Techno Baby Steps

Fears of revolutionary scientific changes are greatly exaggerated

Ronald Bailey | May 23, 2001

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Such calls are wholly ahistorical; there is simply no evidence that the pace of biomedical research is outstripping our ability to resolve issues surrounding the new techniques. As important, why is "society" the right level at which to decide whether or not to use new therapies?

Surely patients and their physicians are the proper people to make "informed and reasoned choices" about their health and the health of their children. In the case of cytoplasm transfers, the result so far has been healthy children born to parents who would otherwise have been infertile. Why should the parents, much less "society," pay any attention to naysaying busybodies like Parens, Juengst, Chapman and Frankel?

Progress surely consists of fulfilling human hopes for health, flourishing, and happiness. That's what the new reproductive technologies can help do, if only the naysayers will let them.