Genetics Is About You, Me and Our Future

After recent discussions over genetic testing for autism (both prenatal and postnatal), I’m glad to have found this Philadelphia Inquirer editorial by Dr. Arthur Caplan, Emanuel & Robert Hart Professor of Bioethics, chair of the Department of Medical Ethics, and director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

The real battle – the battle that will come to occupy the moral center stage of American politics, morality, law, public policy, editorial pages, and water-cooler discussions – will be waged over where genetic engineering ought to take us and whether we are satisfied to leave it to scientists to guide us there.
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Sometimes it seems scientists are trying to do shady stuff without caring what anybody thinks. It is easy to let the love of the laboratory blind one to the need to engage one’s fellow citizens in the adventure and drama that is genetics. Few scientists do so. All ought to.

The editorial makes me want to stand up and cheer. You must go read it. RIGHT NOW.

Via Free Association

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