This Blog considers assisted suicide/euthanasia, bioethics, human cloning, biotechnology, radical environmentalism, and the dangers of animal rights/liberation. My views expressed here, as in my books and other writings, reflect my understanding that the philosophy of human exceptionalism is the bedrock of universal human rights. Or, to put it another way: human life matters. (The opinions expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of any organization with which I am affiliated.)
Take this story as just one example: Scientists have used bacterial enzymes to convert one blood type into another, potentially ending the threat of blood shortages. There is a lot going on out there that is entirely laudable and has nothing whatsoever to do with embryonic stem cell research or human cloning.
Labels: Biotechnology
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 7:33 PM
3 Comments
I am a Senior Fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics at the Discovery Institute and the author of 12 books, including A Rat Is A Pig Is A Dog Is A Boy, which is relevant to the issues considered by this blog.
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3 Comments:
I would rephrase the title to read "Most Biotechnology is Not Controversial to Wesley".
There are other objections to biotechnology besides ESCs and cloning. For instance, environmental, religious, civil liberties, safety, equitable distribution of its benefits among socio-economic classes, and tinkering with nature.
Yes. Well, I suppose that is technically true. But most of the sturm and drang, the screaming and hollering, is aimed at these issues, particularly Bush's policy because it implies strongly that nascent human life has moral value.
The environmental issues involving GM foods, the genome project, etc., are controversial in some quarters but do not receive the kind of media obsession that cloning/escr receive.
I agree that the media WAS more obsessed with ESCs. But since the high-profile elections last November, it's all seemed to die down to what I would call white noise.
But I think the mainstream media obsession with cloning is about the same as GM foods and patenting of human genes. As for env't safety, I guess you don't read the Sierra magazine.
Likewise, I would never use mainstream media obsession to gauge morality.
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