Thanks for your reply. Work got in the way.
> I refer to John McLarens message of 16:11 19/07/00
> -0400:
> > Shame on you Keith.
> I'm totally non-plussed by this comment.
I took it that you were trying to squelch debate from the lofty heights of learning. Who but someone on the same perch could debate this issue with you on the same ground, I wondered. Expertise has its privileges. Stifling public debate is not one of them, I thought.
You have denied doing that. I take you at your word without any reserve. Perhaps that helps to clear away your puzzlement so the moderator can sally forth again. <g>
As for the numerous mistakes in my post, I have learned from you that I need to be a good deal more meticulous about narrowing the gap between my thoughts and my words, not to mention other gaffes that I may commit ot out of simple ignorance. That's a tall order for someone not disciplined to academic standards of peer review, although I beg for no mercy on that account.
I will never again confuse inherited wealth with what I was thinking at the time. I meant concentration of wealth. Your explanation was a revelation to me on the subject. Frankly, I wouldn't have believed it, even had I been thinking of it in that way. However, I can't doubt your authority on the subject and I appreciate the instruction. I would do well to keep the dust of whatever history books I may have, let alone read them.
When I spoke of my profound contempt for those who promote their wares on the basis of some specious benefit to the 'perpetually disadvantaged', I was not thinking of individuals, either, but of a perpetual class: undermenschen, common people or even the not-so-rich. Especially the not-so-rich when it comes to medical benefits and heroic care. Marcy Darnovsky wrote:
> > > Many people are reluctant to oppose human germline
> > > engineering because they believe that "genetics" will
> > > deliver medical cures or treatments.
I don't have to tell you that this kind of sell is cynical, simply because those who make such claims don't make them for public benefit. They claim public benefit for very private / corporate enrichment. Support for projects designed to advantage a predatory upper crust of beneficiaries is routinely drawn from the ranks of common people and paupers alike, simply by playing upon their fears, or promising them crumbs that may fall from the altar on which the poor paupers are perpetually sacrificed to propitiate the gods of greed. Did I really write that? <g> Anyway, Darnovsky wrote:
> > > But there is no reason that we cannot forgo germline
> > > engineering and still support other genetic technologies
> > > that do in fact hold promising medical potential. In
> > > fact, the medical justifications for human germline
> > > engineering are strained, while its ethical and
> > > political risks are profound.
Are they indeed? Is this declamatory? What are some of those risks, I wonder?
> > > Fortunately, the distinction between human germline
> > > engineering and other genetic technologies (including
> > > somatic genetic engineering) is a reasonably clear
> > > technical demarcation. ...
Clearly distinguishable? Something makes me think everyone could profit from your opinion on this. You say:
> John has fallen into the trap of equating voluntary
> eugenics with coercive eugenics as carried out by State
> governments (and at a stage when eugenic knowledge was,
> and remains, fairly primitive). How I tire of such
> black-and-white moralistic statements. There are many
> practices which are perfectly moral if done voluntarily
> but which are immoral if enforced by others.
Marcy Darnovsky wrote:
> > > Silver understands that such scenarios are disconcerting.
> > > He counsels realism. In other words, he celebrates the
> > > free reign of the market and perpetuates the myth that
> > > private choices have no public consequences. ...
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I consider morality an attribute of individuals -- so, too, the fault of being moralistic. I fancy that something can be moral or the contrary from any individual point of view but still offend against a public code of ethics.
I regard genetics an ethical issue -- an issue of public concern about individual choice -- and as such, eminently fit for open public debate, debate informed by honest scientific information, information which is not coloured by the third-party endorsements of campaign communicators. I am one of those who, as Darnovsky puts it, is inspired by
> > > wariness of techno-scientific hubris and a reductionist
> > > world view, or their objections to corporate ownership
> > > of life at the molecular level, or their skepticism
> > > about the drastic technological manipulation of the
> > > natural world.
More to your point of objection, I suspect, Darnovsky said:
> > > Promoting a future of genetically engineered inequality
> > > legitimizes the vast existing injustices that are
> > > socially arranged and enforced. Marketing the ability to
> > > specify our children's appearance and abilities
> > > encourages a grotesque consumerist mentality toward
> > > children and all human life. Fostering the notion that
> > > only a "perfect baby" is worthy of life ... perpetuates
> > > standards of perfection set by a market system that
> > > caters to political, economic, and cultural elites.
But if Darnovsky does declaim, I think she declaims against the the campaign behind human genetics for private and anti-social purposes of slight public benefit and great public and individual risk. She may surpass the foreseeable limits of the technology in her objections. But, if she does, does she not also claim to have been a reluctant convert of those who promote the 'technological manipulation of the natural world' without the slightest qualm, secure in the belief that 'corporate ownership of life at the molecular level' is a good thing?
Darnovsky also observes (I thought rather profoundly) that
> > > Channeling hopes for human betterment into preoccupation
> > > with genetic fixes shrinks our already withered
> > > commitments to improving social conditions and enriching
> > > cultural and community life.
I think you mistook the purpose for my professing atheism in relation to this issue, but I'll take your suggestion about agnosticism under advisement without raising your hopes. I counselled Prince Charles to dissociate his duties as pontifex from his views on GMOs, and just look what happened!
I hope that the issue that Darnovsky puts so eloquently will not be lost in this intellectual gymnasium because of my own false steps. I'm a curious bloke who made a curious entrance, to be sure. But the issue, as you say is too damned important to be lost to discussion for the sake of artificial standards of academic propriety. Excuse me, while I get back to my seat in the bleachers where I belong.
-- John McLaren Free Anti-spam service: http://www.brightmail.com
