Biotechnology

Ronald Bailey Hangs Out WIth the Bioethicists at the BEINGS 2015 Summit

Is life better than death; health better disease; wealth better than poverty? Opinions vary.

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At the close of the BEINGS 2015 Summit, the novelist Margaret Atwood summed up her attitude towards biotechnology: She was "Ms. Grumpy." The Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, she added, was "Dr. Happy." The summit's specific focus was science aimed at directly manipulating human cells and cells that impact human beings. After attending as one of 200 delegates to the Biotech and Ethical Imagination Global Summit in Atlanta earlier this week, Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey reports that most of his fellow delegates seemed distinctly more grumpy than happy, at least when it came to biotech's prospects for relieving humanity's manifold ills.