"[G]erm-line
genetic alteration [poses] many risks and potential harms,
without any clear benefit to any individual. It…jeopardizes, rather
than protects, those who are vulnerable….Genetic enhancement raises
the prospect of a society where…people are treated as things that
can be changed according to someone else's notions of human
perfection."
|
Canadian Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies, "Gene Therapy and Genetic Alteration," Proceed with Care: Final Report of the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies, Vol. 2 (Ottawa: Canada Communications Group-Publishing, 1993), reprinted in Human Gene Therapy (Vol. 5, No. 5, 1994), pages 612-613 |
"Germ line modification is not needed in order to save the
lives or alleviate suffering of existing people….The cultural impact
of treating humans as biologically perfectible artifacts would be
entirely negative."
|
Council for Responsible Genetics, "Position
Paper on Human Germline Manipulation," 1992, updated 2000,
online at |
"Humans have long since possessed the tools for crafting a better
world. Where love, compassion, altruism and justice have failed,
genetic manipulation will not succeed."
|
Gina Maranto, science writer, Quest for Perfection: The Drive to Breed Better Human Beings (New York: Scribner, 1996), page 278 |
"The lessons of history have shown us what happens when people
are ordered as better and worse, superior and inferior, worthy
of life and not so worthy of life….What can happen when the
technology used in support of genetic thinking is not the crude
technology of shackles and slave ships, of showers that pour lethal
gas and of mass ovens, or even the technology of surgical
sterilization, but the fabulous, fantastic, extraordinary technology
of the new genetics itself?…My children will not be led to genetic
technology in chains and shackles, or crowded into cattle cars. It
will be offered to them."
|
Barbara Katz Rothman, Professor of Sociology, City University of New York, "A Sociological Skeptic in the Brave New World," Gender & Society (Vol. 12, No. 5, October 1998) |
"The final goal of reproductive engineering appears to be the
manufacture of a human being to suit exact specifications of
physical attributes, class, caste, colour and sex. Who will decide
these specifications? We have already seen how sex-determination has
resulted in the elimination of female foetuses. The powerless in any
society will get more disempowered with the growth of such
reproductive technologies."
|
Saheli Women's Resource Centre, "Reproductive Rights in the Indian Context," Feminist Strategies: Struggles and Issues, Sadhana Arya, Nivedita Menon and Jinee Lokaneeta, eds. (Delhi: Delhi University, March 2001) |
"The value of life must not be reduced to a matter of
genetic inheritance. If that is allowed to happen no potential
child will be safe from arbitrary selection, no parents will escape
the moral burden of making impossible choices, and no one will be
safe from genetic discrimination."
|
Disabled People International-Europe, Position
Statement on Bioethics and Human Rights |
“The push to redesign human beings, animals and plants to
meet the commercial goals of a limited number of individuals is
fundamentally at odds with the principle of respect for nature.”
|
Brent Blackwelder, President of Friends of the
Earth, Testimony before Senate Appropriations Commitee
(January 24, 2002) |
"[W]ould not the creation of two different categories of
people, those born the way they are and those whose genes have been
manipulated and supposedly "improved," seriously undermine the
notions of liberty and equality we so highly prize and, by the
same token, the very foundations on which democracy and human rights
are built? What would it mean for democracy, for a society that
calls itself civilized, if the equality of all human beings were no
longer recognized as sacrosanct?"
|
Joschka Fischer, Federal Minister for Foreign
Affairs, |
"[W]e have finally reached a point where scientists
have proved dispositively that race is not genetic but an irrational
social construct—well, suddenly there's also the ability to alter
the human germline in ways that may, in fact, create new classes of
genetic characteristics resembling what we had only imagined
heretofore as racial difference."
|
Patricia J. Williams, "Dust and Destiny," The Nation (July 17, 2000) |
"[Cloning a dying child] should not be permitted. Not only
does this encourage the parents to produce one child in the image of
another, it also encourages all of us to view children as
interchangeable commodities. The death of a child thus need no
longer be a singular human tragedy, but rather an opportunity to try
to duplicate the no longer priceless deceased child."
|
George J. Annas, Edward R. Utley Professor and Chair, Health Law Department, Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health, Some Choice: Law, Medicine, and the Market (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pages 12-13 |
"[U]nless we mobilize the courage to look foursquare at the full
human meaning of our new enterprise in biogenetic technology and
engineering, we are doomed to become its creatures if not its
slaves….[I]t is not too late…to become aware of the dangers, not
just to privacy or insurability, but to our very humanity. So aware,
we might be better able to defend the increasingly beleaguered
vestiges and principles of our human dignity, even as we continue to
reap the considerable benefits that genetic technology will
inevitably provide."
|
Leon R. Kass, Addie Clark Harding Professor in
the Committee on Social Thought and the College of the
University of Chicago, "The Moral Meaning of Genetic
Technology," Commentary (September 1999), and online at
|
"Genetic engineering of the human germline represents a
fundamental threat to the preservation of the human species as
we know it, and should be opposed with the same courage and
conviction as we now oppose the threat of nuclear extinction."
|
"Theological Letter Concerning the Moral Arguments," presented to the US Congress by the Foundation on Economic Trends (June 8, 1983) |
"[W]e can easily imagine an arms race developing over GNR
[genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics] technologies, as it did
with the NBC [nuclear, chemical, and biological] technologies in the
20th century….This time…we aren't in a war…[W]e are driven, instead,
by our habits, our desires, our economic system, and our competitive
need to know."
|
Bill Joy, Chief Scientist and Co-founder, Sun
Microsystems, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," Wired
(Vol. 8, No. 4, April 2000) |
"New technologies, pervasive commercialization, and extraordinary
claims by researchers, funding agencies and entrepreneurs
provide relentless pressure to continuously shift the line of
ethically acceptable applications of human genetic engineering….The
germ line taboo is giving way to campaigns for gaining public
acceptance, otherwise known as 'marketing.'"
|
Charles Weiner, Professor Emeritus of History of Science and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Social Responsibility in Genetic Engineering: Historical Perspectives," Gene Therapy and Ethics, Anders Nordgren, ed. (Uppsala Sweden: Uppsala University Press, 1999), pages 51, 64 |
"[The] dominant view of liberty reserves most of its protection
only for the most privileged members of society….Reproductive
freedom is a matter of social justice….[P]rocreation's special
status stems as much from its role in social structure and political
relations as from its meaning to individuals."
|
Dorothy Roberts, Professor of Law, Northwestern University, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (Pantheon Books, 1997) |
"Together with proposed techniques of inheritable gene
modification, the use of cloning for reproduction would irrevocably
turn human beings into artifacts. It would bring to an end the
human species that evolved over the millennia through natural
evolution, and set us on a new, uncontrollable trajectory of
manipulation, design and control.
|
Brent Blackwelder, President,
Friends of the Earth |
"The institutions of genetic, scientific, and technical research,
and the industries of genetic application, are relatively well
organized and generously funded. Their imperatives are clear: push
toward new knowledge and its applications. By contrast, our ethical,
social discussion is unfocused, episodic, and scattered. We need to
harness moral thinking to genetic technique. The need for organized,
intelligent debate involving an active public and committed
scientists has never been clearer."
|
Everett Mendelsohn, Professor of the History of
Science, Harvard University, "The Eugenic Temptation: When
Ethics Lag Behind Technology," Harvard Alumni (May
2000) |
"Germline manipulation opens up, for the first time in human
history, the possibility of consciously designing human
beings….I am not generally happy about using the concept of playing
God, but it is difficult to avoid in this case….[T]he world is not a
safe enough place to let this particular genie out of its bottle,
and it would be irresponsible in the extreme to do so."
|
David King, Editor, "No to Genetic Engineering
of Humans!" GenEthics News (Issue 9) (now Human
Genetics Alert) |
"Using the new genetics to try to make a `better human' by
genetic engineering goes beyond discrimination to elimination by
raising the prospect of genetic genocide….Is this inflammatory
language justified?…[G]iven the history of humankind, it is
extremely unlikely that we will see the posthumans as equal in
rights and dignity to us, or that they will see us as equals.
Instead, it is most likely either that we will see them as a threat
to us, and thus seek to imprison or simply kill them before they
kill us. Alternatively, the posthuman will come to see us (the
garden variety human) as an inferior subspecies without human rights
to be enslaved or slaughtered preemptively….It is this potential for
genocide based on genetic difference, that I have termed 'genetic
genocide,' that makes species-altering genetic engineering a
potential weapon of mass destruction, and makes the unaccountable
genetic engineer a potential bioterrorist."
|
George J. Annas, "Genism, Racism, and the
Prospect of Genetic Genocide," presented at the World
Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia
and Related Intolerance (Durban, South Africa, September
3, 2001) |
More Information
Analysis:
Examine the social, cultural, and economic landscape
Perspectives:
Explore various communities' concerns regarding human genetic
technologies
Policies:
Read about existing and potential regulations
Technologies:
Learn the basic science and consider arguments for and against
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