[extropy-chat] Anti-research hysteria

[Brent Neal]

 (10/20/04 8:04) Giu1i0 Pri5c0 <pgptag at gmail.com> wrote:

>At one day from the beginning of the UN debate on therapeutic cloning,
>there are a few interesting articles in the press. The Washington Post
>has a good summary of where things stand, and a very good article on
>"A Cloning Compromise That Works" by the president of the Royal
>Society, Britain's national academy of sciences. The proposal put
>forward by Belgium and supported by Britain, would prohibit human
>reproductive cloning but would allow individual countries to make
>their own decisions about therapeutic cloning for research.
>The Times quotes one of the leading spokesmen for the fundamentalist
>anti-research hysteria, Pres. Bush´s advisor Leon Kass: "By allowing
>scientists to clone human embryos for research, countries such as
>Britain that have permissive regulatory regimes are promoting the
>perfection of technology that will one day be abused for
>reproduction". Kass does not seem too concerned with the potential of
>therapeutic cloning for treating diseases and saving lives.



This does not surprise in the least. Kass, like others of his ilk, have a deep-seated fear of the future and believe that a frantic effort to halt all change is the only way to save humanity.  Personally, I think a sound thrashing with a copy of Postrel's "The Future and Its Enemies" is called for. :)

B
-- 
Brent Neal
Geek of all Trades
http://brentn.freeshell.org

"Specialization is for insects" -- Robert A. Heinlein