Word: riche
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...previously been unwilling to release data until they were of high quality, the administrators announced that they would offer up a "working draft" of only moderate precision by 2001. Says Mark Guyer, an assistant director with the NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute: "These data are so rich, it's hard not to extract value from them." But, he admits, "it would not have happened had it not been for the Celera announcement...
Silver even contemplates a scenario in which society splits into two camps, the "gen-rich" and the "gen-poor," those with and those without a designer genome. The prospect is disturbing, but trying to stop it might entail even more disturbing choices. "There may be problems," admits James Watson, whose co-discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 made all this possible. "But I don't believe we can let the government start dictating the decisions people make about what sorts of families they'll have...
...government does try to ban certain eugenic maneuvers, some rich parents will visit clinics in more permissive nations, then come home to bear their tip-top children. (Already, British parents have traveled to Saudi Arabia to choose their baby's sex in vitro, a procedure that is illegal at home.) Even without a ban, it will be upper-class parents who can afford pricey genetic technologies. Children who would in any event go to the finest doctors and schools will get an even bigger head start on health and achievement...
Enter the government. The one realistic way to avoid this nightmare is to ensure that poor people will be able to afford the same technologies that the rich are using. Put that way, it sounds innocent, but critics will rightly say it amounts to subsidizing eugenics...
...sense, the fundamental question of suffering transcends the Sally Struthers puzzle because all human beings--rich or poor--suffer. We all go through emotional turmoil, and many of us endure physical pain. It all seems unnecessary...