quotations about genetic engineering
The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved only because they once served the fitness of our genes. They will be replaced by a different sort of neural architecture. States of sublime well-being are destined to become the genetically pre-programmed norm of mental health. The world's last aversive experience will be a precisely dateable event.
DAVID PEARCE
The Hedonistic Imperative
Genetic modification, like any other kind of modification, is good if you modify in a good direction, bad if you modify in a bad direction.
RICHARD DAWKINS
A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love
Given advances in genetic engineering, it's reasonable to expect that someday genetic engineers might mix and match features of different species' brains for different purposes--if you want to have a heightened sense of sight, say, genetic engineers might be able to manipulate the human brain so it grows optic lobes more like those of birds.
RAY DALIO
Principles: Life and Work
Already, one can use plastic surgery to improve appearance, so using genetic engineering to do this may be unnecessary. But the danger may arise when one tries to genetically change one's personality. There are probably many genes that influence behavior, and they interact in complex ways, so tampering with behavioral genes may create unintended side effects. It may take decades to sort through all these side effects.
MICHIO KAKU
Physics of the Future
For all we know, particular camel genes might be good at cooperating with particular cheetah genes. But they are never called upon to do so. Presumably mammal genes are better at cooperating with other mammal genes than with bird genes. But the speculation must remain hypothetical, because one of the characteristics of life on our planet is that, genetic engineering aside, genes are mixed only within species.
RICHARD DAWKINS
Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder
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
Quest for Perfection
With genetic engineering, a bacterium can acquire a human gene--and treat it as one of its own. In some ways there is nothing very new about this; every time you get a cold you acquire unwelcome viral genes, but the point about genetic engineering is having some control over the transfer process.
SUSAN ALDRIDGE
The Thread of Life: The Story of Genes and Genetic Engineering
Some say that we should use designer genes to make us healthier and happier. Others say that we should allow for cosmetic enhancements. The big question will be how far this will go. In any event, it may become increasingly difficult to control the spread of "designer genes" that enhance looks and performance. We don't want the human race to split into different genetic factions, the enhanced and the unenhanced, but society will have to democratically decide how far to pus this technology.
MICHIO KAKU
Physics of the Future
A largely unrecognized danger of the obsessive hysteria surrounding genetically modified foods is crying wolf. I fear that, if the green movement's high-amplitude warnings over GMOs turn out to be empty, people will be dangerously disinclined to listen to other and more serious warnings.
RICHARD DAWKINS
A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love
It is logical to assume that if methods to produce genetically superior individuals are available, and they certainly will be by the time man learns that he has to control his population size, they will be used. In the meantime, we must remember that man is not a product of genetics alone; his genes must act in some sort of environment. The more conducive to human development that environment is, the greater will be the degree to which all men will realize their genetic potential.
JAMES J. NAGLE
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December 1971
You can stop splitting the atom; you can stop visiting the moon; you can stop using aerosols; you may even decide not to kill entire populations by the use of a few bombs. But you cannot recall a new form of life.
ERWIN CHARGAFF
letter to the editor of Science Magazine, 1976
Even minor tampering with nature is apt to bring serious consequences, as did the introduction of a single chemical (DDT). Genetic engineering is tampering on a monumental scale, and nature will surely exact a heavy toll for this trespass.
EVA NOVOTNY
attributed, Environmental Biotechnology: A Biosystems Approach
In a more general sense, all the quarter-million plant species--in fact, all species of organisms--are potential donors of genes that can be transferred by genetic engineering into crop species in order to improve their performance. With the insertion of the right snippets of DNA, new strains can be created that are variously cold-hardy, pest-proofed, perennial, fast-growing, highly nutritious, multipurpose, water-conservative, and more easily sowed and harvested. And compared with traditional breeding techniques, genetic engineering is all but instantaneous.
EDWARD O. WILSON
The Future of Life
It might be argued that a genetically enhanced athlete, like a drug-enhanced one, would have an unfair advantage over his unenhanced competitors. But the fairness argument against enhancement has a fatal flaw: it has always been the case that some athletes are better endowed genetically than others, and yet we do not consider this to undermine the fairness of competitive sports. From the standpoint of fairness, enhanced genetic differences would be no worse than natural ones, assuming they were safe and made available to all. If genetic enhancement in sports is morally objectionable, it must be for reasons other than fairness.
MICHAEL J. SANDEL
"The Case Against Perfection", The Atlantic Monthly, April 2004
Recombinant DNA technology faces our society with problems unprecedented not only in the history of science, but of life on the Earth. It places in human hands the capacity to redesign living organisms, the products of some three billion years of evolution. The nub of the new technology is to move genes back and forth, not only across species lines, but across any boundaries that now divide living organisms. The results will be essentially new organisms, self-perpetuating and hence permanent. Once created, they cannot be recalled. It presents probably the largest ethical problem that science has ever had to face. Our morality up to now has been to go ahead without restriction to learn all that we can about nature. Restructuring nature was not part of the bargain. For going ahead in this direction may be not only unwise, but dangerous. Potentially, it could breed new animal and plant diseases, new sources of cancer, novel epidemics.
GEORGE WALD
attributed, It's in Your DNA
You could argue that humans have been "interfering" in evolution since the dawn of agriculture, with the development of conventional plant and animal breeding, and genetic engineering is just a rather sophisticated breeding technology. You could point to nature's own "genetic engineering"--the spread of antibiotic resistance, the transfer of taxol genes from the yew to a fungus, and even Griffith's discovery of the transforming principle, to name but three examples. Or you may side with those who regard genetic engineering as deeply suspicious because of the way it allows the setting aside of species barriers.
SUSAN ALDRIDGE
The Thread of Life: The Story of Genes and Genetic Engineering
Denying the science and technology of which genetic engineering is the current striking manifestation is simply an ostrich reaction and cannot solve our problems.
BERNARD E. ROLLIN
The Frankenstein Syndrome
The possibility of genetic engineering is one of the most important concepts to arise in the history of mankind because, for the first time, a living creature understands its origin and can undertake to design its own future.
ROBERT SINSHEIMER
attributed, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December 1971
Genetic engineering is the midwife of a brave new world of environmentally-engineered plagues totally unimaginable in the past. From an evolutionary view, these developments may be the last round.
MICHIO KUSHI
AIDS and Beyond
There is no such thing as offensive and defensive technology when it comes to DNA research. The manipulation of genes can be used for either purpose.
MICHIO KAKU
Physics of the Future