Correspondence
Correspondence CLONING THRIVES ABROAD THOUGH J. BOTTUM makes many excellent points regarding the dangers of bioengineering, it seems as though he assumes that if all cloning is banned in the...
...WILLIAM J. DURR Cornwall, NY TOD LINDBERG RESPONDS: I take William Durr's point and share his concern, but my statement is correct...
...He wants to quarrel over the latter, which is fine, but it's not a quarrel with me...
...In particular, Suzanne Mubarak has been our most devoted and loyal alumna in both agreeing to serve as patron for our capital campaign and in unfailingly helping us with matters great and small...
...Truthful and provocative conversations between AUC students and professors—particularly if both are Egyptian—are more likely outside of classrooms than in...
...That usually gets a laugh...
...ROBERT HOLLAND Lexington Institute Arlington, VA AN AMERICAN IN CAIRO REUEL MARC GERECHT's "Losing the Middle East...
...A simple call to our offices in New York or Cairo could have avoided these egregious and offensive errors...
...The claim that self-defense is always socially sanctioned doesn't imply a claim that all means or any particular means of self-defense will always be socially sanctioned...
...China is way ahead of most countries in experimentation, furiously issuing cloning patents and attempting to commercialize the process with the aid of private, multinational corporations...
...March 18) is replete with inaccuracies, including those relating to the American University in Cairo, of which I am president...
...Adult education is a grand idea, particularly in Egypt, where education for the young is haphazard...
...Gerecht writes, "Mubarak's wife has led the charge to force the sale of AUC in downtown Cairo so that Mubarak, Inc., can tear down the gracefully crenalated university to build luxury high-rises and other profitable enterprises...
...Whether we like it or not, globally speaking, the genie's out of the bottle...
...He writes, "Self-defense is always socially sanctioned . . ." Leaving aside the legal distinctions between "excusable" and "justifiable" homicides, themselves descended from the early practice of confiscating the property of and/or exiling those who had killed in self-defense as a result of a disagreement that got out of hand, as opposed to the killing of a felonious attacker, we have the modern phenomenon of those who defend themselves justifiably but fall afoul of weapons laws...
...It seems likely that included therein may be some ancient viral DNA (which has the propensity to insert itself in genes of target species), with which our immune systems have no experience...
...It is my understanding that much of human DNA is "inactive" and is not "transcribed...
...I believe that the latter is the case and encourage my fellow conservatives to think twice before jumping back on the term-limits bandwagon...
...Although I am not an expert in genetics, I am a physician...
...ERIC DARBE Penacook, NH A BIG LAUGH JOSEPH EPSTEIN's jokester Casual was a fun one ("Situation Comedy," March 4...
...We will see...
...But Great Britain's House of Lords just recently voted to allow therapeutic cloning...
...Conformity of thought and deference to power have been perennial problems for AUC (these forces have annihilated the state-run Cairo University...
...It thus seems plausible that such an incipient particle might be reconstituted through splicing, much to the detriment of the human race...
...Since the end of the British occupation, Egypt has rarely been a land welcoming independence of mind and free inquiry—the defining virtues of a Western university...
...Dethroning King Ritalin appears to be every bit the bipartisan cause that passage of President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act was...
...This is usually followed by a few moments of embarrassed stammering until they realize I'm kidding...
...In Vermont, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Richard Sears, is sponsoring a bill seeking to protect parents from schoolhouse strong-arming to put their kids on psychostimulants...
...It surprises me that cloning proponents ignore the specter of an unintended genetic disaster that may result from our prideful meddling with the genome...
...i was so enthused by this idea as an undergraduate that i rushed headlong into a paper on the subject, which I envisioned as a manifesto supporting term limits...
...Using a weapon there—any weapon—to injure an attacker, no matter how justifiable, is likely to result in prosecution...
...Weekly Standard readers deserve an accurate and truthful account...
...I'm a large guy, and when the service is slow at drive-up windows and the person who finally hands me my food says, "Sorry about the wait," I love to reply, "Oh, it's not your fault, I've been heavy all my life...
...While violent self-defense may still be legal, it has become taboo in many countries, and its social acceptability is declining virtually everywhere...
...I tell grocery store clerks who ask if I want cash back: "Yes, but not from my account...
...owning a firearm for self-defense is often expressly prohibited in Europe...
...I find inexplicable this odious diatribe...
...There can be no doubt, however, that Suzanne Mubarak, who has in recent years energetically inserted herself and her family into so many aspects of Egyptian life, unfailingly applied similar energy and concern to finally put an end to the AUC's real-estate troubles...
...This contradiction led me to one obvious question: Are term limits really about "ballot access," or would their passage merely limit the rights of citizens to vote for whomever they like just because certain national organizations have had enough of Ted Kennedy in Washington...
...JOHN GERHART President, American University in Cairo Cairo, Egypt REUEL MARC GERECHT RESPONDS: It is no easy feat to be the president of the American University in Cairo...
...Her report, however, leaves the impression that reining in Ritalin by legislating against pressures to drug little Johnny into docility is a Republican-only crusade...
...The promise of term limits is that we can shed Congress and state legislatures of the lifetime hacks who expand government while limiting our freedoms...
...The truth is otherwise...
...In that election, the good people of the Bay state voted to impose term limits on their congressional delegation while also reelecting the bloated poster child of the term-limits movement, Ted Kennedy, for his sixth consecutive term in the senate...
...The Egyptian government has been extremely supportive in this process, which was initiated by the university...
...STEVEN CHERNUS Pittsburgh, PA A JITTERY BIPARTISANSHIP MELANA ZYLA VICKERS does a fine job of reporting on the widespread resort to discipline in a pill in u.S...
...This trend has descended into absurdity in Europe—especially in Great Britain...
...DEFENSE, EUROPEAN STYLE TOD LINDBERG makes one significant error in his "Rebirth of a Nation" (March 4...
...Nonetheless, there are those who love the AUC, in Egypt and abroad, who will continue to hope that the AUC administration's "40-year search for a badly needed new site" goes on a bit longer...
...As I pulled back the layers of the debate, though, i was struck by a phenomenon best illustrated in November 1994 by the voters of Massachusetts...
...Given this risk, caution ought to be in order...
...But also many jurisdictions in the United States effectively prohibit the possession of guns and knives for self-defense through denial of permission to possess them at all, restrictions placed on permits and licenses and/or "safe-storage" or "child access prevention" laws...
...Correspondence CLONING THRIVES ABROAD THOUGH J. BOTTUM makes many excellent points regarding the dangers of bioengineering, it seems as though he assumes that if all cloning is banned in the United States, the practice will disappear from the face of the earth ("The Biotech Project," March 11...
...P. MARTIN Dunedin, FL...
...While the immediate threat of terrorism may slow the trend, there's little reason to believe the march toward "civilization" can be reversed by a reality that few perceive...
...schools and the reaction it is provoking ("Readin', Ritalin, 'Rithmetic," March 11...
...I certainly hope that President Gerhart's assertions about the future of the old AUC campus prove correct, and that the campus will not be devoured by those in the Egyptian elite who want the land and care not for an American presence in the heart of Cairo...
...LIMITS OF TERM LIMITS TERM LIMITS have always on their face appealed to conservatives, apparently including Fred Barnes ("Term Limits, Unlimited," March 18...
...JIM KARAGEORGOS Seaford, NY It is not surprising that those futurists who pretend they can predict all the (bad) consequences of climate change 1,000 years hence believe they can also predict what is in the interest of the human genome...
...The university is not selling its historic landmark buildings, as Gerecht falsely reports...
...Epstein has a sense of humor I can appreciate...
...With the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) up for congressional reauthorization this year, quelling the tendency to "redefine childhood as an ailment, and medicate it until it goes away," as Vickers aptly puts it, could become another worthwhile cause for bipartisanship...
...In Kentucky, Democratic state representative Mike Cherry has introduced a similar bill...
...After a 40-year search for a badly needed new site, AUC has bought 260 acres to build a beautiful new campus in suburban Cairo that will meet our space requirements for the next 100 years...
...It is worth the little bit of effort to make sure the teaching profession knows it's not their job to recommend a particular drug for a particular kid," he told Education Daily...
...We intend to use them for our 30,000 adult education students and our executive management courses, whose participants mostly work downtown...
Vol. 7 • March 2002 • No. 27
