Saturday, June 21, 2003
WE HAVE ARRIVED
Bio-Luddites Find a Voice
The Bio-Luddites now have an official journal: The New Atlantis. The link leads to the first issue. Naturally, the very first article is by the leader of the bio-conservatives in America and the head of the president's stacked-deck advisory board on bioethics, Leon Kass. Kass' article is well worth reading, since he openly struggles with the difficulty of arguing for death and arbitrary limits on human freedom:
Why, if at all, are we bothered by the voluntary self-administration of agents that would change our bodies or alter our minds? What is disquieting about our attempts to improve upon human nature, or even our own particular instance of it? It is difficult to put this disquiet into words. We are in an area where initial repugnances are hard to translate into sound moral arguments.
Kass pretty much admits that he's not being rational, and concedes that the usual arguments against technological enhancement of the human animal can't withstand close scrutiny. He confesses his famous "repugnance," and then writes:
But is there wisdom in this repugnance? Taken one person at a time, with a properly prepared set of conditions and qualifications, it is going to be hard to say what is wrong with any biotechnical intervention that could give us (more) ageless bodies or happier souls.
Kass proceeds to struggle and contort, but never escapes from the fact that his opposition to improving the human condition through technology is based purely on intuition and mystical feelings about the value to be found in becoming weak and forgetful with age, and accepting the lot that wonderful "nature" has doled out to each of us through the chance shuffling of the deck of genetic cards.
Make no mistake: Leon Kass and his buddies want you to suffer and die.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 9:01 AM
