The Future Is Now
The Future Is Now A few news items from the first month of 2001: Scientists have created the fi rst genetically modified monkey, an advance that could lead to customized primates for medical...
...Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men...
...This patent specifically covers the possible creation of embryos made containing both cells from humans and mice, sheep, pigs, cattle, goats or fish...
...Among the NIH-funded studies is one in California in which human fetal tissues have been transplanted into mice to create rodents with humanized immune systems...
...Wall Street JoarnaJ, January 24, 2001 Scientific research groups are becoming increasingly con -cerned that President Bush may block federal funds for research on so-called embryonic stem cells...
...T]hey have stepped into the void...
...Isnt it time to start drawing lines...
...Over half a century ago, C.S...
...Los Angeles Times, January 31, 2001 For years, we have been progressing step by step down a road while averting our gaze from the roads desti -nation...
...They are not men at all: they are artifacts...
...Washington Post, January 12, 2001 Britain eased curbs on embryo research, effectively sanc -tioning the creation of cloned human embryos...
...W illiam Kristol...
...Lewis saw it coming...
...They are not men at all...
...There will always be sophistsand scientists, and humanitarianswho will explain why any particular advance shouldn t be stopped, or can t be stopped, or isnt fundamentally different from previous steps we have taken...
...Or will we at least stop to consider where it is we are goingeven if we cannot yet summon up the courage seri -ously to consider retracing some of our steps, and embarking on a new direction...
...Before this prospect, before this possibility, every other issue palesnot into insignifi cance, for many other issues are significant, but at least into lesser significance...
...Mans final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man...
...National Catholic Register, January 28, 2001 One of the leading childrens hospitals in Britain illegally harvested hearts, brains, eyes and other organs from thousands of dead children without the consent of their parents, according to a government report published Tuesday...
...The challenge of the scientific revolution in genetics and biotechnology, of scientific progress loosed from natural, human, or religious moorings, is the challenge we face...
...It is not that they are bad men...
...And its of course true that the lines aren t as bright as one would like between medical gene therapy and eugenics, between scientific experimentation and exploitation, between a better human world and a new inhuman world...
...More than 135 NIH-funded projects rely specifically on fetal tissues, and many more are believed to use those tissues incidentally...
...colleague have announced plans to clone human beings, apparently becoming the first scientists with expertise in human reproduction to publicly set such a goal...
...But to fail to draw lines is passively to submit to a scientific revolution in genetics and biotechnology that threatens our liberty and our dignity...
...The Future Is Now A few news items from the first month of 2001: Scientists have created the fi rst genetically modified monkey, an advance that could lead to customized primates for medical research and that brings the possibility of genetic manipulation closer than ever to humans...
...Now it looms before us...
...Will we continue to sleepwalk...
...But equally alarming, some researchers say, are signals from the White House that Bush might also cut off funding for a related and much larger branch of research: studies that rely on conventional tissues retrieved from induced abortions...
...In The Abolition of Man, Lewis explained what Man s conquest of Nature really means and especially the final stage in the conquest, which, perhaps, is not far off: [W]hat we call Mans power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument...
...T]he man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out posterity in what shape they please...
...Los Angeles Times, January 28, 2001 Late last year , genetic engineering watchdog groups warned that the European Union had granted a patent in December 1999 to an Australian company for a process that would allow the creation of chimerical creatures human/animal hybrids...
...Washington Post, January 26, 2001 A well-known Italian fertility specialist and his U.S...
Vol. 6 • February 2001 • No. 21
