Word: braved
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...start of the fiercest scientific debate about medical ethics since the birth of the first test-tube baby 15 years ago. A line had been crossed. A taboo broken. A Brave New World of cookie-cutter humans, baked and bred to order, seemed, if not just around the corner, then just over the horizon. Ethicists called up nightmare visions of baby farming, of clones cannibalized for spare parts. Policymakers pointed to the vacuum in U.S. bioethical leadership. Critics decried the commercialization of fertility technology, and protesters took to the streets, calling for an immediate ban on human-embryo cloning. Scientists...
Rifkin, however, was the exception. Few people seemed to be thinking of the Brave New World visions in which a totalitarian government creates whole subclasses of clones designed expressly for particular tasks. As Annas pointed out, there are better ways to create a crack Navy SEAL team or an astronaut corps than to clone the appropriate mix of sperm and egg and wait 20 years. "Maybe if this were Nazi Germany, we would worry more about the government," said Annas. "But we're in America, where we have the private market. We don't need government to make the nightmare...
...result has been a relentless stream of outrageous books, movies and television shows, beginning with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, published 61 years ago, and continuing through the summer's box-office behemoth, Jurassic Park. There are mysteries, thrillers, love stories -- even a sci-fi parody of an old pop song ("Weird Al" Yankovic's I Think I'm a Clone Now, sung to the tune of Tommy James and the Shondells' I Think We're Alone Now). Cloning, in fact, has been a fertile enough subject to earn its own lengthy entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction...
...them to be missed. The Wine-Dark Sea (Norton; 261 pages; $22) is the 16th installment of what devotees call the Aubrey/Maturin novels. All are set in the early 19th century, during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, and all feature the same two heroes: Jack Aubrey, a blunt, brave captain in the British Royal Navy, and Stephen Maturin, a ship's surgeon, amateur naturalist and sometimes spy for His Majesty's government...
...this subtle comparison, Doerr undermines the romanticism of the remote foreign hamlet. Loomis, the only involuntary member of the community, alone succeeds in forging a bright future in this brave new world. The others mentally reconstruct Amapolas to match the painting on the book's cover. The local grandee cautions his guest: "Consider this, senora. You are transforming Amapolas into something more beautiful than...