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Ethics: the reason people do not trust Gene Engineers.
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Gene Engineering is a term applied to practices of the Molecular Biology professions. In general,
most people have very scant knowledge of the technical details of Molecular Biology, and cannot
easily obtain comprehensible information on the subject. The only criteria available, then, to the
the general population is their life-experience in evaluating human nature and the ethics of persons
who may be doing something which they have to judge.
Judging is a practical necessity in every life. We all have to do it regularly, and on many subjects
which we have an incomplete knowledge. We have learned to substitute judgements on the ethical
trustworthiness of the salesman making a sales pitch to us, when we cannot follow the abstruse
details and logic of the underlying complexity.
Gene-Engineering is one subject which most have to judge the messenger, not on the merits of the
message, but upon the evaluable merits of the messenger. It is the self-evident lack of ethics of
gene-engineers which causes the deep uneasiness about the actions they take. The gene-engineers are
their own worst enemy, NOT the ignorance of their judging public opposition.
To say the lack of ethics in gene-engineers is self-evident is to point to the intrusive nature of
their activities, which is neither invited nor voluntary. This is the ultimate archetype of rape and
violation.
Gene engineers on their part, are very familiar with the general exclusiveness of their professional
knowledge, more and more of which is proprietary, trade secret, or too technically specialized to be
mastered by even a minority of the public.
They certainly deserve the blame for pushing on in activities where the public has expressed fears
and anxieties. To aggressively ignore these fears is the second most damaging strike against
gene-engineers.
Deliberately and willfully, inflicting terrorism (as extreme cases of fearfulness and anxiousness
might legitimately be labelled) is not the action of the ethically-minded by any fair and ordinary
definition.
The visible fact that gene-engineers are unable to practice self-restrain is the essence of what we
normaly classify as unethical nature, and this disregard of self-restraint is hallmark of unsavory
and criminal types we all abhore.
That the unrestrained invasiveness and terrorism is motivated by pure selfish monetary motivation
with disregard of long-term consequences or unintended collateral damage is the final capstone of
the elements required to judge that the fruits of the minds of the gene-engineers can never be
better than their nature, and their nature is self-evident.
There will come a time within a decade where it will be common practice to impose restraints on
those who cannot restrain themselves. In the academic fields it will come in the form of revocation
of the diploma of graduates and post graduates, and lifelong barring from employment related to
gross breach of ethics causing verifiable largescale suffering through deliberate action, whether
negligently through excessive selfishness, or deliberately through sociopathic unwilingness to be
concerned about the well-being of others.
Universities will be disbanded and their assets distributed by court executor for failure to enforce
lifelong ethical control in exchange for the certification of transmitted knowledge (diploma or
degrees). In other words, I am predicting that within ten years some ecological disaster worse than
all the preceeding will have tried peoples patience too much. The boom will be lowered, and the era
of science without ethics will close forever.
There will be no more tolerance for experimenting with the only planet known to harbor life in
reckless fashion. Lobbying for the end to zero-ethics science is already underway.
Signed, Lion Kuntz
email: LionKuntz@AOL.COM
http://msnhomepages.talkcity.com/VolunteerSt/lifesaviors/
http://lifesaviors.nav.to/microfarming
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 11 2000 - 22:02:12 EDT