More Anything Goes Science; Human/Rabbit Transgenic Embryos
So, UK scientists have petitioned the authorities to create human/rabbit embryos by injecting human cells into rabbit eggs with their nucleuses removed. If it works, this will create a mostly human but about 1% rabbit hybrid embryo. Given that Brave New Britain's authorities almost never say no to requests from the biotech sector, it is a good bet that the effort will receive the go-ahead.
There is much to say about this, but for now, let's just focus on hubris. Society is wrestling with the ethics and propriety of these "futuristic" technologies. It isn't helpful that the scientists are hyping the cures, misstating the biology and claiming they want the people's support--and billions in tax dollars--while also charging forward heedless of what the people might think. It is clear now, that "the scientists" have decided they know best and that the intrinsic importance of being human means very little to them, and they are going to do what they want and to heck with the public's moral sensibilities.
But amidst the outrageous hype, outright fraud, gross misrepresentations, spin, and tens of millions spent annually in propagandizing society to promote what amounts to unfettered biotechnology, these science uber alles types are losing sight of an important point: If they go too far, too fast, science could well lose the confidence of the people. If that happens, how long will it take for the sector to recover?
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:05 PM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
A hard question to ask, and of course harder still to answer, but one thing does come to my mind, Wesley, and that is the following...
Our academia and intelligencia has long jettisoned the "antiquated" notion of Christianity following the Enlightenment, and this revolution in thinking also dove-tailed quite nicely with the industrialization of Europe and America in the 19th century and subsequent progress in the natural sciences: paleontology, geology, physics, chemistry, physiology, genetics.
This frantic and ever-accelerating body of knowledge has not only come to light outside of mankind's traditional acknowledgement of the transcendental throughout the ages, but the research itself is largely amassed and conducted by the academic elites, who are almost wholly (especially in the natural sciences) set against the transcendental in any manner.
To them, science, the pursuit of knowledge of the natural world, is the highest calling of man. To know something is to be able to go about setting up experimental conditions which can be disproved and to observe the resulting data.
These so-called "positivists" or "naturalists," without grounding in traditional models of morality or religion, in place of a transcendental truth, establish science as their religion - the thing that seems to have the most value. Science will "help mankind progress," is what I often hear them argue.
As Dr. Richard C. Lewontin (famous zoology professor at Harvard) said in his book Biology as Ideology, scientists have become the new clergy of our times. From my graduate school experience, I would say this is largely true, at least in the minds of the faculty.
But I'm digressing - the point I'm trying to make is that it makes one wonder how deep the penetrance of this ideology goes into our society and culture at large.
You ask if science can loose the confidence of the people - but I wonder if the people have first and foremost already lost their foundation (at least in the West) in Christianity, in which case, how can they turn aside from science - they have nothing to turn to, so it would become an ever more desperate, ever more immoral plunge into the depths of human ability to exploit and manipulate ourselves and our world.
I probably could have said this a lot more concisely... :)
-Chris
Science question: Would it work? Would such embryos even live? Of course, maybe for the research purposes they have in mind they don't need to live for very long.
My friend Jonathan Wells (of Intelligent Design fame) has told me that attempts to unite sperm and egg across even relatively "similar" species lines have failed to produce live embryos. They just die.
I would think--perhaps, even, hope, if that isn't wrong to hope--something similar would happen here.
Chris: The problem you discuss is the ideology of scientism, in which adherents believe that science can tell us Truth, which of course, it cannot. Scientism is especially dangerous because like bioethics and animal liberation, it refuses to see the exceptionalism in man (whether created or evolved), reducing us merely another animal in the forest.
Lydia: I don't know if it will work. I am told that scientists in Singapore (or China?) cliam to have done it, but I haven't seen any papers published in that regard. If someone has, I would be interested to know.
Thanks to both of you for contributing to Secondhand Smoke.
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