What is the greatest fear people have about biotechnology?
It’s hard to say. Some, mostly religious people, worry about usurping God’s powers. There are people more on the left who are inclined to worry about the use of these powers by some people over other people, the pacification of populations producing a certain kind of conformity. There are other people who don’t so much worry about the technologies themselves but worry about unequal access to the benefits. Does the report debunk some fears about biotechnology as illegitimate? There is a lot of hype and fear – exaggerated promises and exaggerated dangers – and one of the things this report is able to say with some confidence is that this much-talked-about prospect of “designer babies,” in which parents can determine in advance the precise genetic makeup of their children, is scientifically unfeasible [now] and unfeasible for the future. This is way down the road…. The virtual impossibility of engineering the precise changes you want means that genetically engineered designer babies are
