Interesting couple of points, Gary:

The technological power in biological systems is both frightening and amazing. Imagine building a machine that could do all of the things a common house fly can do?

Why would we want a machine to spread disease and lay eggs that hatch into maggots???

Soon we won't need to. All we'll need to do is reverse engineer how a fly's DNA works and then reprogram the thing to do our bidding. That's where it gets spooking: We'll have near instant access to a "technology" that has 3.5 billion years of evolution behind it. Do we (the human race) have the collective wisdom for that sort of power? Surprisingly the answer maybe "Yes!". Despite having 20,000 warheads with hair fine triggers pointed at each other for over 40 years, we didn't nuke ourselves. Was this blind luck?

Not at all - it was fear of instant retaliatory annihiliation. That's what "mutually assured destruction" means, after all. What finally killed the nuke option as a war-fighting strategy was two things that happened during the Reagan Adminstration. First, the US Postal Service was asked to develop a contingency plan for mail delivery after a nuke war - a concept that, when exposed to the public, was subject to instant sardonic ridicule (and which may have inspired David Brin to write The Postman). Not long after that, the public's intuition that nuclear war was unsurvivable was given scientific grounding when Turco, Toon, Sagan et al. published their seminal Nuclear Winter research in Science.

What does this have to do with cloning, stem cell research and reverse genetic engineering?

It has to do with "the wisdom to handle the power", and the fact that wisdom does not always rule the hand of man - much more important: wisdom rules the policies of man even less often. Behind every advance in genetic manipulation lies the spectre of eugenics. If we can eventually repair defects, we can make enhancements - and it will not be left to doctors as scientists alone to decide what is a defect, and which enhancments are most desirable.

The most important thing to consider in whether or not mankind has the wisdom is: timing. Nuclear quid pro quo is immediate and unmistakeably final. The social consequences of genetic manipulation are just as inexorable, but so slow as to be dangerously overlooked. Just like global warming: by the time an effect is confirmed beyond reasonable doubt, it will be far too late to do anything more than suffer the consequences.

I am not among the villagers with their pitchforks and torches, gathering to lynch Frankenstein's Monster. I recognize there is a great dea of difference between the techniques being investigated now and the public misconception of "cloning" as Xeroxing humans in multiple copies. Neither do I consider a blastocyst to be an embryo, let alone a human being. As a matter of principle I reject the concept that there are paths of science which should remain untrodden.

I am among those who understand that human nature is innately untrustworthy. Fabulous predictions of a brave new world are no more convincing than the superstitions of the frightened old world.

E'