean Isaac's most recent book (with Erich Isaac) is The Coercive Utopians (Regnery Gateway...
...Diversity conflicts with the left's ideal of human equality...
...For Davis the final straw came when the medical school's dean won approval to waive the National Board requirement for a student who had failed its basic science examination five times...
...If Davis can be faulted, it is for giving the activists of the anti-science movement too much credit for good intentions...
...He calls the American Friends Service Committee "highly responsible...
...The point of the experiment was to combat the frost damage that costs U.S...
...Nazi...
...their impact is heightened by the support they receive from the publicists of science...
...At stake in "the storm over biology," whether the target is recombinant DNA or a wide range of studies focusing on the role of heredity in human behavior, is nothing less than the integrity -of science...
...Davis is a genuine hero of modern science, standard bearer for a faith that truth is a supreme end that cannot be held hostage to the intellectual fashions of the day, that science is a methodology for seeking universal, objective truths about nature, that progress in science is good for society, and that the scientific community can be trusted with a high degree of autonomy...
...In Illinois, 1-800/892-6831...
...Publicly he stood alone...
...Davis reports that Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin, on a "Nova" program on public television, went so far as to scorn the belief that musical talent was inherited, to minimize the contribution of genetics to agricultural production, and to deny the legitimacy of human behavioral genetics...
...Davis writes that he has often been asked why he took upon himself the task of calling attention "to extremely touchy problems that were well known to a great many people, and that our society was bound to correct eventually...
...Fearful that studies in behavioral genetics will contradict their extreme environmentalist assumptions, this determined band denies the validity of studies documenting human diversity and 'Davis himself strongly defends a neoDarwinian view, arguing that molecular genetics lends it new support...
...The taboo on discussion in this area is so strong that even Edward 0. Wilson, in his path-breaking Sociobiology, sidesteps the influence of genes on mental ability...
...The essays, speeches, editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor drawn together in this volume, written over a period of seventeen years and published in journals ranging from Science and Chemical and Engineering News to the New York Times and Harvard Magazine, bear witness not only to Davis's literary and intellectual abilities, but also to his generous spirit, civility, and courage—qualities in far shorter supply in the academy...
...He notes that "the best answer I could give was the story of the old lady,gently awakened by an usher closing up a theater, who looked around at the empty seats and said, 'This is what comes of my following the theory that if everyone waited for everyone else there would be no rushing...
...Nowhere is- Davis's courage more evident than in the stand he took against the excesses of affirmative action at Harvard Medical School...
...But if a man is born with a need for religion and for an ethical system, knowledge that he has such needs tends to erode his faith rather than provide a foundation for it...
...Although the editorial made no mention of Harvard and even advocated stretching admissions criteria to help disadvantaged groups, Davis was accused of racism, picketed by students who demanded his dismissal, vilified on national television, denounced by his dean, censured by the faculty council, and told he could not become, as had been planned, director of the college's Center for Human Genetics...
...Davis wrote a guest editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine arguing that given the power the M.D...
...He describes the development of the program into a quota system setting aside20 percent of the entering class for black students...
...Davis zeroes in on the politically sensitive area of genetically determined intellectual differences, defending the validity of intelligence tests against the likes of Stephen Jay Gould, also a professor at Harvard, who has attacked the whole concept of measurable intelligence as meaningless, presumably because it would then follow that the disturbing data on group differences are meaningless as well...
...As faculty became ever more reluctant to fail black students, they fell back on a requirement that students pass the National Board exam—and even that exam they could take five times...
...Most scientists probably continue to share this faith, but they are intimidated and therefore silent...
...Davis received "private messages of support" from over a hundred of them...
...Have we really compensated, as Davis says, by developing a radically increased sensitivity to the problems of human rights...
...Many of the essays defend evolutionary theory.' Despite the quasi-religious fervor with which the left defends Darwinian theory against creationists, it is unwilling, as Davis notes, to accept the implications of biological diversity, even though this is central to Darwin's theory...
...Meanwhile, the "highly responsible" American Friends Service Committee has become a chief apologist for the PLO...
...D avis also strikes me as overly optimistic in his claim that we have weathered the storm created by Darwin when he struck down the doctrine of special creation, and thus shattered the supernatural basis for moral consensus...
...agriculture an estimated $1.6 billion a year...
...For example, in characterizing Science for the People, he says, "there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of this group of critics...
...The story is typically self-deprecating, but if our society does indeed correct these problems, it will be thanks in no small measure to rare individuals like Bernard Davis...
...And while he criticizes Edward 0. Wilson for his failure to recognize that "the values that guide social behavior within a group will continue basically to be derived by a political process" (Wilson argues that evolution can become the presiding myth of a universal new religion), he too believes evolution can provide an alternative foundation for a variety of value systems, "for the deep-seated drive for perpetuation of one's genes, and the inescapably social nature of the species, places boundaries on the range of viable ethical principles...
...As for its methods, Jon Franklin describes in Molecules of the Mind how, in the late 1960s, members would disrupt scientific meetings of molecular biologists, who were beginning to unSTORM OVER BIOLOGY: ESSAYS ON SCIENCE, SENTIMENT, AND PUBLIC POLICY Bernard D. Davis/Prometheus Books (Buffalo, NY)/$22.95 Rael Jean Isaac 54 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1987 fold the mysteries of brain function (with the immense promise of relieving mental illness), with chants of "Nazi...
...Davis's bruising experiences are the subject of the only essay in the collection not published previously...
...That a man with Rifkin's credentials (none of them scientific) has been able almost single-handedly (with foundation support, to be sure) to set back an entire area of vital research by five years—with the outcome still uncertain—is a tribute to the weak-kneed vulnerability of our scientific institutions...
...As for Jeremy Rifkin, he started his career in 1971 as director of something called the "People's Bicentennial Commission...
...While Davis does say that exposure seems "more important than legitimation," it is disappointing to find him pulling his punches...
...But these are quibbles...
...Cash/Check ^ VISA ^ MasterCard ^ AM EX INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA Quantity Price Total $32.95 (c) $16.95 (p) 75 1. Shipping and handling BANK NUMBER (MC) CA, IL, WA Tax Total ORDER FORM NAME TITLE ADDRESS CITY/STATE/ZIP CARD NUMBER EXPIRATION DATE SIGNATURE Mail to: OPEN * COURT, Attention: Order Department, Box 599, Peru, Illinois 61354...
...The point of the protesters was to continue, by "other means," their four-year battle, waged in the courts and the press, to stop all work in genetic engineering on the grounds of the peril posed to public health...
...Communist Party organizer, Rifkin's "Commission" used the occasion of the Bicentennial to call for a new American revolution based on Marxist principles...
...To be sure, even Davis's forbearance is taxed by Jeremy Rifkin, whom he describes as "the professional opponent of genetic engineering...
...While Davis expresses considerable sympathy for the egalitarian goals of the movement (he is a political liberal, and was active in the movement against the Vietnam war), he refuses to make scientific truth subservient to ideology...
...Human rights may be used more frequently as a political weapon, but there is little in the record of this century to suggest great devotion to their substance...
...Little wonder that Davis refers to "neo-Lysenkoism...
...Wilson, whose work is the subject of several essays in this book, is of course anathema to left-wing ideologues intent on giving science political shape: as Davis notes, "their utopias are built on assumptions of human malleability and perfectibility, and a socio-biological perspective does threaten these assumptions...
...Davis points out that if the study of infectious diseases had faced similar demands, "we might still be losing one-quarter of our children to communicable diseases...
...Recognition that our genes program us to develop moral and religious systems is no substitute for belief in a transcendental deity who demands obedience to His law...
...Later, Rifkin formed a "People's Business Commission" as a device for anti-corporation propaganda, and then turned to his present crusade to halt research in genetic engineering...
...Not infrequently, in a pattern followed by a number of elite colleges, better qualified black applicants from the middle class were rejected in favor of those less qualified from suitably "disadvantaged" backgrounds...
...themodon that one can derive an "is" from an "ought...
...seeks to discourage (and even outlaw) further study in this area...
...DA1087 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1987 55...
...Thus Davis decries what he calls the "moralistic fallacy...
Vol. 20 • October 1987 • No. 10
