If the religious aspects of the story are to be taken seriously, then doesn it say that theres no incompatibility between religious values and genetic engineering of humans?
Yes, Noren’s simultaneous service as innovative priest and genetic engineer was meant to imply it. I’m not opposed to genetic engineering–or even to human cloning–assuming that techniques are first thoroughly proven and experimentation follows the ethical rules applying to all medical research. (Although I don’t think it will be safe to try with humans, except for cure of a few genetic diseases, in the foreseeable future, because not nearly enough is understood at present about the regulation of genes and the extent to which their combination, as distinguished from the presence of individual genes, affects human characteristics.) I believe there’s more to human beings than their genes–which we need more genetic research to demonstrate.
