Biohazards

November 7, 2005

Wesley Smith has a biotechnology overview in the San Francisco Chronicle. Smith addresses personhood theory, human-animal chimeras, reproductive rights, genetic engineering, cloning, and more.

Look out America: The trajectory of science is coming into conflict with venerable human values. Which side prevails will depend less on what scientists can do than upon the ethical principles that govern society in an era of biological control.

. . .

How all of this will turn out, nobody knows. But as Leon Kass, former chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, has said: “All of the natural boundaries are up for grabs. All of the boundaries that have defined us as human beings, boundaries between a human being and an animal on one side and between a human being and a super human being or a god on the other. The boundaries of life, the boundaries of death. These are the questions of the 21st century, and nothing could be more important.”