Les Jones

Science > Junk Science

SNOPES: Do toilets in the southern hemisphere flush in the opposite direction of toilets in the northern hemisphere? An oldie but a goodie.

STEVEN MILLOY: Is NOW's stance on silicone breast implants based on science or politics?

NAPLES NEWS (VIA EUGENE VOLOKH): Yesterday was the 25th birthday of Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby.

It's hard to believe the uproar that the first test-tube baby caused. Pundits, religious leaders, politicians, and even some scientists warned that this was "playing God" and would lead to a moral breakdown of society.

Scientific American quoted Leon Kass, a biologist at the University of Chicago, who warned in 1978 that "the idea of humanness and of our human life and the meaning of our embodiment and our relation to ancestors and descendants" were at risk because of the first test-tube baby.

Fast forward to 2003. Test-tube babies are commonplace and the world hasn't self-destructed. But now people are pointing quaking fingers at the idea of cloning human beings.

"Cloning threatens the dignity of human procreation, giving one generation unprecedented genetic control over the next. It is the first step toward a eugenic world in which children become objects of manipulation and products of will." Who said that? The self-same Leon Kass.

The point is that every new capability in biology - particularly a new capability that deals with the creation of children - has been proclaimed to be wrong, evil or immoral by people who fear change. Yet today we live longer, healthier lives than any preceding generation of human beings.

Even the test-tube babies are getting along quite well, thank you.