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To: horsegirl48 who wrote (2813)	7/3/2000 3:01:33 PM
From: Walkingshadow	Respond to of 13572

HG48, Largely this is noise from the media. The media's job, of course, is to attract your attention so you will buy their magazines, newspapers, watch their programs, and so on. That doesn't necessarily mean there is any relationship to reality in what is proliferated, or that is of any real significance. I don't at all mean to suggest that genomics does not raise difficult moral and ethical issues, and will require some struggling and wringing of hands and so forth to work through. As with any advance, genomics will be a double-edged sword. The power to to good invariably carries with it the power to also do harm. As you may recall, that realization is precisely what prompted Alfred Nobel to establish his prize, since he saw the the invention of explosives was fraught with the potential for both good and evil, and he hoped to encourage the development of new inventions and discoveries for good purposes rather than evil. But these concerns have never in the past resulted in a potentially powerful advance being stopped in its tracks for fear that it would be used for evil ends. IMHO, the same will be true of the application of genomics to medicine, science, and society. It is too powerful, the potential for good too great, and---perhaps most importantly, given that government is fundamentally an oligarchy of the property owning class, political rhetoric notwithstanding----the potential for profit is so huge that it cannot be stopped. As has always been true in such situations, we'll find some sort of solution to the moral and ethical issues-----or we'll call them something else, pretend they don't exist or are not important, or look the other way and sweep them under the carpet. Never underestimate the potential of people---well-meaning people included---to rationalize and justify their positions. Or even, if necessary, to very effectively delude themselves. Unconscious facility at these seems inborn, endemic to the human race. Maybe CRA will one day localize on the genome the mechanism subserving this ability. But, would we really want a treatment for it? Now there's a moral dilemma!<ggg> JMVHO.......... Walkingshadow