Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!gnome
From: gnome@olivea.atc.olivetti.com (Gary)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Human/Chimp Hybrids? Trogs
Message-ID: <49480@olivea.atc.olivetti.com>
Date: 29 Sep 90 06:00:11 GMT
References: <27093@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino, CA
Lines: 36

From article <27093@boulder.Colorado.EDU>, by binkley@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Jon Binkley):
> In article <34305@cup.portal.com> mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson)
> writes, in response to Michael Siemon:
> 
>>Even simple stuff like fixing a broken gene or implanting a few
>>fetal brain cells brings the would-be Jeremy Rifkins out of the woodwork.
> 
> Precisely.  And if beneficial genetic research brings out the
> anti-technology troglodytes in droves, what do you think the kind
> of research you're proposing would do?  What it would do is bring
> on such a backlash that no more valuable research would be performed.
> Science doesn't operate in a social vacuum.

This is not true, at least not in real-time.
Lots of "science" operates in a social vacuum -
It's called "Secret", as in Military Secret.
Not only can you not stop it, you can't even know what
IT is, at least not for many years after the fact.

Before you start claiming that research into a subject can be
stopped by "saying it ain't so", then think back into where
many of the major technological inovations in the last 100 years
came from - military and aerospace spinoffs.
Knowledge is not good or bad, but it is valuable either way.
The more stupidity (intentional ignorance) that you spread
throughout a populace, the greater chances that the "bad"
side of science will be used.

Just remember what it would take to control research in all areas
of all the countries of the world.  Implement it, and you'd have the
reality that you fear the most.

Gary

PS- Isn't there a better place for this?  Something like
    sci.bio.flames?