quotations about genetic engineering
A largely unrecognized danger of the obsessive hysteria surrounding genetically modified foods is crying wolf. I fear that, if the green movement's high-amplitude warnings over GMOs turn out to be empty, people will be dangerously disinclined to listen to other and more serious warnings.
RICHARD DAWKINS
A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love
In the twenty-first century, genetic engineering will do more than merely eliminate Siamese twins and alligator-skinned people. It will make it hard to find a person with even a slight overbite or a large nose. I can see that future and it makes me shudder.
LES MARTIN
Humbug
Genetic engineering is to traditional crossbreeding what the nuclear bomb was to the sword.
ANDREW KIMBRELL
"Animal Patenting: Impact of Bioengineering on Altering Animals", The Environmental Magazine, April 1994
Already, one can use plastic surgery to improve appearance, so using genetic engineering to do this may be unnecessary. But the danger may arise when one tries to genetically change one's personality. There are probably many genes that influence behavior, and they interact in complex ways, so tampering with behavioral genes may create unintended side effects. It may take decades to sort through all these side effects.
MICHIO KAKU
Physics of the Future
When one adopts a theological perspective, one can certainly understand the qualms that religious leaders might have about genetic engineering. The Judaeo-Christian tradition has been staunch in its belief that God created living things "each according to its own kind," with the clear implication that species are fixed, immutable, and clearly separated from one another. Nineteenth-century and contemporary opposition by religious factions to Darwin and Darwin's notion of the origin and flux of species illustrates the significance placed upon fixed kinds of religious groups. For humans to meddle with species, to possibly create new species, to blur the lines between species, and, indeed, as Darwin did, to argue that humans and animals are continuous, is to erode the special place of humans and to trade comfortable predictability and order for uncertainty.
BERNARD E. ROLLIN
The Frankenstein Syndrome
It is logical to assume that if methods to produce genetically superior individuals are available, and they certainly will be by the time man learns that he has to control his population size, they will be used. In the meantime, we must remember that man is not a product of genetics alone; his genes must act in some sort of environment. The more conducive to human development that environment is, the greater will be the degree to which all men will realize their genetic potential.
JAMES J. NAGLE
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December 1971