The Future is Now: America Confronts the New Genetics - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0742521966 ISBN 13: 9780742521964

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002

Synopsis

Who could have imagined that President Bush's first special address to the nation would be about the coming genetic revolution? Or that one of the defining issues in American Politics would be stem cell research? Clearly, a national debate has begun that will not soon end ― one that will force America to confront whether genetics advances will contribute to human dignity or threaten it, whether there are moral limits to scientific progress, and in general what life will look like in the genetic age. Welcome to the politics of the 21st century.
This collection, edited by William Kristol and Eric Cohen, chronicles the start of this great national debate. It looks back, beginning with selections from Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis, who first imagined the possibility of a Brave New World many decades ago. It looks forward, moving on to the current debate over human cloning and stem cells, including articles, essays, speeches and testimony from genetic enthusiasts and critics, scientists and moralists, politicians and scholars. An original introduction by Kristol and Cohen maps out the major disagreements, the questions ahead, and their own view that America's unchecked faith in technological progress needs a radical reconsideration.
Other selections include essays by Leon Kass, Francis Fukuyama and Charles Krauthammer; testimony from Geron president Thomas O'Karma, bioethicist Daniel Callahan and actor-activist Michael J. Fox; speeches from the House of Representatives debate on human cloning; and the President's address to the nation.

About this title

About the Author:

William Kristol is editor of The Weekly Standard. Widely considered one of the nation's leading political analysts and commentators, Kristol regularly appears on major television public affairs shows. Eric Cohen is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center

From Booklist:

That a leading Republican strategist--Kristol--has coedited a volume of essays on genetic engineering says much about how deeply politics has come to affect the biological sciences. For though a few of the contributors claim bona fides as scientists, most come to the issue, like Kristol himself, with political credentials. A few voices speak from the left (Laurence Tribe and Tom Harkin), but most of the contributors sit on the right: George W. Bush, Orrin Hatch, and other Republican notables. But this conservative choir lapses into dissonance on some fundamental questions, especially those pertaining to stem-cell research. Even more pronounced cacophonies emerge as various conservative journalists and business leaders add their voices, some invoking religious and moral absolutes to oppose experimentation with human genes, others appealing to libertarian economics to advocate a new capitalism of genetic innovation. To their credit, the editors acknowledge and even highlight this rift. As a result, this compilation will attract not only those struggling to understand the ethical debate over bioscience but also those trying to predict the political fortunes of the Republican right. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0742521966
• ISBN 13: 9780742521964
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384
• Editor: William Kristol, Cohen Eric