[extropy-chat] Another stupid apology of death and disease

Giu1i0 Pri5c0 pgptag at gmail.com
Tue Oct 12 12:18:25 UTC 2004


>From the Times, the usual stupid apology of death and disease, even
more disgusting since the article, "We should fear the disturbing
future where man becomes superman" was inspired by the death of
Christopher Reeve.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-1305837,00.html

"To be human is to inhabit a world of vulnerability and limits. The
weakness of flesh, and its end in death, frame all human endeavour.
Human virtues, certainly as most moral thinkers have understood them,
are responses to the fraught nature of our existence."

Then my dog is much more human than me: she is much more stupid and
will have a much shorter life. A fly is more human than both. The
"human dignity" that apologists of death want for us all, is the
dignity of flies.

"For some scientists the promise inherent in stem-cell research, the
cloning of human embryos and the whole burgeoning field of
biotechnology, is the prospect of remaking man. The frailties that
make up the human condition can, progressively, be eliminated by the
manipulation of life's building blocks. Not just life-threatening
disease, but all manner of infirmities and imperfections can,
potentially, be engineered out of existence. The prospect, if not of
Superman, certainly of superior models of man, beckons. The comic-
book myth of transcending human constraints has become a modern
scientific aspiration."

Here the author is right, transcending human constraints has become a
modern scientific aspiration.

"Have we not learnt from those in the past century who wished to
remake man, and saw in the lure of genetics the chance to create their
own superman? I fear that once we trample over respect for the
vulnerable and voiceless in our desire to eliminate frailty, we no
longer make weakness our enemy, but make enemies of the weak."

Here the author tries to scare the reader by making a subliminal
analogy with things, like eugenics and nazi, that carry a negative
connotation (without having anything to do with the actual issue), and
tries to appeal to the social sensibility of the reader with a
similarly misguided argument. We do not want to make enemies of the
weak, we want to make the weak strong. Period.



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