Mitchellmemo25

There is an apparent shift back in biology from a discipline that should study to one that should create. Biology started out as studying (animals, development, etc.) then got “practical” with eugenics, which then fell out of favor and now the “practicality” is back with genetic screening, life extension, etc. I would say it came back at the end of 1970’s/beginning of 80’s (with things like IVF). The discourse seems quite similar however to the eugenics discourse (not saying they actually are eugenicists, but the discourse has certainly shifted back to one that is quite similar). Take this statement, “We are about to reap a harvest sown at the turn of the century…The objective is the control of the genetic architecture of many of the individual life forms which inhabit this planet—including humans—for the benefit of our species.” That is biologist Barry Kiefer in 1983. Also, the number of “let’s change the species” books that have come out in the last years is quite amazing (after a large lull following eugenics’ downfall).

Further, the idea of what is possible has shifted significantly in the past fifteen years. The common idea used to be that there were limits in how much one could modify life. Much of that (if not all of it) died with the birth of Dolly the sheep. The idea that a cell went inexorably to death after birth was no longer the dogma of biology. Moreover, a team at Wisconsin a year later figured out how to make a collection of human cells divide indefinitely (thus making them immortal).