A new technology, recombinant DNA, has been created by biologists since 1972. It has the potential to allow them to create new plants and animals, and to genetically alter the human species. The discovery of this powerful biological tool launches us, willingly or unwillingly, into a new age with its own terrors and responsibilities. In just the way that the atomic physicists of the 1940s propelled us into the Nuclear Age, biologists now are ushering us into what has been called the Organic Age.
How does one begin to evaluate a technology which will alter the nature of life itself? Who shall have the authority to develop and produce these altered ‘organisms? Should scientists be allowed to proceed with “pure research,” regardless of its ominous foreseeable applications? Should the American laissez-faire attitude toward business dictate that industry patent and market new life forms unhampered? Should decisions about the research be made solely by scientists and industry, following the dictates of what can be done, and without the insights of the church regarding what should be done?
One can foresee government monitoring and control of corporations and universities doing the new research because of the awesome dangers inherent in the technique. Civil liberties might at some point be secondary to the control of a tool so easily used as a weapon. The church may find itself the caretaker of laboratory mistakes, cast off “cyborgs”--a new addition to the wretched of the earth.
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