Some may find it surprising that I’m not a total technology zealot—in fact, much of my philosophy towards tech may even label me as a borderline luddite. An important part of technological progress, I believe, is to recognize the consequences it brings about. This concept will be more important than ever in the next few decades as technology brings us to unforeseen heights. This isn’t complete speculation; we can expect to see life altering advances fairly soon, mainly due to significant leaps in biotechnology. While advances such as these are overwhelmingly beneficial, they carry within them the seeds of something more ethically complex. Biotechnology is an especially tricky domain since it gives us the potential to control life and death—the potential to play God.Take pet cloning for example: on the surface, it may appear to be a harmless way for a pet owner to keep the memory of their beloved pet alive, albeit at an extremely high cost. Dig a little deeper though, and the moral ambiguities abound. First off, the cloned pet will never be exactly the same as the source pet. While the genetics will be identical, that doesn’t take into account differing environmental factors. Someone hoping to reclaim all of Fido’s nostalgic personality quirks will certainly feel cheated.
There’s also considerable work that needs to be done in perfecting the cloning process. A quick Wikipedia search reveals that in cloning the first commercial pet cat, cloning firm Genetics Savings and Clone went through many kittens before finding one that survived more than two months. Is this high rate of failure fair to the animals that die young? Even the few that survive more than a few months will most likely be plagued with potential health problems. In the end, cloning personal pets seems like a technology we’re better off without. With the thousands of animals waiting for adoption in shelters, and even more homeless and stray, how can we justify spending so much to reclaim what is, in the end, a flawed memory?
Soon we won’t be far off from the future presented in The 6th Day, an Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi film that seems more prescient than ever now. In that film human cloning is outlawed, while pet-cloning services are commonplace. But of course, just because human cloning is outlawed doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist on the black market. We can expect the same sort of issues when human cloning becomes a reality. Is it justified for the parents of a dying child to clone him? If given the same name as the original child, is the clone meant to take over the life of the original? Is individuality something robbed from clones? Complexities such as this will assure that human cloning will most likely never be legal in our future. Just as in the film however, being outlawed will not make it impossible.
If you couldn’t tell, I have significant issues with pet and human cloning, but that doesn’t mean I’m entirely pessimistic when it comes to biotechnology. As we gain a better understanding of genetics and the technology progresses, I am certain that we will witness incredible medical feats fairly soon. Cures for cancer, and AIDS are on the hit list for sure, but that will take time.
Even sooner than that, we may see a new sort of flu vaccine to combat against a potential (and some say certain) avian flu pandemic. With around $7 billion in emergency federal funding allocated for an avian flu solution, researchers are working overtime to be the first to release an effective and easily deployable vaccine. Deployment is the biggest problem; according to an article in the January 2006 issue of Popular Science, How to Stop a Pandemic, manufacturing a typical flu vaccine currently takes about six months. If one researcher has their way, we will eventually be able to mass-produce vaccines more quickly by relying on a new method for growing the cultures.
It has been recently shown that this new strain of avian bird flu isn’t all that different from the one responsible for the 1918 flu pandemic—that we may be able to avoid yet another is testament alone for progress. I only hope that in making further technological advances, we look before we leap.
Amherst Bytes #18: On Ethics and Progress
Some may find it surprising that I’m not a total technology zealot—in fact, much of my philosophy towards tech may even label me as a borderline luddite. An important part of technological progress, I believe, is to recognize the consequences it brings about. This concept will be more important than ever in the next few decades as technology brings us to unforeseen heights. This isn’t complete speculation; we can expect to see life altering advances fairly soon, mainly due to significant leaps in biotechnology. While advances such as these are overwhelmingly beneficial, they carry within them the seeds of something more ethically complex. Biotechnology is an especially tricky domain since it gives us the potential to control life and death—the potential to play God.Take pet cloning for example: on the surface, it may appear to be a harmless way for a pet owner to keep the memory of their beloved pet alive, albeit at an extremely high cost. Dig a little deeper though, and the moral ambiguities abound. First off, the cloned pet will never be exactly the same as the source pet. While the genetics will be identical, that doesn’t take into account differing environmental factors. Someone hoping to reclaim all of Fido’s nostalgic personality quirks will certainly feel cheated.
There’s also considerable work that needs to be done in perfecting the cloning process. A quick Wikipedia search reveals that in cloning the first commercial pet cat, cloning firm Genetics Savings and Clone went through many kittens before finding one that survived more than two months. Is this high rate of failure fair to the animals that die young? Even the few that survive more than a few months will most likely be plagued with potential health problems. In the end, cloning personal pets seems like a technology we’re better off without. With the thousands of animals waiting for adoption in shelters, and even more homeless and stray, how can we justify spending so much to reclaim what is, in the end, a flawed memory?
Soon we won’t be far off from the future presented in The 6th Day, an Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi film that seems more prescient than ever now. In that film human cloning is outlawed, while pet-cloning services are commonplace. But of course, just because human cloning is outlawed doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist on the black market. We can expect the same sort of issues when human cloning becomes a reality. Is it justified for the parents of a dying child to clone him? If given the same name as the original child, is the clone meant to take over the life of the original? Is individuality something robbed from clones? Complexities such as this will assure that human cloning will most likely never be legal in our future. Just as in the film however, being outlawed will not make it impossible.
If you couldn’t tell, I have significant issues with pet and human cloning, but that doesn’t mean I’m entirely pessimistic when it comes to biotechnology. As we gain a better understanding of genetics and the technology progresses, I am certain that we will witness incredible medical feats fairly soon. Cures for cancer, and AIDS are on the hit list for sure, but that will take time.
Even sooner than that, we may see a new sort of flu vaccine to combat against a potential (and some say certain) avian flu pandemic. With around $7 billion in emergency federal funding allocated for an avian flu solution, researchers are working overtime to be the first to release an effective and easily deployable vaccine. Deployment is the biggest problem; according to an article in the January 2006 issue of Popular Science, How to Stop a Pandemic, manufacturing a typical flu vaccine currently takes about six months. If one researcher has their way, we will eventually be able to mass-produce vaccines more quickly by relying on a new method for growing the cultures.
It has been recently shown that this new strain of avian bird flu isn’t all that different from the one responsible for the 1918 flu pandemic—that we may be able to avoid yet another is testament alone for progress. I only hope that in making further technological advances, we look before we leap.