Editorial
commonweal THE MANUFACTURE OF LIFE THERE WERE two reactions to the Supreme Court's decision allowing manmade microbes to be patented like any other "new and useful. . . manufacture." The...
...senators, thought that it was the public's responsibility, and not just the scientific community's, to oversee these developments...
...When the Kentucky physician was asked about the '' 1984'' aspect of promoting surrogate motherhood, he replied breezily, "It's only four years away...
...It was sharply attacked, however, by science lobbyists...
...HEW secretary Patricia Harris has more recently stated that federal funds will not support such research, no doubt in view of the political opposition to it...
...The federal Ethics Advisory Board that considered the issue of human in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer (popularly known as "test-tube babies") could only issue a faint-hearted report approving government funding in this area, partially because "the procedures may soon be in use in the private sector" anyway and therefore government involvement "might help to resolve questions of risk and avoid abuse...
...Town council members, some of them at least, were perplexed and frustrated when a recent delegation from the American Jewish Committee, after viewing the performance on May 25th, found it "undoubtedly one of the most antiSemitic presentations shown anywhere...
...The first was the science writer's stock-in-trade about getting closer to the secrets of the universe: gee whiz with just a dash, a smailfrisson, of anxiety...
...Though the case before the Supreme Court had nothing to do with recombinant DNA technology, it was widely recognized that the new gene-splicing techniques might soon be producing a flood of microbial "inventions...
...Several years ago, when recombinant DNA techniques were first being developed, there were widespread fears of new life forms that might "escape" from laboratories with incalculably horrible consequences...
...I'd consider this buying a receptacle," was the judgment of one legal expert on the matter...
...have become cautious in talking about their studies at scientific meetings because . . . they may jeopardize their chances in the race for commercial applications...
...Seven years ago, Working Papers was established in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a bimonthly that tried to translate radical ideals into practical, constructive proposals...
...Pioneering researchers in the area were themselves the first to call for a research moratorium, at least until scientists could discuss the matter and settle upon safeguards...
...Mayor Ernst Zwink and the town council, which owns the copyright to the play, tried hard to remove the most obvious slanders—and yet no amount of cosmetic surgery on the text could exorcise the anti-Semitic conceptual structure of the play...
...The worries arise from questions of equity (the new private industry is based on earlier research paid for by taxes), from questions of safety (the original issue about unwisely admitting new organisms into the environment), and from questions about the inevitable tendencies of commercial development (emphasis on secrecy, responsiveness only to market forces...
...It is interesting to note that the regulation of gene-splicing was opposed only a short while ago as interference with the free and autonomous conduct of science, while today the New York Times reports, "The industrial potential of many gene-splicing products has already had an effect on academic research...
...Undoubtedly it is, and it is appalling that for thousands of American as well as German Christians this ahistorical and Manichaean distortion of Christ's last days is the real thing...
...The promise comes from the rapid technological progress that entrepreneurship on this scale seems to achieve, at least as exemplified by the electronics and microchip industries...
...Paulist, $2.95) and the AJC's pamphlet, "What Viewers Should Know About the Oberammergau Passion Play, 1980...
...But this is our gospel," protested one of the council members...
...It was, as its editors recognize, "an intellectual success—and very nearly a publishing failure...
...The combination of scientific ambition and a ready market is obviously a potent 4 July 1980: 387 one, and if one believed in Adam Smith's "invisible hand" assuring that the social consequences would always be beneficial, we could relax and rejoice...
...The scientists quickly got cold feet once it became clear that various representatives of the public, from the Cambridge city council to various U.S...
...It is also true that real progress has been made in rooting out anti-Semitic stereotypes among Catholics...
...Now on a firmer financial footing, it is being edited by Bob Kuttner, whose background includes reporting for the Washington Post, assisting several congressman, and once serving (under the pen name "Ernest Garvey") as Commonweal's Washington correspondent...
...Some scientists...
...The private, commercial development of new life forms is both promising and worrisome...
...The 1980 version, which will be seen by an estimated one hundred to one hundred and fifty thousand Americans this summer, has been revised and cut in an effort to conform to the Vatican's Guidelines on Religious Relations with Jews...
...From the excellent illustrations in its latest issue, we have borrowed one, by Arnie Levin, for our own cover...
...I am simply growing it for him," declares an actual surrogate mother...
...Lacking that confidence, we are still hard put to offer social guidance for the development of technologies, even when they touch on the springs of life itself...
...and regulation of research was soon outpaced by the swift movement of the whole field from publicly supported university labs to private industries...
...In fact, the public's fears—insofar as there was much public awareness of the problem at all—were probably exaggerated...
...Such a bizarre development has nothing directly to do with the very real promise of gene-splicing...
...For those interested in such follow-up, we recommend Commonweal contributor John T. Pawlikowski's What Are They Saying About Christian-Jewish Relations...
...A Kentucky physician has begun institutionalizing the practice of "surrogate motherhood" in which a woman is artificially impregnated and carries a baby to term for a childless couple...
...It's the father's child...
...but the principle of public oversight, and not simply professional self-policing, was a sound one...
...bishops declared in 1975—"have definitely laid to rest this myth (that Jews were and are collectively guilty of the death of Christ...
...OBERAMMERGAU "It is vital," said Adolph Hitler, "that the Passion Play be continued at Oberammergau: for never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed...
...WORKING PAPERS While the intellectual world is rightly mourning the demise of Harper's magazine, we would like to note an encouraging sign of new life: the reappearance of Working Papers for a New Society...
...Nonetheless, much of the mythology lingers on at the local level and demands continued educational follow-up to official pronouncements...
...Free single copies of the latter are available by writing the American Jewish Committee, 165 E. 56th St., New York, NY 10022...
...It does illustrate the difficulty our society has in setting limits when the strong desires of even a few individuals are matched with sufficient money and with scientific or medical eagerness for new "conquests...
...The second was the admonition of cooler heads: it was, they rightly pointed out, only a technical point in law, whether or not the patent statute of 1793 applied to living things...
...It is true that Vatican II and subsequent Vatican guidelines—as the U.S...
...Many molecular biologists at universities have ties to industrial concerns...
...Commonweal: 388...
Vol. 107 • July 1980 • No. 13
