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In Their Own Words

  • "Chimeras [human-animal crossbreads] or parahumans might legitimately be fashioned to do dangerous or demeaning jobs. As it is now, low-grade work is shoved off on moronic and retarded individuals, the victims of uncontrolled reproduction. Should we not program such workers 'thoughtfully' instead of accidentally, by means of hybridization?" — Dr. Joseph Fletcher, Harvard University professor widely recognized as the "patriarch of bioethics"

  • "The horizons of the new eugenics are, in principle, boundless. For the first time in all time, a living creature understands its origin and can undertake to design its future..." —  Dr. Robert Sinsheimer, molecular biologist, Chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz, initiator of the Human Genome Project.
  • "No newborn infant should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment, and that if it fails these tests it forfeits the right to live.” — Dr. Francis Crick Nobel Prize Laureate 1962, co-discovery of DNA.   Crick also favored a scheme for licensing parenthood or a tax on children to encourage "those people who are more socially desirable to have more children.”

  • "If you are really stupid, I would call that a disease...so I'd like to get rid of that....People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great." — Dr. James Watson, president of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, New York, Nobel Prize Laureate, co-discovery of DNA, advocating for manipulation of the human genome.

  • "Science is moving at such a fast pace that scientists have proven that they can create headless mice through removal of genes in the embryo that control development of the head. But the body would have the capacity to keep the organs functional for use as transplants.... Embryonic stem cells, which holds promise of cure of any organ, is but a slow move towards immortality." — Dr. P.B. Desai world renowned oncologist in India

  • "If biological manipulation is indeed a slippery slope, then we are already sliding down that slope now and may as well enjoy the ride.'' Gregory Stock,  Director of the Program on Medicine, Technology, and Society at UCLA’s School of Public Health and author of Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future

  • "There is a close analogy between a human body invaded by a cancer and a nation afflicted with subpopulations whose inborn defects cause them to become social liabilities. Just as in cancer the best treatment is to eradicate the parasitic growth as quickly as possible, the eugenic defense against the dysgenic social effects of afflicted subpopulations is of necessity limited to equally drastic measures . . . . When these inferior elements are not effectively eliminated from a population, then—just as when the cells of a malignant tumor are allowed to proliferate throughout a human body—they destroy the host body as well as themselves." — Dr. Konrad Lorenz, Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, 1973.  (Taking Eugenics Seriously)

     

     

 

Critics of Transhumanism

 
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This public education effort is sponsored by the Elliot Institute as part of its Coalition to Regulate Human Engineering and Human-Animal Crossbreeding project.

copyright 2006 Elliot Institute