Letters

From the January 2002 issue

(Page 3 of 3)

Daniel Pink replies: The response to this story -- both its volume and its intensity -- was astonishing. For the majority of readers, the critique of dreary classrooms and bureaucratic schools resonated with their own experiences.

Of course, some readers took issue with certain arguments. I learned from Andrew Coulson that free agent schooling thrived in Athens. Bill Barrett argues that Americans flourish in spite of meager test scores because tests don't measure what matters and because the U.S. system is more fluid. I agree.

A handful of readers offered perspectives similar to Bruce Sabin's. My view: Yes, a college diploma will remain an important form of certification. ("B.A. Harvard" on a résumé functions somewhat like "Intel Inside" on a computer.) However, colleges and universities won't be the only entities performing this function. Professional associations and unions will provide both learning and imprimaturs. And one's portfolio of adult work will ultimately matter more than one's youthful report card.

Jeff Zorn, alas, tumbled into a trap of his own making. Leaving aside the fact that he labels me a philistine while quoting Jerry Seinfeld, he argues that free agency will destroy education as surely as it wrecked baseball. Let's hope so. Since baseball's free agent era began 25 years ago, fan attendance has soared, the value of franchises has increased, television revenue has climbed, a greater variety of teams have won pennants, and a host of once unassailable records have fallen. To paraphrase another television icon, free agency has been berry, berry good for beisbol. It will, I suspect, be very, very good for learning, too.

Our Mad Scientist

Ronald Bailey's "Blastocyst Brouhaha" (October) was so annoying, and the logic so puerile, that I must speak against it.

Surely anybody can distinguish between a sloughed-off skin cell and a fertilized egg. In the normal course of events, one will become an infant, and the other won't. At some time in the future the two may, with tremendous scientific intervention, both become human. But that does not make them identical, just as the inevitable similarity of any human's end does not make us all identical.

There are other reasons to oppose using blastocysts for research. If one believes in a unique human soul, one must suppose that at some point it inhabits the agglomeration of cells that will become a human. There is no logical reason to suppose that this does not happen at fertilization; indeed, I can't think of any logical reason to pick any other moment for this event. If you accept the possibility of a human soul, or even believe in human dignity, then reason counsels prudence, caution, and consensus before embarking on the wholesale slaughter of blastocysts.

In fact, if we follow Bailey's reasoning, there is nothing to stop us from manufacturing zygotes solely to be harvested for the benefit of others. But where do we draw the line? At what point in development is it no longer allowable to destroy one life that another may live -- or have his quality of life improved? Any line drawn is arbitrary, and cannot be defended logically from those who will keep smearing the lines.

I sometimes watch old horror flicks, in which a "mad scientist" rationalizes his awful experiments, in which monstrous acts are done for "the good of humanity." Until I read Bailey's piece, I had not realized that Dr. Frankenstein's ethos had penetrated to my favorite magazine. Except here, Bailey is crying, "It's not alive, it's not alive!"

Lindsay Peet
Studio City, CA

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