'Mortal Combat' and Biotechnology
Posted by Parita Shah November 14, 2006
Biopolitical Times
Check out Will Saletan's latest article in Slate, Mortal Combat: The Exploding Politics of Biotechnology.
Here's an excerpt:
Here's an excerpt:
To eradicate diseases with today's technology, you'd have to screen embryos and flush the ones with bad genes. With tomorrow's technology, you'll be able to re-engineer them. Each of these advances saves life at the price of dissolving it. We're taking ourselves apart....We're so not ready for this. But we can't stop ourselves. So we try to simplify the oncoming technologies, treating them like issues we already know. On the right, that means equating ESC research with abortion....On the left, the instinct is to treat ESC research like health care.