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Brave New World, Here We Come

The West seems congenitally incapable of restraining Brave New World. In the cause of eliminating suffering by any means necessary, no technology — including lethal — is apparently off limits.

Now, the we-never-say-no UK Embryo Authority — which once approved attempts at human cloning with cow eggs — has told CRISPR gene editors to feel free to edit away. From the BBC story:

It is the first time a country has considered the DNA-altering technique in embryos and approved it.

The research will take place at the Francis Crick Institute in London and aims to provide a deeper understanding of the earliest moments of human life. It will be illegal for the scientists to implant the modified embryos into a woman.

But the field is attracting controversy over concerns it is opening the door to designer — or GM — babies.

“Concerns”? That is the ultimate point!

Nascent human life is considered so much clay to be researched upon and destroyed. That will lead to fetal farming one day, in which fetuses will be similarly treated and destroyed.

This is 21st-century eugenics — and it will, in the end, become just as oppressive and anti-human equality as the original version.

Image credit: © Dr_Kateryna / Dollar Photo Club.

Cross-posted at Human Exceptionalism.

Wesley J. Smith

Chair and Senior Fellow, Center on Human Exceptionalism
Wesley J. Smith is Chair and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. Wesley is a contributor to National Review and is the author of 14 books, in recent years focusing on human dignity, liberty, and equality. Wesley has been recognized as one of America’s premier public intellectuals on bioethics by National Journal and has been honored by the Human Life Foundation as a “Great Defender of Life” for his work against suicide and euthanasia. Wesley’s most recent book is Culture of Death: The Age of “Do Harm” Medicine, a warning about the dangers to patients of the modern bioethics movement.

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