Biology’s Chernobyl. Chernobyl proved that a badly designed and badly managed reactor could cause an accident capable of killing a small number of people and slightly increasing the cancer risk in a large area nearby. The worst nuclear power could do was thereby proved to be modest damage compared with the safety and environmental record of coal, oil and wind. Yet Chernobyl instead left the impression that all nuclear power was unsafe. Likewise, the Raelians may have just made it more difficult for science to convince a skeptical public that reproductive technologies and genetic engineering can deliver benefits. No matter that they have already begun to deliver magnificent benefits: fertility for the infertile, safe insulin for diabetics, new drugs for cancer victims, individually targeted drugs for mental patients, vitamin-A-rich rice for poor children in poor countries–even the promise of stem cells to repair the damage wrought by Parkinson’s disease. Against these benefits, the disaster of one sick child produced by the premature use of reproductive cloning might seem to be a small setback. But public debate does not work that way. It takes benefits for granted and makes a massive fuss of costs. The principal victim of the backlash to Eve will be stem-cell research. [Mobilog]
Cloning….
