[extropy-chat] More on the Glofish: When Fish Fluoresce, Can Teenagers Be Far Behind?

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

>From the New York Times: Sometime in the future, when the distinction
between cosmetologist and molecular biologist has faded and gene shops dot
the seedier urban streets like tattoo parlors, the philosophers, moralists
and historians of science will try to pin down the moment when the new age
began. Science historians will probably say it started with the discovery of
DNA, or the mapping of the human genome. Others will claim it started when
Dolly was cloned and it became clear that the tools of biotechnology had
moved out of the high church of pure research and into the unpredictable
hands of people who bred sheep for profit.
I think the moment is now. And the creature that embodies the escape of
biotechnology into the world at large - a movement that will never be
reversed - is an aquarium fish that glows in the dark. This is the tipping
point, when the world irrevocably turns toward the science-fiction fantasies
of writers like Philip K. Dick and William Gibson, who envision biomedical
technology permeating every corner of the marketplace, from global
corporations on down to small-time illegal operations like stolen-car chop
shops. Imagine if you will, that you could pay to have genes for glowing in
the dark inserted into your own body. How many glowing teenagers would there
be? And who would stop them, once they reached age 18? After all, one's own
body is one's own business.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20031203/658212ef/attachment.html>