Word: kass
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Even if the technology is basic, and even if it appeals to some infertile couples, should grieving parents really be pursuing this route? "It's a sign of our growing despotism over the next generation," argues University of Chicago bioethicist Leon Kass. Cloning introduces the possibility of parents' making choices for their children far more fundamental than whether to give them piano lessons or straighten their teeth. "It's not just that parents will have particular hopes for these children," says Kass. "They will have expectations based on a life that has already been lived. What a thing...
...extent that genetic engineering is dangerous, the danger must lie with the parents rather than the children. The greatest concern of Will and of Leon Kass, the ethicist whose work he cites, is that the genetic engineering would invert the Nicene Creed: children would be created, not begotten--human artifacts bereft of mystery, dignity and individual worth. Parents would consider their children as playthings; in short, humans would play...
...better argument is provided for the immorality of genetic engineering than the revulsion it inspires. Kass, indeed, titles his essay "The Wisdom of Repugnance" and attacks genetic engineering as evil because it is unsettling. But moral theory should be more than a summation of the circumstances under which one gets the willies. Genetic engineering is indeed "inhumane" if we think only of those things to which humans have historically been accustomed--but then so is the railroad, wearing clothes and refraining from killing one another. Reasons are required to decide which new practices are acceptable and which beyond the pale...
...brought the world Hobo Junction, the Left Coast's indie response to the Wu-Tang Clan, drops his third album, The Hit List. Since his first solo album, The Boxcar Session, Saafir's been busy. Between teaming up with Ras Kass and Xzibit (who'll headline the Lyricist Lounge show in Boston on the 18th) to form the Golden State Warriors crew and recording Trigonometry, his second album, under the pseudonym Mr. No-No, one wonders where the Saucee Nomad has had time to come up with the tight lyrical flow and musicality a worthy hip-hop album necessitates...
...debate among husbands and wives: how many children to have. But Steven and Maureen Kass of Amityville, N.Y., bring something new to the issue: they're wrestling with the question five years after their divorce. The Kasses have five frozen embryos, made from his sperm and her eggs, left over from their married days of trying to conceive by in-vitro fertilization. Maureen, who is 40 and childless, wants to use them to have children. Steven, 38, is adamant that he doesn't want kids with his ex-wife. He is seeking to donate the embryos to research. Their fight...