The future of life.

• Author: Ackerman, Felicia Nimue
• Position: Letter to the Editor

Leon Kass's anti-cloning slogan, "Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder" ("Bioethics, Bush Style," by Nina Siegal, May issue), invites this reply: Narrow are the souls that cannot comprehend that different souls shudder at different things.

I shudder at the thought of being denied life-saving technology because it violates Kass's particular conception of dignity.

Felicia Nimue Ackerman

Providence, Rhode Island

Rather than debate whether the ideas of Leon Kass on embryo cloning support the progressive agenda or not, Nina Siegal resorts to a McCarthyist form of guilt by association. She assumes that Kass's ideas must be opposed because some right-wing groups like them or because he talks to conservatives.

Well, some of us progressives support some of what he does, too.

Today's biotech barons are attempting to enclose the global commons of life.

They want exclusive control of plants, animals, and now even human genes and human embryos and their stem cells. Like railroad barons, they lobby their friends in government to get them to turn over our common resources. They seek patents and government funding to help them in this new enclosure of the commons. They even argue that their theft is progress.

Progressives should not move into the "technological change=growth= progress" camp, and The Progressive should not endorse technologies without examining their effects on justice for all groups and the future of life itself.

When biotechnologists with an economic stake in these technologies make exaggerated health claims, progressives must question their claims as much as we question those of plant and animal genetic engineers. Robert Lanza, of Advanced Cell Technology, Inc., should be viewed with the same suspicion as the CEO of Monsanto or...