(((PING))))))
Posted on 04/30/2003 12:49:58 PM PDT by MHGinTN
2003 marks the fiftieth years since the discovery of the double helix, the shape of the DNA molecule that carries the message identification for an individual in a species. The April 2003 edition of Scientific American magazine carried an interview with James Watson, one of the Nobel Winners credited with defining the double helix of DNA (pp 67 – 69).
James Watson is an avowed atheist. [par 4, column 2, p. 68] That perspective didn’t seem to hinder his scientific work, but it impacts his opinions on issues such as abortion and manipulation of nascent human life. Stating as exemplary the opinions of a truly great scientific mind has subtle affectation on the ‘public mind’, on public opinion.
Whether a member of society has a religious belief or not, it is grossly misleading to have a great scientist waxing over ethical and moral issues under the guise of ‘knowing better than the average Joe’, simply because that person has reached so high an understanding of a particular topic or puzzle in science. To illustrate, refer to the last five paragraphs of the article, where in the fifth from the last, Watson waxes over the question of political supervision over scientific rigors. He says of this societal supervision, “ I think they’re so contentious, that the state shouldn’t enter in. Yes, I would just stay out of it, the way [government] should stay out of abortion. Reproductive decisions should be made by women, not the state.
I mean, cloning now is the issue. But the first clone is not like the first nuclear bomb going off. It’s not going to hurt anyone!”
There are many characterizations that could be issued regarding Dr. Watson’s assertion, but the greatest problem is his assumed dehumanization of the individual lives severely handicapped and dead during the effort to produce one healthy clone. It will damn sure ‘hurt’ those ones! But that’s the point of the denegration exercise: only the healthy clone will be afforded the designation of a person, all other lives along the way will be designated as something less worthy of personhood. It is the same with abortion: the individual human little ones alive and sensing in the womb are designated as less than worthy for personhood simply upon the efficacy of whether the woman wants them to continue living. Nothing more complicated or deep than that, personhood is to be a function of arbitrarily designated worth.
Is it really that clear, is this arbitrary dehumanization that easy to spot? Well, in the next to last paragraph of the article, Dr. Watson states the following (and too many will swallow it without thinking) : “People say, ‘Well, these would be designer babies,’ and I say, ‘Well, what’s wrong with designer clothes?’ If you could just say, ‘My baby’s not going to have asthma,’ wouldn’t that be nice? What’s wrong with therapeutic cloning? Who’s being hurt?” Indeed, if one has adopted the belief that the earliest age along the continuum of a lifetime is not an age of the individual to be born, dehumanizing for purposes of exploitation, convenience, and expedience is easy to embrace. But the clones conceived and slaughtered for their stem cell body parts will definitely never see a sunrise, or play with a puppy, or hug their own child … because they will be killed as if the cannibalism hurts no-one and only helps the recipient of cannibalized parts. Ultimately, it is the society that is dehumanized with such transactional ethics, arbitrarily assigning worth to a class of fellow human lives based on their utility rather than their humanity. That’s not so elementary a dismissal as Dr. Watson would have us believe.
(((PING))))))
I'm always reminded of Lord Bertrand Russell - an absolutely brilliant historian of philosophy, credible mathematician, engaging skeptic and essayist.......and a pacifist moron of epic proportions.
Watson is pretty famous for being a blunt snob. It so happens I read something about him today, containing an even more outrageous quote than the one you cite, in David Gelernter's Wired Magazine review of Bill McKibben's new book Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age. Geneticist Michael West is even worse.
Gelernter writes:
Behind this bizarre and terrifying project is control lust and naked nihilism. "The reason the techno-topians can talk so casually about the 'posthuman' future," McKibben writes, "is that they find nothing particularly significant about the human present." Scientists and technologists in general are not McKibben's enemies. Many (in my experience) are as horrified as he is by enhancement. Most are probably indifferent. But the cheerleaders are not a pretty sight. Someone asks His Eminence James Watson, co-unraveler of DNA, whether "enhancement" isn't a lot like eugenics, the weeding out of genetically inferior human stock. "It's not much fun being around dumb people," Watson answers. Michael West, the first cloner of human embryos, explains why the US Congress is unfit to oversee such affairs: Who wants "insurance salesmen from who knows where," he asks, "pontificating on such important issues?" So much for democracy.
So much for democracy indeed. I am not opposed to research going forward in these areas (i.e., nanotechnology, genetic engineering), but nowhere near enough debate has taken place on the ethics and consequences of the implementation of these technologies.
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