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Paul Billings, Marcy Darnovsky, Andrew Imparato
What really is the nature of the human genome project? It is a rough draft, with an error rate of 30%. The human genome is not a blueprint for making a human being. Our genes are not particularly different from those in mice and dogs. As genetic engineering progresses, issues from the past return to the fore, among them eugenics, genetic discrimination, classification of people as uninsurable or unemployable. These violate the fundamental right to privacy, including genetic privacy.
There is a new twist in human genetic engineering, techno-eugenics, a technology involving human clones that makes “designer babies” possible. This technology would employ direct manipulation of parents’ genes in order to “improve” their offspring. The risks of cloning are huge. In the animals actually born (the total is less than 1%), many abnormalities occur either immediately or later. We do need global bans on human cloning and on human germ-line engineering, and effective regulations of other new
genetic and reproductive technologies. These are the most immediately consequential decisions that humanity has ever faced.(40 minutes, 2002)
<http://www.gene-watch.org> <http://www.genetics-and-society.org>
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