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The clone wars: A reason online debate.
WHAT IS THE CASE for allowing genetic and other biological manipulations with the potential to change human beings? As stem cell research, cloning, and other technologies develop, perhaps no other question is more central to our future as a species--and perhaps no other question is as hotly contested.
In the wake of the first meeting of the President's Council on Bioethics and as Congress considered new legislation on the matter, we invited two of the major players in the field to debate the issue on reason's Web site. Gregory Stock, who makes the affirmative case, is director of the Program of Medicine, Technology, and Society at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine. He is also the author of the new book Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future (Houghton Mifflin). Arguing against genetic and biological manipulations is Francis Fukuyama, professor of international political economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). The debate unfolded over the week of March 18-22, with each participant responding within hours of the other's posting. Readers interested in more information can visit www.reason.com/biclone.shtml, which includes links to reason's voluminous coverage of cloning and biotechnology. Of special interest is "Criminalizing Science," in which a transpartisan coalition of thinkers and commentators respond to a left-right alliance to outlaw "therapeutic cloning" and stigmatize genetic research. Go Ahead and Clone Don't cause real damage to assuage phantom fears. Gregory Stock THERE HAS BEEN A lot of hand wrin...See the full content of this document
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