Sci and Tech Readings

7/29/2019 Sci and Tech Readings

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Pre-Writing Activity: Science and Technology Dialogue Sessions

ConceptYou and your team are participating in a Science and

Technology Dialogue Session. Depending on your roleassignment, your team will either represent the calm,authoritative voice of the Government, or the angsty,antagonistic voice of the protestors. Government anddissenters will face off in this dialogue session. Both sides areexpected to put forth persuasive arguments pertaining totheir topic, bearing in mind a good mix of Logos, Pathos andEthos.

ScenarioThe Government, in the name of progress and advancement,has controversially decided to remove strict regulations onGenetic Engineering, Robotics, Nanotechnology, and CarbonEmissions. Once banned, scientists are now allowed todirectly apply Genetic Engineering research and experimentson human beings. Restrictions on Robotics and the massproduction of robots in all industries have been lifted, as isthe case for Nanotechnology. Industries no longer need to

cap their carbon emissions clean and green is a thing of thepast.

The corporate sector is celebrating with profit opportunitiesin abundance. Jobs are sure to be created, and the countrysGDP is set to soar. On the other hand, traditionalists andrealists are up in arms, staging protests and strikes. Thisdiscussion forum and referendum will set things straight

Task and Format

Given the above scenario and based on your teams roleassignment, your team is expected to present and marketyour case at the dialogue session. The government team willspeak on the respective assigned topic first for 10 mins,followed by the team of dissenters for another 10 mins. Thiswill then be followed by a 5 min cross-examination round.

Following each dialogue session, a public referenduminvolving the audience will be held, and the votes received

Daniel Siew (2010). 1


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will determine the outcome of each dialogue session. Articleswill be handed out to you to guide you, but you are alsoexpected to tap on your existing notes and as well asconduct further research.

Your presentation should be marketed with the followingdeliverables:

- Posters (at least one per government team) and Placards(at least one per team of dissenters) that represent yourteams key slogans and thrusts

- Flyers (at least 5 to be distributed to classmates) that

represent your teams key ideas

- A 10

minute presentation with the help of visual aids (e.g.Powerpoint)

- Preparatory material for the cross-examination round

Topics:

1. Genetic Engineering will advance our country2. Robotics will advance our country3. Nanotechnology will advance our country4. Global Warming will not affect our country



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Two Articles for Topic 1:

Article A: Triumph or Tragedy? The Moral Meaning of Genetic Technology

Reprinted, with permission, from "The Moral Meaning of Genetic Engineering," by Leon R. Kass,Commentary, September 1999; all rights reserved.

Leon R. Kass is Addie Clark Harding professor at the University of Chicago. Trained in medicine andbiochemistry, he writes frequently about bioethical issues such as human genetic engineering andphysician-assisted suicide. With James Q. Wilson, he is coauthor of The Ethics of Human Cloning.

The public is right to doubt the ethics of applying gene-altering technology to humans. Unlikeconventional medicine, this technology could affect not only existing individuals but others not yetborn or even conceived. Knowledge of one's own genetic weaknesses may threaten human free will,and being able to change the genes of one's offspring may endanger human dignity by makingchildren into manufactured commodities. Gene manipulation is likely to move from therapy (curingdiseases) to enhancement, or adding characteristics that some members of society deem desirable.In doing so, it may alter the nature of the human species. It is thus a threat to humanity.

When, less than a half-century ago, James D. Watson and Francis Crick first revealed to the worldthe structure of DNA, no one imagined how rapidly genetic technology would develop. Within a fewyears, we shall see the completion of the Human Genome Project, disclosing the DNA sequences ofall 100,000 human genes. [The project was completed in June 2000.] And even without completegenomic knowledge, biotech business is booming: according to a recent report by the researchdirector for Smith Kline Beecham [a drug company], enough sequencing data are already availableto keep his researchers busy for the next twenty years, developing early-detection screeningtechniques, rationally designed vaccines, genetically-engineered changes in malignant tumorsleading to enhanced immune response, and, ultimately, precise gene therapy for specific diseases.In short, the age of genetic technology has arrived.

This technology comes into existence as part of the large humanitarian project to cure disease,prolong life, and alleviate suffering. As such, it occupies the moral high ground of compassionatehealing. Who would not welcome surgery to correct the genetic defects that lead to sickle-cellanemia, Huntington's disease, and breast cancer, or to protect against the immune deficiencycaused by the AIDS virus?

And yet genetic technology has also aroused considerable public concern. Even people dulyimpressed by the astonishing achievements of the last decades are nonetheless ambivalent aboutthese new developments. For they sense that genetic technology, while in some respectscontinuous with the traditional medical project of compassionate healing, also representssomething radically new and disquieting. For their own part, enthusiasts of this technology areoften impatient with such disquiet, which they tend to attribute to scientific ignorance or else tooutmoded moral and religious notions.

In my own view, the scientists' attempt to cast the debate as a battle of beneficent andknowledgeable cleverness versus ignorant and superstitious anxiety should be resisted. For thepublic is right to be ambivalent about genetic technology, and no amount of instruction inmolecular biology and genetics should allay itsourlegitimate human concerns. In what follows, Imean to articulate some of those concerns, bearing in mind that genetic technology cannot betreated in isolation but must be seen in connection with other advances in reproductive anddevelopmental biology, in neurobiology, and in the genetics of behaviorindeed, with all thetechniques now and soon to be marshaled to intervene ever more directly and precisely into thebodies and minds of human beings. I shall proceed by raising a series of questions.What is different about genetic technology?At first glance, not much. Isolating a disease-inducing aberrant gene looks fairly continuous withisolating a disease-inducing intracellular virus; supplying diabetics with normal genes for producing

insulin has the same medical goal as supplying them with insulin for injection.



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Nevertheless, despite these obvious similarities, genetic technology is also decisively different.When fully developed, it will wield two powers not shared by ordinary medical practice. Medicinetreats only existing individuals, and it treats them only remedially, seeking to correct deviationsfrom a more or less stable norm of health. Genetic engineering, by contrast, will, first of all,deliberately make changes that are transmissible into succeeding generations and may even alter inadvance specific future individuals through direct "germ-line" or embryo interventions. Secondly,

genetic engineering may be able, through so-called genetic enhancement, to create new humancapacities and hence new norms of health and fitness.

For the present, it is true, genetic technology is hailed primarily for its ability better to diagnoseand treat disease in existing individuals. Confined to such practices, it would raise few questions(beyond the usual ones of safety and efficacy). Even intrauterine gene therapy for existing fetuseswith diagnosable genetic disease could be seen as an extension of the growing field of fetalmedicine. But there is no reason to believe that the use of gene-altering powers can be soconfined, either in logic or in practice.

For one thing "germ-line" gene therapy and manipulation, affecting not merely the unborn but alsothe unconceived, is surely in our future. The practice has numerous justifications, beginning withthe desire to reverse the unintended dysgenic effects of modern medical success. Thanks to

medicine, for example, individuals who would have died from diabetes now live long enough totransmit their disease-producing genes. Why, it has been argued, should we not reverse theseunfortunate changes by deliberate intervention? More generally, why should we not effect precisegenetic alteration in disease-carrying sperm or eggs or early embryos, in order to prevent inadvance the emergence of disease that otherwise will later require expensive and burdensometreatment? Why should not parents eager to avoid either the birth of afflicted children or thetrauma of eugenic abortion be able to avail themselves of such alteration?

In sum, before we have had more than trivial experience with gene therapy for existing individualsnone of it thus far successfulsober people have called for overturning the current (self-imposed)taboo on germ-line modification. The line between these two practices cannot hold.Despite the naive hopes of many, neither will we be able to defend the boundary between therapyand genetic enhancement. Will we reject novel additions to the human genome that enable us to

produce, internally, vitamins or amino acids we now must get in our diet? Will we oppose theinsertion of engineered foreign (or even animal) genes fatal to bacteria and parasites or offering usto increased resistance to cancer? Will we decline to make alterations in the immune system thatwill increase its efficacy or make it impervious to HIV? When genetic profiling becomes able todisclose the genetic contributions to height or memory or intelligence, will we deny prospectiveparents the right to enhance the potential of their children? Finally, should we discoveras nodoubt we willthe genetic switches that control our biological clock, will we opt to keep our handsoff the rate of aging or our natural human lifespan? Not a chance.

We thus face a paradox. On the one hand, genetic technology really is different. It can and will goto work directly and deliberately on our basic, heritable, life-shaping capacities, at their biologicalroots. It can take us beyond existing norms of health and healingperhaps even alter fundamentalfeatures of human nature. On the other hand, precisely because the goals it will serve, at least tobegin with, will be continuous with those of modern high-interventionist medicine, we will find itspromise familiar and irresistible.

This paradox itself contributes to public disquiet: rightly perceiving a difference in genetictechnology, we also sense that we are powerless to establish, on the basis of that difference, clearlimits to its use. The genetic genie, first unbottled to treat disease, will go its own way, whetherwe like it or not.

How much genetic self-knowledge is good for us?Quite apart from worries about genetic engineering, gaining genetic knowledge is itself a legitimatecause of anxiety, not least because of one of its most touted benefitsthe genetic profiling ofindividuals.

The deepest problem connected with learning your own genetic sins and unhealthy predispositionsis neither the threat to confidentiality and privacy nor the risk of discrimination in employment or



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insurance, important though these issues may be. It is, rather, the various hazards anddeformations in living your life that will attach to knowing in advance your likely or possiblemedical future. To be sure, in some cases such foreknowledge will be welcome, if it can lead toeasy measures to prevent or treat the impending disorder, and if the disorder in question does notpowerfully affect self-image or self-command. But will and should we welcome knowledge that wecarry a predisposition to Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, or some other personality or behavior

disorder, or genes that will definitely produce at an unknown future time a serious but untreatabledisease?

Still harder will it be for most people to live easily or wisely with less certain informationsay,where multigenic traits are involved or where the predictions are purely statistical, with no clearimplication for any particular "predisposed" individual. The recent case of a father who insistedthat ovariectomy and mastectomy be performed on his ten-year-old daughter because shehappened to carry the BRCA-1 gene for breast cancer shows dramatically the toxic effect of geneticknowledge.Less dramatic but more profound is the threat to human freedom and spontaneity, a subjectexplored 25 years ago by the philosopher Hans Jonas. In a discussion of human cloning, Jonasargued eloquently for a "right to ignorance."

That there can be (and mostly is) too little knowledge has always been realized; that there can betoo much of it stands suddenly before us in a blinding light. ... The ethical command here enteringthe enlarged stage of our powers is: never to violate the right to that ignorance which is acondition for the possibility of authentic action; or: to respect the right of each human life to findits own way and be a surprise to itself. [Emphasis in the original]

To scientists convinced that their knowledge of predispositions can only lead to rational preventivemedicine, Jonas's defense of ignorance will look like obscurantism. It is not. Although everyoneremembers that Prometheus was the philanthropic god who gave to human beings fire and the arts,it is often forgotten that he also gave them the greater gift of "blind hopes," precisely because heknew that ignorance of one's own future fate was indispensable to aspiration and achievement. Isuspect that many people, taking their bearings from life lived open-endedly rather than frompreventive medicine practiced rationally, would prefer ignorance of the future to the scientific

astrology of knowing their genetic profile. In a free society, that would be their right. Or would it?This leads us to the next question.

What about freedom?Even people who might otherwise welcome the growth of genetic knowledge and technology areworried about the coming power of geneticists, genetic engineers, and, in particular, governmentalauthorities armed with genetic technology.1 Precisely because we have been taught by these veryscientists that genes hold the secret of life, and that our genotype is our essence if not quite ourdestiny, we are made nervous by those whose expert knowledge and technique touch our verybeing. Even apart from any particular abuses or misuses of power, friends of human freedom havedeep cause for concern.

The English humanist C.S. Lewis put the matter sharply in The Abolition of Man (1965):In reality, ... if any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to makeits descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power. They areweaker, not stronger: for though we may have put wonderful machines in their hands we havepreordained how they are to use them.... Man's conquest of Nature, if the dreams of somescientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billionsof men. There neither is nor can be any simple increase of power on Man's side. Each new powerwon by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger. Inevery victory, besides being the general who triumphs, he is also the prisoner who follows thetriumphal car.

Most genetic technologists will hardly recognize themselves in this portrait. Though they concedethat abuses or misuses of power may occur, they see themselves not as predestinators but as

facilitators, merely providing knowledge and technique that people can freely choose to use inmaking decisions about their health or reproductive choices. Genetic power, they will say, thusserves not to limit freedom but to increase it.



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But as we can see from already existing practices like genetic screening and prenatal diagnosis, thisclaim is at best self-deceptive, at worst disingenuous [insincere]. The choice to develop andpractice genetic screening and the choices of which genes to target for testing have been made notby the public but by scientistsand not on liberty-enhancing but on eugenic grounds. In manycases, practitioners of prenatal diagnosis refuse to do fetal genetic screening in the absence of aprior commitment from the pregnant woman to abort any afflicted fetus. In other situations,

pregnant women who still wish not to know prenatal facts must withstand strong medical pressuresfor testing.

While a small portion of the population may be sufficiently educated to participate knowingly andfreely in genetic decisions, most people are and will no doubt always be subject to the benevolenttyranny of expertise. Every expert knows how easy it is to get most people to choose one wayrather than another simply by the way one raises the questions, describes the prognosis, andpresents the options. The preferences of counselors will always overtly or subtly shape the choicesof the counseled.

In addition, economic pressures to contain health-care costs will almost certainly constrain freechoice. Refusal to provide insurance coverage for this or that genetic disease may eventually workto compel genetic abortion or intervention. State-mandated screening already occurs for PKU

(phenylketonuria) and other diseases, and full-blown genetic-screening programs loom large on thehorizon. Once these arrive, there will likely be an upsurge of economic pressures to limitreproductive freedom. All this will be done, of course, in the name of the well-being of children.

Already in 1971, the geneticist Bentley Glass, in his presidential address to the AmericanAssociation for the Advancement of Science, enunciated "the right of every child to be born with asound physical and mental constitution, based on a sound genotype." Looking ahead to thereproductive and genetic technologies that are today rapidly arriving, Glass proclaimed: "Noparents will in that future time have a right to burden society with a malformed or a mentallyincompetent child." It remains to be seen to what extent such prophecies will be realized. But theysurely provide sufficient and reasonable grounds for being concerned about restrictions on humanfreedom, even in the absence of overt coercion, and even in liberal polities like our own.

What about human dignity?Here, rather than in the more talked-about fears about freedom, lie our deepest concerns. Genetictechnology, the practices it will engender, and above all the scientific teachings about human lifeon which it rests are not, as many would have it, morally and humanly neutral. Regardless of howthey are practiced and taught, they are pregnant with their own moral meaning, and willnecessarily bring with them changes in our practices, our institutions, our norms, our beliefs, andour self-conception. It is, I submit, these challenges to our dignity and humanity that are at thebottom of our anxiety over genetic science and technology. Let me touch briefly on four aspects ofthis most serious matter.

"Playing God."

This complaint is too facilely dismissed by scientists and nonbelievers. The concern has meaning,God or no God. By it is meant one or more of the following: man, or some men, are becomingcreators of life, and indeed of individual living human beings (in-vitro fertilization, cloning); notonly are they creating life, but they stand in judgment of each being's worthiness to live or die(genetic screening and abortion)not on moral grounds, as is said of God's judgment, but onsomatic [bodily] and genetic ones; they also hold out the promise of salvation from our genetic sinsand defects (gene therapy and genetic engineering).

Never mind the exaggeration that lurks in this conceit of man playing God: even at his mostpowerful, after all, man is capable only of playing God. Never mind the implicit innuendo thatnobody has given to others this creative and judgmental authority, or the implicit retort that thereis theological warrant for acting as God's co-creator in overcoming the ills and suffering of theworld. Consider only that if scientists are seen in this godlike role of creator, judge, and savior, the

rest of us must stand before them as supplicating, tainted creatures. That is worry enough.



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Not long ago, at my own university, a physician making rounds with medical students stood over thebed of an intelligent, otherwise normal ten-year-old boy with spina bifida. "Were he to have beenconceived today," the physician casually informed his entourage, "he would have been aborted."Determining who shall live and who shall dieon the basis of genetic meritis a godlike poweralready wielded by genetic medicine. This power will only grow.

Manufacture and commodification.

But, one might reply, genetic technology also holds out the promise of a cure for these life-crippling and life-forfeiting disorders. Very well. But in order truly to practice their salvific power,genetic technologists will have to increase greatly their manipulations and interventions, wellbeyond merely screening and weeding out. True, in some cases genetic testing and risk-management to prevent disease may actually reduce the need for high-tech interventions aimed atcure. But in many other cases, ever greater genetic scrutiny will lead necessarily to ever moreextensive manipulation. And, to produce Bentley Glass's healthy and well-endowed babies, letalone babies with the benefits of genetic enhancement, a new scientific obstetrics will benecessary, one that will come very close to turning human procreation into manufacture.

This process has already crudely begun with in-vitro fertilization. It will soon take giant steps

forward with the ability to screen in-vitro embryos before implantation; with cloning; and,eventually, with precise genetic engineering. The road we are traveling leads all the way to theworld of designer babiesreached not by dictatorial fiat but by the march of benevolenthumanitarianism, and cheered on by an ambivalent citizenry that also dreads becoming simply thelast of man's manmade things.

Make no mistake: the price to be paid for producing optimum or even only genetically sound babieswill be the transfer of procreation from the home to the laboratory. Increasing control over theproduct can only be purchased by the increasing depersonalization of the entire process and itscoincident transformation into manufacture. Such an arrangement will be profoundlydehumanizing, no matter how genetically good or healthy the resultant children. And let us notforget the powerful economic interests that will surely operate in this area; with their advent, thecommodification of nascent human life will be unstoppable.

Standards, norms, and goals

According to Genesis, God, in His creating, looked at His creatures and saw that they were good:intact, complete, well-working wholes, true to the spoken idea that guided their creation. Whatstandards will guide the genetic engineers?

For the time being, one might answer, the norm of health. But even before the genetic enhancersjoin the party, the standard of health is being deconstructed. Are you healthy if, although you showno symptoms, you carry genes that will definitely produce Huntington's disease, or that predisposeyou to diabetes, breast cancer, or coronary artery disease? What if you carry, say, 40 percent ofthe genetic markers thought to be linked to the appearance of Alzheimer's? And what will "healthy"

or "normal" mean when we discover your genetic propensities for alcoholism, drug abuse,pederasty, or violence? The idea of health progressively becomes at once both imperial and vague:medicalization of what have hitherto been mental or moral matters paradoxically brings with it thedisappearance of any clear standard of health itself.

When genetic enhancement comes on the scene, standards of health, wholeness, or fitness will beneeded more urgently than ever, but just then is when all pretense of standards will go out thewindow. " Enhancement" is a soft euphemism for "improvement," and the idea of improvementnecessarily implies a good, a better, and perhaps even a best. If, however, we can no longer lookto our previously unalterable human nature for a standard or norm of what is regarded as good orbetter, how will anyone know what constitutes an improvement? It will not do to assert that we canextrapolate from what we like about ourselves. Because memory is good, can we say how muchmore memory would be better? If sexual desire is good, how much more would be better? Life is

good; but how much extension of life would be good for us? Only simplistic thinkers believe theycan easily answer such questions.



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More modest enhancers, like more modest genetic therapists and technologists, eschew grandiosegoals. They are valetudinarians [people who worry about health], not eugenicists. They pursue notsome faraway positive good but the positive elimination of evils: disease, pain, suffering, thelikelihood of death. But let us not be deceived. Hidden in all this avoidance of evil is nothing lessthan the quasi-messianic goal of a painless, suffering-free, and finally immortal existence. Only thepresence of such a goal justifies the sweeping-aside of any opposition to the relentless march of

medical science. Only such a goal gives trumping moral power to the principle, "cure disease,relieve suffering."

"Cloning human beings is unethical and dehumanizing, you say? Never mind: it will help us treatinfertility, avoid genetic disease, and provide perfect materials for organ replacement." Such,indeed, was the tenor of the June 1997 report of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission onCloning Human Beings. Notwithstanding its call for a temporary ban on the practice, the only moralobjection the commission could agree upon was that cloning "is not safe to use in humans at thistime" because the technique has yet to be perfected. Even this elite ethical body, in other words,was unable to muster any other moral argument sufficient to cause us to forgo the possible healthbenefits of cloning.

The same argument will inevitably also justify creating and growing human embryos for

experimentation, revising the definition of death to facilitate organ transplantation, growinghuman body parts in the peritoneal cavities of animals, perfusing newly dead bodies as factories foruseful biological substances, or reprogramming the human body and mind with genetic orneurobiological engineering. Who can sustain an objection if these practices will help us live longerand with less overt suffering?

It turns out that even the more modest biogenetic engineers, whether they know it or not, are inthe immortality business, proceeding on the basis of a quasi-religious faith that all innovation is bydefinition progress, no matter what is sacrificed to attain it.

The tragedy of success.

What the enthusiasts do not see is that their utopian project will not eliminate suffering but merelyshift it around. We are already witnessing a certain measure of public discontent as a paradoxicalresult of rising expectations in the health-care field: although their actual health has improved,people's satisfaction with their current health status has remained the same or declined. But that ishardly the highest cost of medical success.

As Aldous Huxley made clear in his prophetic Brave New World, the conquest of disease,aggression, pain, anxiety, suffering, and grief unavoidably comes at the price of homogenization,mediocrity, pacification, trivialized attachments, debasement of taste, and souls without love orlonging. Like Midas, bioengineered man will be cursed to acquire precisely what he wished for, onlyto discoverpainfully and too latethat what he wished for is not exactly what he wanted. Or,worse than Midas, he may be so dehumanized he will not even recognize that in aspiring to beperfect, he is no longer even truly human.

The point here is not the rightness or wrongness of this or that imagined scenarioall this isadmittedly highly speculative. I surely have no way of knowing whether my worst fears will berealized, but you surely have no way of knowing that they will not. The point is rather theplausibility, even the wisdom, of thinking about genetic technology, like the entire technologicalventure, under the ancient and profound idea of tragedy. In tragedy, the hero's failure is embeddedin his very success, his defeats in his victories, his miseries in his glory. What I am suggesting is thatthe technological way of approaching both the world and human life, a way deeply rooted in thehuman soul and spurred on by the utopian promises of modern thought and its scientific crusaders,may very well turn out to be inevitable, heroic, and doomed.

To say that technology, left to itself as a way of life, is doomed, does not yet mean that modernlifeour lifemust be tragic. Everything depends on whether the technological disposition is

allowed to proceed to its self-augmenting limits, or whether it can be restricted and brought underintellectual, spiritual, moral, and political rule. But here, I regret to say, the news so far is notencouraging. For the relevant intellectual, spiritual, and moral resources of our society, the legacy



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of civilizing traditions painfully acquired and long preserved, are taking a beatingnot leastbecause they are being called into question by the findings of modern science itself. Thetechnologies present troublesome ethical dilemmas, but the underlying scientific notions call intoquestion the very foundations of our ethics.

This challenge goes far beyond the notorious case of evolution versus biblical religion. Is there any

elevated view of human life and human goodness that is proof against the belief, trumpeted bycontemporary biology's most public and prophetic voices, that man is just a collection of molecules,an accident on the stage of evolution, a freakish speck of mind in a mindless universe,fundamentally no different from other livingor even nonlivingthings? What chance have ourtreasured ideas of freedom and dignity against the teachings of biological determinism in behavior,the reductive notion of the "selfish gene" (or for that matter of "genes for altruism"), the belief thatDNA is the essence of life, and the credo that the only natural concerns of living beings are survivaland reproductive success?

Dangers to humanityIn 1997, the luminaries of the International Academy of Humanismincluding the biologists FrancisCrick, Richard Dawkins, and E.O. Wilson and the humanists Isaiah Berlin, W.V. Quine, and KurtVonnegutissued a statement in defense of cloning research in higher mammals and human beings.

Their reasons were revealing:

What moral issues would human cloning raise? Some world religions teach that human beings arefundamentally different from other mammalsthat humans have been imbued by a deity withimmortal souls, giving them a value that cannot be compared to that of other living things. Humannature is held to be unique and sacred. Scientific advances which pose a perceived risk of alteringthis "nature" are angrily opposed.... As far as the scientific enterprise can determine, [however] ...[h]uman capabilities appear to differ in degree, not in kind, from those found among the higheranimals. Humanity's rich repertoire of thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and hopes seems to arisefrom electrochemical brain processes, not from an immaterial soul that operates in ways noinstrument can discover.... Views of human nature rooted in humanity's tribal past ought not to beour primary criterion for making moral decisions about cloning. ... The potential benefits of cloningmay be so immense that it would be a tragedy if ancient theological scruples should lead to a

Luddite rejection of cloning.

In order to justify ongoing research, these intellectuals were willing to shed not only traditionalreligious views but any view of human distinctiveness and special dignity, their own included. Theyfail to see that the scientific view of man they celebrate does more than insult our vanity. Itundermines our self-conception as free, thoughtful, responsible beings, worthy of respect becausewe alone among the animals have minds and hearts that aim far higher than the mere perpetuationof our genes. It undermines, as well, the beliefs that sustain our mores, institutions, and practicesincluding the practice of science itself. For why, on this radically reductive understanding of "therich repertoire" of human thought, should anyone choose to accept as true the results of thesemen's "electrochemical brain processes," rather than his own? Thus do truth and error themselves,no less than freedom and dignity, become empty notions when the soul is reduced to chemicals.There is, of course, nothing novel about reductionism, materialism, and determinism of the kinddisplayed here; they are doctrines with which Socrates contended long ago. What is new is that, asphilosophies, they seem to be vindicated by scientific advance. Here, in consequence, is the mostpernicious result of our technological progressmore dehumanizing than any actual manipulation ortechnique, present or future: the erosion, perhaps the final erosion, of the idea of man as noble,dignified, precious, or godlike, and its replacement with a view of man, no less than of nature, asmere raw material for manipulation and homogenization.

Hence our peculiar moral crisis: we adhere more and more to a view of human life that gives usenormous power and that, at the same time, denies every possibility of nonarbitrary standards forguiding the use of this power. Though well-equipped, we know not who we are or where we aregoing. We triumph over nature's unpredictabilities only to subject ourselves, tragically, to the stillgreater unpredictability of our capricious wills and our fickle opinions. That we do not recognize

our predicament is itself a tribute to the depth of our infatuation with scientific progress and ournaive faith in the sufficiency of our humanitarian impulses.



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Does this mean that I am therefore in favor of ignorance, suffering, and death? Of killing the gooseof genetic technology even before she lays her golden eggs? Surely not. But unless we mobilize thecourage to look foursquare at the full human meaning of our new enterprise in biogenetictechnology and engineering, we are doomed to become its creatures if not its slaves. Importantthough it is to set a moral boundary here, devise a regulation there, hoping to decrease the damagecaused by this or that little rivulet, it is even more important to be sober about the true nature and

meaning of the flood itself.

That our exuberant new biologists and their technological minions might be persuaded of this is, tosay the least, highly unlikely. But it is not too late for the rest of us to become aware of thedangersnot just to privacy or insurability, but to our very humanity. So aware, we might be betterable to defend the increasingly beleaguered vestiges and principles of our human dignity, even aswe continue to reap the considerable benefits that genetic technology will inevitably provide.

Footnotes1. It is remarkable that most discussions of genetic technology naively neglect its potentialusefulness in creating biological weapons, such as, to begin with, antibiotic-resistant plaguebacteria, or later, aerosols containing cancer-inducing or mind-scrambling viruses.

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Article B: Religion Should Not Interfere in Bioethics

George Dvorsky, "The Separation of Church and Bioethics," Betterhumans, March 31, 2004.www.BetterHumans.com. Copyright 2004 George Dvorsky. Reproduced by permission.

"[The] blind acceptance of mixing ethics and medical science with religion is unacceptable, and ithas got to stop."

In the following selection futurist George Dvorsky argues that religious interference in decisionsabout the ethics of reproductive technology is unwarranted and harmful. He argues that ethicshave to evolve to keep up with scientific discoveries and technological possibilities. For example,brain death was not a concept available to people who lived in the era when the Bible was written,he notes. The moral absolutism of religious conservatives is particularly harmful, he claims, in anage when technology regularly prolongs and establishes life through artificial means. GeorgeDvorsky is deputy editor of and a regular columnist for BetterHumans.com. He lives in Ontario,Canada.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. What's wrong with the "wisdom of repugnance," in Dvorsky's view?2. What, according to the author, is the source of moral absolutism?3. How might giving full rights to embryos lead to every human cell having full rights?

It is now a criminal offense in Canada to engage in therapeutic cloning, to create an in vitroembryo for any purpose other than creating a human being (or for improving assisted humanreproductive procedures), to maintain an embryo outside a woman's body for more than 14 days, togenetically manipulate embryos, to choose the gender of one's offspring, to sell human eggs andsperm and to engage in commercial surrogacy.

While I'm loath to admit it, and despite the merciful sanctioning of stem cell research (albeit understrict conditions), Canadian bioconservatives have clearly won a major battle hereand in thissense it's a de facto victory for religious interests. While not stated explicitly in the bill, it's quiteobvious that C-61 upholds religious interpretations of personhood (namely the belief that life startsat conception) and theological injunctions against meddling in human biology and reproduction....

This blind acceptance of mixing ethics and medical science with religion is unacceptable, and it hasgot to stop. For centuries, societies have known better than to let religious influences interfere



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with democracy, due process, reason and scientific inquiry. The inalienable domains of humanbiology and procreation should be regarded no differently than the social and political arenas.Religious bioethics is full of inherent problems and inconsistencies. It's time to dismiss it andacknowledge the efficacy and validity of real and accountable secular bioethics. In biology as inpolitics, citizens have the right to be freefrom the pressures of organized religion.

Influenced by Theology

Leon Kass [then chairman of the President's Council of Bioethics], who is fully aware of the negativeimplications of chairing a religiously biased President's Council on Bioethics, has adamantlydeclared his brand of ethics to be untainted by theology. On closer inspection, however, his claimis as disingenuous as it is false.

Kass has vigorously studied the Torah [Jewish law] and has written extensively about the Bible,including his book on Genesis, The Beginning of Wisdom. He adheres to a conservative form ofJudaism, attends synagogue and fasts on Yom Kippur. As Kass himself half-jokingly concedes, "Isuffer from a late-onset, probably lethal, rabbinic gene which has gradually expressed itself, and ithas taken me over." Further, says Kass, "I've come to treasure the biblical strand of our Western

tradition more than the strand that flows from Athens."

So it's no surprise that his particular approach to bioethics betrays an adherence to long-standingAbrahamic [biblical] injunctions against meddling with the human body and reproductive processes.Kass's "wisdom of repugnance" ethics asks us to evaluate issues simply based on how we feel aboutthem. "In crucial cases," says Kass, "repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom,beyond reason's power fully to articulate it." According to Kass, those things we find offensive,grotesque, revolting and repulsive are illegitimate and immoral for inexpressible reasons andregardless of what our logic tells us.

The Yuck Factor

This so-called "yuck factor" ethics betrays its religious roots, what sociologist Emile Durkheimdescribed as the religious fixation on the profane and sacred. "All known religious beliefs," wroteDurkheim, "whether simple or complex, present one common characteristic: they presuppose aclassification of all the things, real and ideal, of which men think, into two classes or opposedgroups, generally designated by two distinct terms which are translated well enough by [the] words

profane and sacred."

Dividing the world into two domains is a tendency that runs rampant in the Abrahamic religioustraditions. It is a tradition that insists on the presence of good and evil, simplistic black and whitearguments, good guys and bad guys, piety and sin, the natural and the unnatural and, of course,moral meaning in the delineation of those things we find appealing and those things we find yucky.

Elizabeth Blackburn, one of two bioethicists recently removed from the President's Council, has

some harsh words for Kass and his yuck factor ethics. "[Kass has] questioned modern medical andbiomedical science and taken the stance of a 'moral philosopher,' often invoking a 'wisdom ofrepugnance'in other words, rejecting science, such as research involving embryonic stem cells,because it feels wrong to him. I remain convinced that this type of visceral reaction should launch,rather than end, debate."

Blackburn is right. But we can trace the "wisdom of repugnance" beyond a single person. At theheart of his argument, and in true arrogant ultraconservative fashion, what Kass is reallyproclaiming is that the current cultural norm, or more specifically, the norm that has beenestablished by longstanding religious traditions in the West, is the only true gauge to help usdetermine what is moral or immoral. And because scientists have a nasty habit of underminingantiquated religious beliefs, and by implication cultural norms, it is most certainly in the best

interest of religious conservatives to interfere with scientific advancement to keep the veils ofignorance high and the taboos firmly rooted.



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Moral Absolutism

Uninterested in reevaluating ethics and morality in the face of scientific progress, religiousconservatives tend to defer to scripture for moral and existential authority. The Bible is treated asa portal into everything we need to know about anythingend of discussion.

Thus, ethical guidelines that arise from scripture tend to take on the form of absolutism. Since Godhas supposedly endowed us with the ultimate moral rulebook, religious adherents argue that a fixedand unassailable universal ethics can and should be applied to all people and at all times. In mymind, there is very little that separates this type of reasoningthis moral absolutismfromideology.

Some might find it comforting to think that we have the answers to everythingespecially theanswers to deep and complex moral questionsbut we don't. By necessity, therefore, what werequire is a more sensible approach to formulating our ethics. This is where a relativistic ornormative methodology comes in, leading to what is known as situational ethics, as formulated bysuch thinkers as Joseph Fletcher. Religious followers tend to have fits over this notion, incredulousto the idea that moral values are editable over time or specific to a situation.

Evolving Ethics Needed

However, since the extent of our knowledge at any given point in history is partial at best, we haveto continually take stock of what we know about the human condition and add to an evolving andimproving set of ethical standards. And while the religious are unwilling to accept this, differentsocial environmentswhether those differences arise from social or technological differenceswillrequire different ethics.

Take life support systems for example. The prolongation of life by technological means is leading tosome interesting dilemmas in how we treat and define death. We currently declare someone to bedead when their heart stops. But what if someone is completely brain dead and on life support?

They are alive in the sense that their body is functioning, but for all intents and purposes, there'snobody home.

Technologies are forcing us to redefine and rethink previously established conventions andpractices. Is it right to leave someone who is clearly deadand permanently sohooked up to amachine? Christians in particular have no difficulty answering this one, defaulting to scripture andspeaking of the "sanctity" of life. Yet the prescientific, ... authors of the Bible (assuming, of course,that God didn't write it) were never in a position where they had to distinguish between a fullyconscious individual and a carcass with a beating heart. Consequently, Christian adherents arefollowing an antiquated version of personhood. And while once reasonable and even helpful, manysuch religious beliefs are of little value today.

Indeed, as our insight expands due to scientific progress, so too do our ethical sensibilities. What

we considered harmful yesterday does not necessarily appear so today; what we consider harmfultoday, may not seem so tomorrow.

Interracial marriages, for example, were not too long ago considered a repugnant and dangeroussocial experiment, but very few today would argue today that they are immoral or risky. It's a non-issue....

Similarly, today we are coping with the prospect of same-sex marriages. I predict that in a fewdecades from nowif not soonerwe will have the same kind of nonchalant attitude to gay andlesbian couples that we currently have to interracial couples.

And I don't use this analogy lightly. Apropos of this discussion, a strong argument can be made that

much of our racial and sexual inhibitions were induced by religious mores. Deep Christian values,often mutating into secularized offshoots, permeate our society to this very day. In the past,



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Christianity in particular has played no small part in the perpetuation of not just racism and anti-homosexual bigotry (including heterocentrism and the insistence on monogamy), but has alsocontributed to misogyny, sexual repression and the ongoing struggle against biotechnology ingeneral and reproductive freedoms in particular.

Harmful Stands

Religious interference with reproductive practices is particularly problematic, often leading toconsiderable harm. [In 2003,] the Catholic Church, in a move that I can only describe as pure evil(if I may be allowed to use such a term), declared that condoms do not halt the spread of AIDSbecause they have tiny holes in them through which HIV can pass. The statement put literallymillions of followers at risk.

And in another example of religious meddling, in the US, thanks to the efforts of President Bush andhis fourth-century stance on reproductive rights, some women who are about to undergo abortionsare being terrorized by clinicians who force them to watch gruesome videos depicting bloodyfetuses.

In addition to being flawed, prejudicial and harmful, the Abrahamic ethic also tends to becontradictory, inconsistent and sometimes just plain nonsensical.

As an example, while supposedly upholding the principle of the sanctity of life at all costs, anumber of bioconservativesKass includedhave contradictorily railed against the prospect of lifeextension technologies. Apparently all life is equal, but some life is less equal than others.

And because religious ethicists believe that personhood begins at conception, it has been arguedthat work in embryonic stem cells and therapeutic cloning is unethical. But as Reason's [columnist]Ronald Bailey has pointed out, this line of reasoning can lead to some rather bizarre conclusions,including the notion that every cell in the human body should be considered inviolable because,given the right circumstances, every cell could conceivably become a full-grown human being.

It's this kind of alternate reality that religiously influenced bioconservatives tend to operate in, onein which a blastocysta microscopic clump of 150 cellsis actually considered not just a person,but a person with equal rights to someone who is fully sentient.

And thus, liberals and social progressives in both Canada and the US march onward in their attemptto derail those who insist on using unfair, dangerous and illogical methodologies. In fact, many oftoday's reformers and activiststhose people who tend to reject absolutist religious ethicsarebusy cleaning up the mess of the Christian legacy in the West.

Footnotes1. The name of the Canadian legislation that outlaws therapeutic cloning, etc.



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One Article for Topic 2

Article C: Robots for Fighting Future Wars

Milan Vesely, "The Robot Revolution," Middle East, April 2005, pp. 22-25. Copyright 2005 IC

Publications Ltd. Reproduced by permission.

Milan Vesely is a Kenya-born journalist who lives in the United States. In the following article he

describes the U.S. military's hopes to use robots in combat. On the one hand, this might save the

lives of many human soldiers, but on the other hand, computer-savvy young insurgents might hack

into the robots' programming and turn them against their original masters. So it is not yet known

how effective they would be. Intelligent machines mounted on tracks are already being used for

bomb disposal. Nevertheless, even advocates of robotic soldiers are not sure they can ever replace

fighting men. Moreover, trusting robots with life-or-death decisions would surely raise ethical issues

and questions of responsibility. Yet the monetary and political cost of sending human soldiers into

battle is so high that robots may be rushed into the field before their usefulness has been proven.

The scene is familiar, the Internet video tape grainy and slightly out of focus. A long line of USmilitary vehicles is racing along the Baghdad airport road when suddenly one is enveloped inflames, the blast scatters pieces of palm tree and metal in a deadly 100-yard arc. Then comes thegunfire, rocket-propelled grenades flying in. Soon another sound joins in, as the Medevachelicopters arrive.

But that scene may lack one important ingredient in the future. The helicopter may not be aMedevac one, its medical personnel replaced by eyeglass-wearing computer geeks with handheldlaptops rapidly punching keyboards to get the truck back up and running.

Welcome to the 21st Century US soldier; programmed robots that can do anything from drive anammunition truck guided by global positioning system (GPS) coordinates to firing a 1,000-rounds-a-

minute M60 machine gun to beat off attacking insurgents.

American military planners predict such robots will in the future become the major fighting force inwars such as that currently being fought in Iraq. "They don't get hungry, they're not afraid, theydon't forget their orders, and they don't care if the robot next to them gets shot," Gordon Johnsonof the Joint Forces Command at Pentagon headquarters says, his confidence based on the results offield trials now underway.

But will they do a better job than the humans they replace, or will technically minded insurgentshack into the command codes and redirect the robot's lethality back against their original masters?that is still an open question for military analysts.

Robo-Soldiers May Reduce Death Toll

The IED (Improvised Explosive Device) has proved the insurgent's most effective weapon in the Iraqiconflict. Crude but safe for the attacker hidden 100 yards away in the palm grove, and highlylethal, the IED has developed from a standoff weapon detonated by wires, to a weapon ignited by acellphone or wireless line-of-sight computer signal.

The damage these devices have inflicted on the US military is vast, [as of early 2005] some 1,600soldiers killed and at least 12,000 wounded since the Iraqi conflict began. But now with robo-soldiers rapidly being brought into the arena the toll is expected to drop dramatically, and a wholenew era of warfare is about to begin.

The robotic soldier has been a Pentagon dream for 30 years. To achieve this, Pentagon plannershave backed it to the hilt financially, allocating some $127bn [billion] to a project called FutureCombat Systems, or FCS....



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The projected increase in funding for robot-soldiers is based on two assumptions; one alreadyproven, one tantalisingly in sight. Following the success of track-mounted robots in Afghanistanwhere they have been successfully used to clear caves of booby traps and ambushes, US militaryplanners believe that robot soldiers that think, see, and react increasingly like humans are possible.Advances in nanotechnologythe science of miniaturisationmake this goal achievable, they argue;crude examples are already able to mimic the walking gait of a normal human being.

Battle-ready robots able to transport ammunition, gather intelligence and/or search and blow upbuildings are already being tested, the first such thinking machine mounted on miniature tracks isexpected to arrive in Iraq [in April 2005].

With a 1,000-round-a-minute M60 machine gun mounted on a 360-degree swivel, this bomb disposalmachine will take up frontline positions, its machine gun able to deal death to any sighted enemywithin a 1,000 yard radius. Already used to dig up roadside bombs, this latest version of robo-soldier will be a radio controlled fighter, its computerised memory allowing it to reactautomatically to incoming fire.

"It's more than just a dream now," Johnson of the robotics effort at the Joint Forces Command

Research Centre, says. "Today we have an infantry soldier. We give him a set of instructions; if youfind the enemy, this is what you do. We give the soldier enough information to recognise the enemywhen he is fired upon. He is autonomous but he has to operate under certain controls. By 2015 wethink we can do the same infantry missions with robots. The American military will certainly havethese kinds of robots," Johnson asserts firmly. "It's not a question of if; it's just a question of when."

Robots May Not Replace Men

Many of the robo-soldier's advocates are not so sure that machines can ever replace the fightinghuman being however. "War will always be a human endeavour, one with death and disaster everpresent," Robert Finkelstein, president of Robotic Technology in Potomac, Maryland, says. "It couldtake up to 2030 to develop a robot that looks, thinks, and fights like a soldier. The Pentagon's goalis there, but the path is not totally clear yet."

And what of the insurgents; how will America's enemies counter a machine capable of spewingdeath while at the same time being protected by the latest advances in armour-plating? Will theyturn its capabilities to their own advantage, much as they have countered the jamming signals usedto disable their IED's in Iraq?

"Will they decipher the operating codes; turn a robot's lethality back onto the operators viaelectronic hacking, or even capture a robot and re-programme it to recognise the US military as theenemy?" some computer experts wonder. One thing US military observers are certain about; it won'tbe long before counter-robot techniques surface and possibly even crude counter-robots appear totake on the real thing on the battlefield.

"After all, a child's radio-controlled toy vehicle filled with explosives could disable the robo-soldierif it explodes close by," one military expert says. "Such items are now commonly sold at toy stores,the larger ones capable of carrying up to 10 pounds of high explosives."

As has been seen in Iraq, technology is not the preserve of the US military alone. Each gruesomekilling or deadly attack by the insurgents is shown on the Internet within minutes. The world is ableto view the terrorist's actions even before any official announcement or CNN report is broadcast.

Computer savvy, the younger insurgents are certain to take the arrival of the new soldiers as apersonal challenge, certain to test their skills against the computer and wireless guided robo-soldier, much as they have against the radio jamming devices now used to protect US convoys onIraqi highways.



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Questions over the Geneva Convention and its rules of conduct during warfare undertaken by robo-soldiers are now being raised. As history shows, every breakthrough in military technology leavesthe ethical laws scrambling to catch up, the arrival of the longbow, the tank and the atomic bombbeing some more obvious examples.

Can Robots Be Trusted to Make Decisions?

Trusting robots with life and death decisions at a roadblock is sure to raise issues and questions ofresponsibility, especially in the event of so called "friendly fire".

"The lawyers tell me there are no prohibitions against robots making life or death decisions,"Johnson says. "I have even been asked what happens if the robot destroys a school bus rather thena nearby tank." In a statement sure to be challenged by human rights activists Johnson states: "Wewill not entrust a robot with that decision until we are confident they can make it."

Others, like Bill Joya co-founder of Sun Microsystemsare not so sure that the trend to robotsmaking their own decisions is all that smart. Writing in Wiredmagazine, Joy says: "As machinesbecome more intelligent people will let them make more of their decisions for them. A stage may

be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex humanswill be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage of development the machinesthemselves will be in effective control."

Not surprisingly, money is a major factor in the US military's decision to mechanise its fightingforces. Future commitments for soldiers' retirement benefits already total $653bn [billion], a figurethe military is unable to come up with if called upon to do so. The current median cost per basicinfantry man is $4m [thousand] and growing, the cost of maintaining, or scrapping, a worn-outrobot estimated at a tenth of that figure. To have robots do at least the basic tasks thereforemakes economic sense to a US military watching the mounting cost of modern armaments withincreasing alarm.

To design a human replica is one of the most daunting aspects of the new technology. A four-foothigh prototype with a single cyclops eye and a gun for a right arm is already being tested. Inlaboratory conditions this robot can aim and fire at a tin can, the first such machine able toidentify targets and shoot at them. "We're at the mammal stage of development now," JeffGrossman of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Centre in San Diego says. "We're trying to get tothe level of a primate where we are making sensible decisions."

Five categories of robots are envisioned by the US military. In addition to the hunter/killer cyclopsprototype mentioned above, one robot is designed to scout buildings, tunnels and caves, a thirdwill haul ammunition, weapons and gear as well as perform basic intelligence gathering, a fourthwill be a drone in flight and a fifth originally designed for guard duty will be able to conductpsychological warfare and other missions. Most successful has been a robot driver, its progress farenough along so that operational models are already being tested at the Army Research

Laboratory's Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland....

As the insurgency in Iraq continues to grind away, the American military is bound to rush robotsinto the field before their capability has been fully proven. "The cost of the soldier in the field is sohigh, both in cash and in the political sense, that robots will be doing wildly dangerous tasks inbattle in the very near future," says Colin M. Angle, 37, cofounder and chief executive of iRobot.How soon their human opponents will figure out a way of negating or even turning their advantagesback on to their handlers will be an interesting issue, the time lag not too distant if the currentconflict is any indicator. In that case, grainy, out-of-focus videos of two sets of robots duelling itout in a Fallujah street may not be that far away.



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Article D: The Government Should Not Regulate Nanotechnology More Strictly

Sonia Arrison, "Nanotechnology Needs Nano-Scale Regulation," TechNewsWorld, January 13, 2006.www.technewsworld.com. Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.

"The nascent [nanotech] industry faces threats from those who believe government should solveproblems before they occur."

In the following viewpoint, Sonia Arrison claims that nanotechnology is a growing field with avariety of applications. Although the new field may have risks, Arrison warns that focusing onunknown consequences can stifle innovation. Therefore, she states that the government shouldrefrain from enacting regulation and let the scientific and production communities determine hownanotechnology should progress. Sonia Arrison is the director of Technology Studies at the PacificResearch Institute in California.


1. How can nanotechnology be used to cure disease, according to Arrison?2. What prediction does the author cite in reference to the global marketplace potential of

nanotechnology in 2015?3. As Arrison reports, how can overregulation of nanotechnology possibly lead to

underregulation?Anyone who purchased clear sunscreen or wore stain-resistant pants during the holidays wasprobably enjoying the benefits of commercialized nanotechnology. While nanotech advances areexciting, some observers dangerously press for greater government oversight in the sector.

Nanotechnology, the manipulation of matter at the molecular level, can create better materials,such as stronger metals and better paints. It also opens the door for self-replicating devices andparticles so small that they may enter the bloodstream to help cure disease. This revolution, likeany new technology, can be deployed for beneficial or nefarious purposes.

Overestimating the Risks

In a report released [in January 2006], environmental policy analyst J. Clarence Davies argued forgreater regulation of nanotechnology. America's current laws, he says, "either suffer from majorshortcomings of legal authority, or from a gross lack of resources, or both." The problem, accordingto Davies, is that current laws "provide a very weak basis for identifying and protecting the publicfrom potential risk, especially as nanotechnologies become more complex in structure and functionand the applications become more diverse."

Of course, Davies also admits that "we know little about possible adverse effects ofnanotechnology." That's partly because of the nascent status of the technology and perhaps alsobecause the risks aren't that high. Even government officials seemed surprised at the suggestion ofnew regulations.

Clayton Teague, director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office, told the AssociatedPress that "until we have information that there are truly inadequacies in existing regulations, anyadditional regulations beyond what we already would have would be burdensome to industry andthe advancement of the field."



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It's encouraging to see national policy makers taking such a reasonable stand. Perhaps that'sbecause they know that advances in nanotechnology will bring greater economic opportunities andtax dollars.

Indeed, it has been estimated that by 2015, the global marketplace for products that use thetechnology will reach US$1 trillion and employ two million workers. The technology is so promising

that the state of California recently released a report brainstorming on how to create a successfulNano-Valley, similar to Silicon Valley, which didn't face regulatory threats in its infancy.

Regulation Paradox

For his part, Davies argues that current levels of government oversight could create distrust andlead to a "public rejection of the technology." While government rules sometimes have alegitimizing effect, that's a poor reason to support them. Over-regulation comes with seriousdangers too.

Not only can too many regulations strangle innovation in the cradle, but over-regulation canironically cause under-regulation, leading to safety hazards. In Forward to the Future, a Pacific

Research Institute report, law professor and celebrity blogger Glenn Reynolds discusses thisproblem.

"When statutes require especially stringent regulations, administrators will tend not to issueregulations at all. Extraordinarily strict rules on workplace toxins, for example, have led to afailure by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to address all but a tinyminority of chemicals believed to be toxic." And of course, government rules tend to discourage thecreation of private-sector solutions.

The Freedom to Be Innovative

The scientific community is well aware of the potential dangers with nano-scale particles. The

public will be glad to know that the discussion over proper methods is thriving and developing intandem with the technology. In addition, concerned groups such as the Foresight Institute inCalifornia have released guidelines for self-regulation modeled on the extensive experience inbiotechnology where there has been great technical progress and little danger to public safety.

Nanotechnology holds much promise for advances in a number of areas such as material science andmedicine, but the nascent industry faces threats from those who believe government should solveproblems before they occur. Nanotech scientists must be free to develop their products, as well asthe rules that govern their development, in order to reap the rewards and protect society frompotential pitfalls. The best approach is the light regulation that already exists, combined with astrong scientific culture of self-regulation.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article E: The Government Should Regulate Nanotechnology More Strictly

J. Clarence Davies, testimony: "Developments in Nanotechnology," U.S. Senate Committee onCommerce, Science and Transportation hearing February 15, 2006. Reproduced by permission of theauthor.

"Adequate government oversight of nanotechnology is an essential part of 'getting it right.'"

J. Clarence Davies is the senior advisor to the Project on Emerging Technologies at the Woodrow

Wilson International Center for Scholars. In the following viewpoint, Davies argues that

nanotechnologythe production and use of materials at a molecular levelis a field of enormous

promise and potential dangers. Because of the unknown risks of putting this technology to use in

manufacturing consumer items, Davies believes nanotechnology should be more strictly regulated



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by the government. According to Davies, existing laws are not enough to protect the public from

this emerging technology, and therefore the federal government will have to enact new statutes

tailored to the possible hazards.


1. Based on past experience and focus group surveys, what does Davies fear the public will doif nanotechnology is not regulated by the government?

2. What does the author believe are the three faults of using existing laws to governnanotechnology?

3. According to Davies, what problem exists in trusting companies to perform voluntary testingon their nanotech products?

Nanotechnology is still very new and it is full of promise. It may offer solutions to many of the mostserious problems our society faces. It offers the hope of significant breakthroughs in areas such asmedicine, clean energy and water, environmental remediation, and green manufacturing. However,we currently know little about the short- and long-term effects of nanotechnology on human healthor the environment.

Additionally, the public's views of nanotechnology remain largely unformed. The vast majority ofpeople have never heard of nanotechnology, though it is anticipated that they will learn about thetechnology as applications emerge and as products enter the market. For this reason, we now havea unique opportunity "to get it right"to introduce a major new technology without incurringsignificant public opposition and without gambling with the health of citizens, workers, consumers,or the environment.

A lot depends on our ability to "get it right." If we fail, we run a double risk. First, we run the riskof unanticipated harm to health and the environment. Second, we run the risk of public rejectionof the technology. Our past experienceswith agricultural biotechnology, nuclear power, andasbestos, just to name a fewillustrate how tragic either of these scenarios could be. Industry, as

well as the general public, has a big stake in ensuring that nanotechnology is developed responsiblyfrom the start.

Adequate government oversight of nanotechnology is an essential part of "getting it right." Thepublic does not trust industry to regulate itself. Past experience, as well as surveys and focusgroups, show that if the public does not think that the government is exercising adequateregulatory oversight of a potentially hazardous new technology then it will mistrust and likelyreject that technology. If this happens, literally billions of dollars of investment by government andindustry in nanotechnology research and development may be jeopardized.

To date, the National Nanotechnology Coordinating Office (NNCO) has maintained that the federalagencies have adequate statutory authority to deal with nanotechnology. E. Clayton Teague,

director of the NNCO, has said that: "Until we have good, solid, scientifically validated informationthat would indicate significant inadequacies in existing regulatory authorities, additionalregulations would just be unnecessarily burdensome." This is an insufficient response to thechallenge, and, I believe, misleading to both the public and industry. By overstating the case forregulatory adequacy, one shifts risks onto corporate investors, shareholders, and the exposedpublic.

Possible Health Threats

The analysis in my report [Managing the Effects of Nanotechnology, 2006] clearly shows that theexisting regulatory structure for nanotechnology is not adequate. It suffers from three types ofproblems: (1) gaps in statutory authority, (2) inadequate resources, and (3) a poor fit betweensome of the regulatory programs and the characteristics of nanotechnology.



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(1) The gaps in statutory authority are most obvious with respect to two of the most common usesof nanomaterialscosmetics and consumer products. In both cases, there is essentially no statutoryauthority to review the health and safety of these products. In both cases, the principle is caveatemptorlet the buyer beware. In both areas, there is large potential for human exposure tonanomaterials. A wide variety of nano-based consumer products have already begun to enter themarket as sporting goods, clothing, cleaning materials, and kitchen appliances. Similarly, nano-

based cosmetic products already range from skin creams to spray-on foot deodorizers, all withsignificant exposure potential (dermal, inhalation, and ingestion) and little publicly available riskdata.

A more subtle set of statutory problems relates to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), whichmany have suggested as the primary law that should be used to regulate nanotechnology. TSCA is avery weak law.... One weakness is particularly important in relation to nanotechnology. TSCAimplicitly assumes that if there is no information on the risk of a chemical then there is no risk. Inother words, the law acts as a significant disincentive to generating information on possible risks ofa chemical. This is exactly the opposite of what is needed. A major reason to adequately regulatenanotechnology is to provide an incentive for generating information. There is an interactionbetween regulation and information. A certain amount of information is needed to make regulationwork, but regulation, properly crafted, can provide an important incentive to produce health andsafety information.

Lack of Experienced Overseers

(2) All of the federal regulatory programs suffer from a shortage of resources. This shortage ofresources is not only related to funding levels. There is also a shortage of personnelparticularlyindividuals with the appropriate expertise to deal with nanotechnology. For some of the programsmost relevant to nanotechnology the deficiency is so great that it raises doubts about whether theprogram can function at all. In 1980, The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)had 2,950 employees, a number that was inadequate for its responsibilities then. Today, with agreatly expanded economy and workforce, OSHA has 2,208 employees, approximately 25% fewer.The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has, since its creation, suffered from both

statutory and resource problems. Today CPSC has half the staff that it had in 1980. Statutoryauthority without the resources for implementation will not lead to adequate oversight....

No Existing Laws Are Geared to Nanotechnology

(3) None of the health and environment laws were drafted with nanotechnology in mind, and fittingnanotechnology into the existing statutory framework can be problematic. For example, many ofthe environmental statutes are based on an assumption that there is a direct relationship betweenquantity or volume on one hand and degree of risk on the other. This relationship does not hold formost nanomaterials.

In the near term, we will have to make do with current laws and programs.... Though voluntary

programs have been put forth as an interim solution, they are not a solution over the long-term.

Voluntary programs tend to leave out the firms that most need to be regulated. Such programs alsolack both transparency and accountability and thus do not contribute to public confidence in theregulatory system.

When I began working on the report, I did not believe that new legislation would be necessary.However, given all of the shortcomings of the existing system, I now believe that it is in everyone'sinterest to start thinking about what a new law might look like. The existing laws are not adequate.They cannot provide protection for the public, or offer a predictable marketplace fornanotechnology businesses and investors. No amount of coordination or patching is likely to fix theproblem....

Three Significant Questions



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Since its release in January 2006, the report has attracted a good deal of attention. I havefrequently been asked three questions which are worth briefly addressing here:

1. Is there any reason to believe that there are any adverse effects from nanotechnology?2. Can't industry be trusted to test new products since it is in its best interest to do so?3. Don't we need to wait for more information before we can regulate nanotechnology?

(1)Adverse effects: I am not a toxicologist, and I do not have the qualifications to address in depththe potential adverse effects of nanotechnology. However, there are three reasons to believe thatsuch effects are likely. First, every technology of the scope of nanotechnology has had adverseeffects. The idea that nanotechnology could be completely innocuous flies in the face of what wehave learned over many years of dealing with technological innovation.

Second, many decades of studying exposure to fine particlesin the workplace and theenvironment in generalhave shown that inhaling fine (and possibly nanometer-sized) particles canbe harmful. Third, on-going research into the health implications of engineered nanomaterialsraises many questions and concerns. For instance, we know that:

Nanometer-scale particles behave differently from larger-sized particles in the lungspossibly moving to other organs in the body;

The surface of some nano-structured particles is associated with toxicityrather than themore usually measured mass concentration; and

Conventional toxicity tests do not seem to work well with nanomaterials such as carbonnanotubes....

The debate over how safe nanotechnology is, and how risk should be governed, must be conductedin the knowledge that nanotechnologiesor the specific applications of nanotechnologyarediverse. Some will present a far greater risk to health and the environment than others....

(2) Voluntary testing: It is in the interest of most manufacturers to do some tests of their products.

A number of companies have a reputation of exceeding current regulatory requirements in regardsto product testing, and no manufacturer wants its customers or workers to be adversely affected byits products. However, testing, when done, is largely for short-term acute effects and not for long-term effects, such as cancer, mutagenesis, and environmental effects. Testing for long-term healthand environmental effects can be expensive and, if there is some adverse effect, it is unlikely thatthe effect will ever be associated with the particular product. Thus it can be tempting not to dosuch testing, if not required.

(3) Information and regulation: We do need more information before an adequate oversight systemcan succeed. But it is not too early to start thinking and talking about the outlines of such asystem. It is not too early because nanotechnology products are being commercialized now, and theregulatory system must deal with them. A survey by EmTech Research of companies working in thefield of nanotechnology has identified approximately 80 nanotechnology consumer products, andover 600 nanotechnology-based raw materials, intermediate components and industrial equipmentitems that are used by manufacturers. Experts at the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies believethat the number of nanotechnology consumer products on the market worldwide is actually largerthan the EmTech data suggest.

Furthermore, it also is not too early to start thinking and talking about an oversight system becauseknowing what a regulatory structure will look like can provide important guidance about whatinformation is needed. Given the realities of the legislative process, it could be years before newlegislation is enacted.



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Article F: The UN Is Creating Hysteria by Publishing Misinformation on Climate Change

Marni Soupcoff, "Vain Attempts to Change the Weather,"American Enterprise Online, December 15,2003. Reproduced with permission of the American Enterprise, a national magazine of Politics,Business, and Culture (TAEmag.com).

Marni Soupcoff is a columnist for the American Enterprise Online (TAEmag.com).

Recently three United Nations organizations released a study claiming that climate change was

responsible for one-hundred and fifty deaths in 2000. This conclusion is based on an irresponsible

use of statistics, drawing conclusions about causalities that are not supported by the evidence. It

would be better use of its resources for the United Nations to combat diseases directly instead of

drawing questionable conclusions about the weather, leading to actions that will probably not be

effective in addressing health issues.

"Global warming kills 150,000 a year," read a dire headline in Britain's Guardian on Friday[December 12, 2003], which sounds a bit like an indictment of a particularly active serial killer. Butbefore you go swearing out a warrant for global warming's arrest, keep in mind that franticpredictions of man's doom caused by his poisoning of the world's climate tend not to stand up to areasoned look at the data. The Guardian's hyperbolic headline is no exception.

The Guardian's indictment was precipitated by climate talks in Milan [Italy] at which three UnitedNations [UN] organizationsincluding the World Health Organizationreleased a study claiming thatclimate change was directly responsible for 150,000 deaths worldwide in 2000.

A number of objections spring to mind. The most obvious is that, even assuming global warming did

cause the deaths (an assumption that will be made by few people save enviro-alarmists like [actor]Ed Asner and [former vice president and presidential candidate] Al Gore), this would not warrantthe Guardian's gloomy conclusion that the statistic is a representative one for every year.

Numbers That Cannot Be Trusted

More importantly, though, the very idea that one can calculate a precise statistic to representdeaths "directly caused" by global warming is ludicrous and irresponsible. Unlike the case of anatural disaster or a plane crash, where it is easy to take toll of those killed or injured, smallincreases in the earth's temperature do not create obvious and immediate victims whose deaths canbe definitively chalked up to warming.

For example, the U.N. report claims that global warming has caused a noticeable increase inmalaria and other mosquito-borne diseases. But the report fails to establish convincing proof for acausal connection between climate change and increased incidents of disease, relying instead onthe simplistic notion that increases in temperature inevitably lead to more disease.

By assigning an artificial number on the lives lost to global warming, the U.N. is misleadingly

implying a scientific certainty and consensus that simply does not exist.

The shortsightedness of this approach has been highlighted by malaria specialist Professor PaulReiter of the Pasteur Institute and Harvard University, who chides, "it is naive to predict the effectsof 'global warming' on malaria on the mere basis of temperature." The history of mosquito-bornediseases is complex, and many factors other than temperature, including agricultural practices and

living standards, are often more important in determining the extent of the diseases. How else toexplain the fact that malaria was common throughout Europe during the freezing weather of its"Little Ice Age" of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?



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Consensus That Does Not Exist

And speaking of ice ages, I'd be remiss not to note that in the midst of the U.N.'s efforts to createhysteria about climate change and drum up support for the Kyoto protocol, a new report in thejournal Climate Change shows that human-induced global warming may have started as early as8,000 years ago (so much for blaming hairspray bottles) and might very well have saved the earth

from experiencing a new ice agea fate significantly more perilous to the earth's population thanthe gradual, three-quarter degree Celsius rise in temperature that scientists predict. (I'm nowwaiting for the Guardian headline about the number of lives saved every year by global warming,but I have a feeling it may be a long wait.)

The bottom line is that by assigning an artificial number on the lives lost to global warming, theU.N. is misleadingly implying a scientific certainty and consensus that simply does not exist. We donot really know if any lives are lost as a direct result of global warming, let alone a quantifiablenumber.

As Professor Reiter sensibly concludes with respect to the mosquito-borne diseases the U.N. claimsare caused by global warming: "Why don't we devote our resources to tackling these diseases

directly, instead of spending billions in vain attempts to change the weather?"

The same could rightly be said of all the other health and human rights problems the world faces.It's about time the U.N. and newspapers like the Guardian started paying attention to the globalproblems that really matter. Let's leave the vain attempts to change the weather to the out-of-touch environmental extremists who have nothing better to do with their time.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article G: Global Warming Is a Serious Threat to Humanity's Future

Mark Lynas, Its Later than You Think, New Statesman, vol. 132, June 30, 2003. Copyright 2003

by New Statesman Ltd. Reproduced by permission.

"I have witnessed major climate-driven changes across five continents, changes that are leaving

millions homeless, destitute and in danger."

Most scientists agree that the planet is warming, claims Mark Lynas in the following viewpoint. He

argues that humanity's future is at risk unless all nations agree to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,

the principal cause of global warming. In Alaska, Lynas asserts, Eskimo villagers are going hungry

because global warming has changed the migration patterns of seals and walruses, an important

part of the Eskimo diet. In other parts of the world, he maintains, flooding, drought, and sea-level

rise are forcing people to leave their homes, creating environmental refugees. Lynas is author of

the book High Tide: News from a Warming World.


1. According to Lynas, how do some residents of Fairbanks, Alaska, describe global warming?2. What happened on the island of Funafuti, in the author's view?3. In the author's opinion, what would be a good start in the effort to reduce greenhouse gas

emissions?

Hardly anyone realises it, but the debate about climate change is over. Scientists around the worldhave now amassed an unassailable body of evidence to support the conclusion that a warming ofour planetcaused principally by greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuelis under way.

The dwindling band of climate "sceptics", a rag-tag bunch of oil and coal industry frontmen, retiredprofessors and semi-deranged obsessives, is now on the defensive....



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The Signs

Meanwhile the world as we once knew it is beginning to unravel. The signs are everywhere, even inBritain. Horse chestnut, oak and ash trees are coming into leaf more than a week earlier than twodecades ago. The growing season now lasts almost all year round: in 2000 there were just 39official days of winter.

Destructive winter floods are part of this warming trend, while in lowland England snow hasbecome a thing of the past. Where I live in Oxford, six out of the past ten winters have beencompletely snowlesssomething that happened only twice during the whole 30-year periodbetween 1960 and 1990. The rate of warming h

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