Friday, January 24, 2003

Darwin, meet Frankenstein

Here scientists are studying evolution:
Talk about funny-looking birds: The duck had a quail's pointy beak and the quail a duck's flat bill.
But University of California scientists who switched birds' beaks through a little egg tinkering had more than avian oddity in mind: The experiment uncovered some of the key cellular players in bird evolution, and may even lead to better understanding of what causes facial birth defects such as cleft palate.
Isn't it amazing what they can do with this tinkering? In principle they could do it to human embryos too.

Of course I use the term "human" only to identify just one pathetic species among millions. Certainly no one would ever confer personhood to a fetus, so the scientists can do whatever they want, right? No slippery slopes here...

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