Dr Lee Silver from Princeton is giving a keynote speech at De Lange V



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送交者: hw 于 2005-3-07, 21:10:16:

De Lange Conference V:
Frontiers of Medicine: Society, Pharmacology and Membrane Biology in the
Genomic Era

Keynote Address
Lecture is free and open to the public; no registration is required

Lee M. Silver, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Molecular Biology
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
http://24.225.233.42/index.html

Monday, March 7, 2005
7:30 p.m.
Shepherd School of Music, Stude Concert Center
Rice University

Title:
"Challenging Mother Nature: Biotechnology in a Spiritual World"

Abstract:
Biotechnology is the most contentious of human inventions.? It is also,
arguably, the oldest, most widespread, and most powerful.? Biotechnology's
dual capacity to unveil life's secrets and to mold life's essential
properties challenges some deeply rooted claims of limits to human knowledge
and power over the natural world.? Honest theologians and others readily
admit that faith in a higher or deeper spiritual authority frames their
antagonism to one biotechnology or another.? Much more commonly, however,
seasoned players on all sides of the political debate studiously avoid
drawing on spirituality when speaking to the public-at-large.? Conservative
religionists strive to appear rational and scientific in their opposition to
human-affecting biotechnologies.? New Age defenders of "natural" organic
food claim to be non-religious and rational in their conviction -- often
unconscious-- that Mother Nature knows best.? And secularists of all stripes
are uncomfortable debating the existence and nature of spirits or soul under
any circumstance, but especially when others don't raise the issue first.
Spirituality is an integral part of the emotional heritage of the human
species.? But different spiritual conceptualizations can bring forth
acceptance or opposition to different biotech applications.

The Judeo-Christian tradition embraces a tight one-to-one linkage between
body and soul which, in its most extreme form, leads to the belief that
human embryo research is murder.? According to traditional Judeo-Christian
doctrine, however, plants and animals have no soul.? This worldview has led
the U.S. government to take a laissez-faire attitude toward genetically
modified plants (GMOs).? In contrast, post-Christian Western Europeans --
who have turned away in droves from the Church and a transcendent God --
fill the spiritual void left in its wake with a faith in Mother Nature
below.? In this light, genetic engineering is a violation of the presumed
"integrity" of an untampered "natural" Nature.? Meanwhile, Asian countries
like China, Singapore, India, and South Korea have embraced both human
embryo stem cell research and genetically modified crops, without much
protest.? In Eastern cultures, biotechnology is not viewed as a challenge to
a master God because no such master is thought to be in charge.
Furthermore, Eastern spirits are much more loosely attached to bodies and
beyond the reach of any scientist.? Ultimately, biotechnology and rational
control over the biosphere will be required to protect humanity and to
develop a system of life on which our descendants can depend for sustenance
and spiritual comfort.? And slowly, inevitably, over centuries or millennia,
Human Nature will remake all of Mother Nature in the image of the idealized
world that exists within our own minds, which is what most people want.




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