Progress

Frequently these days new articles come out talking about advances in technology, from time to time involving cloning or gametes in some way. People like to become very upset with the various possible related ramifications: “How unnatural!” “Think of what people will do with that technology, what horrible things might come about!”

Of course, yes, unsavory things might happen as a result, sometimes, but really, flying in airplanes is “unnatural.” And bad things sometimes occur in consequence. Same with cars–even more so. (Note that you don’t see the fundamentalists walking instead of driving because the Bible doesn’t mention cars, but then they get all worked up over IVF). Same with telephones–now we can harass people from afar! And with every other technological innovation. To me, I just don’t see these other types of advances as necessarily harmful. Frankly, whatever helps people have the children they desire sounds fine to me, or whatever works to cure disease.

Over time humans have evolved to be wonderful tool makers and users, with creative, flexible minds (in some ways, anyway), and recent scientific advanced are just more examples of us putting our abilities to work. Instead of leaving our bodies as we found them, we can determine where we lead them—-to controlled reproduction, to the rewriting of them to suit our vain, medical, or whimsical purposes, to healing the sick. It is up to us to put our superbly programmed brains to use to figure out how fix the disease-causing mistakes our genes never worked out, or to figure out how to increase mutual respect, or run cars on less expensive and more environmentally-friendly power, or make loved babies, and many more things that we will dream up as we go along.