Word: humanize
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...even if -- the affliction will strike, how severe it will be and how long and good a life the baby can expect. As scientists learn to detect ever more minute imperfections in a strand of DNA, it will become increasingly difficult to distinguish between genetic abnormalities and normal human variability. "We haven't thought much about how to draw the line," admits Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Minnesota. "It is going to be one of the key ethical challenges of the 1990s...
...geneticist today would even talk about creating a master race. Scientists are careful to point out that experiments in gene therapy will be aimed at curing hereditary disease and relieving human suffering, not at producing some sort of superman. But what if people want to use the technology to improve genes that are not defective but merely mediocre? Could genetic engineering become the cosmetic surgery of the next century? Will children who have not had their genes altered be discriminated against...
Even to label genes as defective can be dangerous. In the 19th century new discoveries about heredity and evolution gave rise to the eugenics movement -- a misguided pseudo science whose followers thought that undesirable traits should be systematically purged from the human gene pool. Believers ranged from the American eugenicists of the early 1900s, who thought humans should be bred like racehorses, to the German geneticists who gave scientific advice to the leaders of the Third Reich, instructing them on how the species might be "purified" by selective breeding and by exterminating whole races at a time...
That is what most frightens the foes of genetic engineering. If biologists can change the course of heredity, they can try to play God and influence human destiny. In 1983 activist Jeremy Rifkin, a longtime opponent of many kinds of genetic research, and several dozen theologians mounted an unsuccessful effort to persuade Congress to ban all experiments on human germ cells. Said Avery Post, president of the United Church of Christ, at the time: "We're not good enough or responsible enough. There is no question about it. We will abuse this power...
...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...