An Effort to Make "Brave New World" Non-fiction
After decades in the fiction section, it may well be that Aldous Huxley's Brave New World may soon be up for a promotion to the non-fiction area in bookstores. Eric Cohen at the Ethics and Public Policy Center explains:In 2001, during the first few months of the Bush presidency, America engaged in a debate about the ethics of embryo research. The policy question was narrow: Should the federal government use public funds to support stem cell research that involves embryo destruction? But everyone knew that the issue was actually much larger--about whether we should be the kind of country that uses some (nascent) lives to benefit others, the kind of country that plunges ahead in revolutionary new areas of biotechnology without establishing clear moral limits.
Research advocates made their case by saying that thousands of embryos in fertilization clinics were "going to die anyway," and that of course no one was suggesting we create human embryos solely for research. The ethical argument was unconvincing--being destined to die hardly turns human beings into things, otherwise no one would feel safe in a nursing home. But at least the research advocates endorsed the notion that there was a line they did not want us to cross.
Today, most advocates of embryonic stem cell research offer no limits and seem to accept no compromises. Last week, a team of South Korean and American researchers announced a successful experiment: They had created scores of cloned human embryos that they then destroyed to produce 11 stem cell lines. So we have truly entered the age of human cloning. Any competent team of researchers in a laboratory anywhere in the world can now create cloned human embryos to the blastocyst stage--and then try to implant them in efforts to initiate a pregnancy. If they fail, they can--and some will--try and try again. To be sure, there will be many grotesque failures along the way to cloned babies--just as there were when Dolly the cloned sheep was created. And the children who make it to birth will inevitably suffer deformities and health problems. But the first cloned child is coming soon, and with it a new, terrible moment in the history of modern science.
For the rest of the article, which I recommend reading, please go to the EPPC website by clicking here.
posted by ertandberni @ 9:51 AM
