Views from around the world.

• Position: The Risks of the Rush - Genetic ethics - Brief Article

Ethiopia

Formally, the human genetic engineering project is expected to identify our genetic peculiarities so that our ailment particularities can be precisely targeted. But, as an African whose ancestors suffered for 500 years being targeted for slavery and being colonized, and whose natural resources are now being plundered, I find it difficult to expect peculiarities to be used positively. When I recall that the North has apologized to the Jews for the Holocaust and even through the Pope to the Arabs for the Crusades, and that only in 2001 the North refused to apologize to Africans in Africa and the Diaspora for slavery and colonialism, I find it difficult to feel so positive. Given this, do I expect the human genome project to make life easier for the sufferer of sickle cell anemia, or killing easier for the white supremacist who is now a major political force in the North? I leave you to guess the answer.

Berehan Gebre Egziabher

General Manager

Environmental Protection Agency, Ethiopia

South Africa

While for privileged people it may seem that the balance in the use of power flowing from scientific knowledge and technological achievements has been in favor of beneficence, different perceptions prevail among those who have been marginalized. Close links between science, technology, the military, money, and those with global power, and the use of power and secrecy to protect privilege, have undermined confidence that there is any significant concern for the future of the people of Africa.

Soloman Benatar, MD.

South Africa

United States

Given the history of mankind, it is extremely unlikely that we will see the posthumans as equal in rights and dignity to us, or that they will see us as equals. Instead, it is most likely either that we will see them as a threat to us and thus seek to imprison or simply kill them before they kill us, [Or that] the posthuman will come to see us (the garden variety human) as an inferior subspecies without human rights, to be enslaved or slaughtered preemptively. It is this potential for genocide based on genetic difference, which I have termed "genetic genocide," that makes species-altering genetic engineering a potential weapon of mass destruction, and makes the unaccountable genetic engineer a potential bioterrorist.

George J. Annas, Chair

Department of Health Law, Bioethics, and Human Rights, Boston University School of Public Health

Malaysia

Potential abuse of technology related to reproductive cloning of...