Word: geneticists
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...wonderful performance, but in the sour view of many scientists, it is largely flimflam. To them, Rifkin is a Luddite, whose opposition to DNA research is based on skewed science and misplaced mystical zeal. Geneticist Norton Zinder of New York City's Rockefeller University calls him a "fool" and a "demagogue." In a scathing 1984 review of Algeny, one of Rifkin's nine books, Harvard's Stephen Jay Gould wrote that it was "a cleverly constructed tract of anti-intellectual propaganda masquerading as scholarship . . . I don't think I have ever read a shoddier work...
...fighting bacteria, developed into a commercial product called Frostban, was sprayed on a test field in 1987. As they predicted, it proved harmless.) Typically, Rifkin would plunge into a scientific setting, armed with papers from dissident researchers, and warn about the potentially catastrophic consequences of inadequately regulated research. Says geneticist Zinder: "The accusations are made simply, with simple words. But the proof is very sophisticated and often difficult to grasp." Rifkin acknowledges that he occasionally uses scare tactics. But he claims that the scientific establishment is equally guilty, both of excessive rhetoric and of usurping policy decisions that need more...
...team of medical researchers has devised a technique that may eventually help parents sidestep this predicament. Scientists at the Illinois Masonic Medical Center and Northwestern University, led by geneticist Yury Verlinsky, say they can test for genetic defects in the human egg even before it has been fertilized. The technique could enable thousands of mothers with a family history of genetic disorders to avoid giving birth to an afflicted child without having to undergo abortion. Dr. C. Thomas Caskey, president of the American Society of Human Genetics, calls the new method "promising" but stresses that more testing is needed...
...This is just absolutely mind boggling," said Judith Hall, a geneticist from the University of British Columbia. "It's a new way of thinking." And that new way may continue to reveal subtle differences in the genetic makeup of the two sexes...
...geneticist is currently planning to transfer genes to human germ cells. Even though mankind has been playing God since biblical times, rearranging the germ lines of crops and farm animals to suit human needs, researchers do not advocate extending such genetic tinkering to people. But medical scientists have an obligation to protect humanity against disease and pestilence. Once it becomes possible to eradicate a gene that causes a fatal disorder, and thus keep it from passing to future generations, it will be criminal not to do so. As director of the Human Genome Project, James Watson contends that the research...