Boon or Bane?
Carmen, Ira H.
Boon or Bane? CLONING AND THE CONSTITUTION By Ira H. Carmen University of Wisconsin Press. 223 pp. $22.50 The most important social change of our time," Daniel Bell observed twenty years ago, "is...
...And we should keep in mind the eugenics movement of the 1920s, under which many of the underclass were involuntarily sterilized to protect the American gene pool...
...Carmen tends to take a sanguine view...
...22.50 The most important social change of our time," Daniel Bell observed twenty years ago, "is the emergence of a process of direct and deliberate contrivance of change itself...
...A political scientist at the University of Illinois, Carmen notes that cloning can include such other processes as sexual reproduction, the creation of identical entities, creating new individuals, but he concentrates on "recombinant DNA"—recombining genetic materials from different organisms through molecular processes...
...She was, moreover, not given a fair shake of the legal dice...
...Technology is not a neutral force, a self-correcting system...
...Her lawyer made no attempt to give her adequate representation...
...Should it be left to the vagaries of the men and women who moil away in laboratories, more and more for profit-making industries...
...We do not yet know, and Carmen does not address the problem save in vague generality, whether the fruits of biotechnology will be boon or bane...
...As Sir Robert Watson-Watt, the discoverer of radar, once remarked, "There is little of importance in the world which does not depend in some measure on technology, even in its most restricted sense as man's mechanical means to his ends...
...No hero to Carmen, who goes out of his way to suggest that Rifkin is improperly impeding scientific progress, Rifkin argues that in the long run, biotechnology industries could harm the environment, perhaps irreparably...
...The law, and certainly the lawyers, are simply ill-equipped—if indeed, they are equipped at all—to deal effectively and rationally with the new problems brought by a rampant scientific-technological elite...
...in the mounting complexity of technology along with the staggering problems of managing the response to ecological scarcity, for these will require us to depend on a special class of experts in charge of our survival and well-being—a 'priesthood of responsible technologists.'" Responsible to whom...
...Who is to watch them, so as to ensure that Weinberg's priesthood serve not only themselves, in exercising their putative First Amendment rights, but also the community generally...
...Bacteria were involved...
...Joshua Lederberg, president of the Rockefeller University...
...Cloning thus is the creation of new life forms by adding and subtracting some characteristics from thousands of pre-existing traits to produce unique mutant organisms...
...The Supreme Court's decision in Buck v. Bell (1927)-01iver Wendell Holmes's worst, by far, opinion—climaxed that drive to genetically engineer the American people...
...The unfortunate victim of technological zealotry, Carrie Buck is a monument to what the human mind can do if left to its own designs...
...The Constitution did not protect her...
...In his slim volume, a pioneer in its field, he argues that cloning is a freedom protected by the First Amendment and that it should be encouraged, but only within certain undesignated boundaries...
...It is precisely here where Rifkin and Carmen differ...
...And then again, maybe not...
...Nonetheless, Cloning and the Constitution should be read in conjunction with Jeremy Rifkin's Algeny...
...Arthur S. Miller (Arthur S. Miller is professor emeritus of constitutional law at George Washington University...
...He does not want to give scientists and technicians a blank check, although he comes fairly close to it, but wishes that "the constitutional politics of implementing restraints on cloning research" should be reconsidered...
...This was evidenced in March 1986 when the supervisors of California's Monterey County called a halt to the world's first official field test of a genetically altered organism...
...These are questions that Carmen discusses in his too-brief volume...
...Carrie Buck, the victim of that famous case, was improperly sterilized...
...Does the technological "fix" of cloning not only involve unknown and unpredictable consequences, but also will it—as did nuclear energy—embrace social fixes as well...
...Daniel Boorstin, the Librarian of Congress and well-known historian, asserts that "every inventor is a Pandora," which surely is correct...
...The alchemists failed, but the algenists have not...
...Carmen does not mention either the 1983 or the 1986 experiments...
...Is this a Faustian bargain...
...His book, therefore, is in many respects an advocate's brief for the biotechnologists of the nation...
...but as Carmen tells us, it is high time that lawyers and others get on with the task of proper regulation of biotechnology...
...Although he merely echoed Alfred North Whitehead's comment that the most important invention of all was the invention of the art of invention, Bell's statement posed important, as yet unresolved questions to the legal order...
...One who says "let's take it easy" is Jeremy Rifkin, who in his 1983 book, Al-geny, maintains that the decision to develop biotechnology may be as portentous, or perhaps more so, to the human condition as the decision to split the atom...
...Well, maybe...
...In 1983, similar bacteria were to be tested outdoors by researchers from the University of California...
...by today's standards—she recently died—she would not have been considered the imbecile that Holmes called her...
...they were to be sprayed on a small strawberry patch in the middle of Steinbeck country, in an effort to stop the development of frost on the blossoms...
...But he takes strenuous issue with the notion that there should be more stringent regulations...
...It is highly recommended, for he has identified one of the pressing constitutional questions of the day...
...We have known for some time that science and technology are undermining the juristic order...
...Algeny" is a neologism of Dr...
...Speaking of nuclear energy, Alvin Weinberg, former director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, once observed: "The danger in the Fa,ustian bargain lies...
...And how...
...Rifkin was the person who stopped the 1983 test...
...It denotes the man-made transformations of the biological revolution, and is to be compared with alchemy, the fruitless quest to transform materials...
...This is the basic message of Cloning and the Constitution by Ira H. Carmen...
...her suit, as Paul Lombardo of the University of Virginia has shown, was a feigned one...
...Now comes the age of "biotechnology," and once again our legal system is not sufficient to the need...
...That test was blocked by a lawsuit brought by environmentalists...
...Is this a Pandora's Box, out of which as yet unknown and terrifying dangers can emerge...
Vol. 50 • October 1986 • No. 10
