Letters to the Editor
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I agree completely. We need to understand what we do, and think ahead.
This article is a careful and rational examination of the current and reasonably projected state of bio-technology. As much as this might shock us, we need to control our emotional reactions to it and consider the logic.
I think Goldstein makes excellent arguments by analogy to presently agreed upon concepts. I think this should be taken seriously, as a good start to a discussion, and not discarded as fearful speculation.
Considering the trajectory of human progress, I believe our most likely terminal adversary (what might end us) is ourselves. Sure, we could make the point of his argument moot by beating him to the punch with a global thermonuclear war, but that only reinforces my prior point. In the net, we are both individually and as a group more succeptable to human events, than "natural" ones. We collectively demonstrate our command of "natural" events, by our unchecked population growth.
If we are forward thinking and smart (and frankly, I think the evidence is against us on that) we need to fully consider the ramifications of what we do. Biotechnology can change us in ways we never expected, and the discrimination of good vs bad will only be made after the fact. We can mitigate that by thinking ahead. This article is a call to think ahead, and it should be heeded. All it asks us to do, is to anticipate the possibilities, and to plan and watch for them. In that, it is no more complex than asking the lumberjack to pay attention to where they stand, and which side of the tree they saw. Just because the concepts might be more complex, it is not fundamentally any different than that simpler analogy. We have grown sophisticated, and we now tread on complex ground. This is a good thing, to take a longer term perspective, it sure beats being cold and hungry.
As individuals and ultimately as a species, our success (and happiness) will be based on our ability to think outside the box. The box is our own minds; disposed to fear, superstition, and worst of all, unmerited hope and optimism. Problems won't just solve themselves, we need to solve them.
Scientific reasoning is not inborn or natural to humans, it must be learned. The best tool we have at our disposal for discriminating fact from fiction is logic and reason. If we aim to control the forces we unleash, be it fire in the past, or biotech in the future, we need to apply our learned capacity for rational thinking. To fail to do so, will get us burned. The article is completely on target in that regard, if we don't critically consider and engage this developing ability we have, it will surely bite us in the ass. Or more specifically, result in the end of humanity as we know it. We tell our children to look both ways before crossing the street, how is this any different?