Carl has an excellent post up, Engineering Life: The Dog that Didn't Bark in the Night:
...Erwin Chargaff, an eminent Columbia University biologist, called genetic engineering "an irreversible attack on the biosphere."
"The world is given to us on loan," he warned. "We come and we go; and after a time we leave earth and air and water to others who come after us. My generation, or perhaps the one preceding mine, has been the first to engage, under the leadership of the exact sciences, in a destructive colonial warfare against nature. The future will curse us for it."
At the same time, people warned that we were doing the unnatural, something that humans were not meant to do. "We can now transform that evolutionary tree into a network," declared Robert Sinsheimer, a biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "We can merge genes of most diverse origin--from plant or insect, from fungus or man as we wish."
It was not a power that Sinsheimer thought we could handle. "We are becoming creators--makers of new forms of life--creations that we cannot undo, that will live on long after us, that will evolve according to their own destiny. What are the responsibilities of creators--for our creations and for all the living world into which we bring our inventions?"
"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
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That article is just begging to be quote-mined by oppositionists. Far too much nuance involved.
His overall point, which you won't get from that excerpt, was that those concerns about plasmids and bacterial expression of human proteins turned out to be unfounded, and perhaps today's concerns about genetic engineering will turn out to be similarly unfounded.
Perhaps - but better to be too cautious than too hasty.
We don't need advanced technology to make poor decisions - look at the questionable tactics already used by agricultural corporations.
"At the same time, people warned that we were doing the unnatural, something that humans were not meant to do."
I love the smell of naturalistic fallacy in the morning. Smells like... hypocrisy.
The entire history of humankind is of us expanding our own influence, and reducing the influence that nature has over us. We didn't put up with water-borne diseases or Polio because they were "natural", nor are we putting up with AIDS and cancer today. We correct natural birth defects, treat natural infertility, and fertilize naturally barren land.
Not to say that it's good because we do it. That would be a kind of unnaturalistic fallacy, I suppose. But the point is, objections should be about the precise dangers particular technologies pose, and solutions should be well-matched technical solutions and systems of oversight.
We should emphatically not give into our inner luddite. First of all, because no other nations will, and we will be left behind. Second, I suppose, because regulated and legal is less dangerous than unregulated and on the black market. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, similar to our other unnatural innovations, biotech has the potential, if handled responsibly, to result in a more robust, more efficient, more human-friendly ecosystem than the highly-stressed one we have right now.
When I was reading this post and the linked post, immediately I began to think of the differences in thinking processes between Scientific community and what is considered the realm of "Humanities and Social Sciences". Both arguements brought up by Erwin Chargaff and Robert Sinsheimer are very weak, and I agree with Jason Failes: "I love the smell of naturalistic fallacy in the morning".
Both people seem to miss the nuances of the subject by relying on the term "natural". What is natural? I doubt either person could honestly tell me, and I doubt their answers would hold up compared with what millions of others would consider natural. Our natural is a constantly shifting idea, and not something that can be tagged down with the scientific method; it is inherently a theoretical topic. Discussions like these remind me that as time rolls on, the sciences and humanities need to come closer and closer to each other in their investigations of life. I don't intend this to sound like an attack on the Scientific community: I'm an English Major, and I'll happily admit that Scientist are doing the most important work in the world.
We don't need advanced technology to make poor decisions - look at the questionable tactics already used by agricultural corporations.
Possibly one can argue that agricultural (or rather chemo-pharmaceutical) corporations also have "advanced technology", at least in comparison with previous periods. In fact they are a good exapmle on how technology is not to be trusted blindly.
We correct natural birth defects, treat natural infertility...
Reducing natural selection is just "bread for today and hunger for tomorrow", probably. We are perpetuating the defects, nothing more. It can be "humanitarian" but not beneficial in the long run. And there are other much cheaper (less elitist) humanitarian priorities, I believe, notably education, freedom and equal rights for all.
Do you think that people who can barely pay for a mosquito net or anti-malaria drugs care about fertility treatments? That's a silverspoon caprice as much as plastic surgery.
... and fertilize naturally barren land.
In fact we mostly erode naturally midling land. Most terrains (Mediterranean, Africa) are being eroded and damaged by aggresive agriculture techniques imported from the much deeper soils of the north. If mediterraneans did not incorporate the heavy plough in the Middle Ages, it was for a reason, not because they were stupid... but now they have taken up on deep soil techniques as well, destroying the land.
Again "bread for today, hunger for tomorrow". No technology will restore the eroded desertified land - or it will be much more expensive than using low impact techniques.
What counts as 'advanced' technology depends entirely on our position in time. Something we might consider a trivial and low-tech solution would have been completely unimaginable to our distant ancestors.
Lots of 'mundane', modern technology is incredibly destructive, and people of the past would have been right to fear it. Instead they mostly seem to have romanticized the idea of "Progress".