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- LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists
heralded a brave new world Monday but skeptics said a genetic breakthrough
could usher in a sinister era of perfect people and death to the disabled.
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- ``The further science goes, the further the worst case
scenario goes,'' Steve Jenkins, a spokesman for the Church of England,
told Reuters. ``I'm not anti-science but there is no way that God is now
out of a job.''
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- He spoke after an international team of researchers said
they had mapped 97 percent of the human genome -- the genetic makeup of
the human body -- in a scientific accomplishment on a par with the discovery
of penicillin or the lunar landing.
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- ``This is the outstanding achievement not only of our
lifetime but in terms of human history,'' said Dr Michael Dexter, whose
Wellcome Trust funded the British arm of the project.
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- Carried out in 16 centers around the globe, the researchers
have effectively whittled down the human body to a complex string of letters
that should revolutionize the way doctors see the body and treat its shortfalls.
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- The potential benefits are huge: drugs tailor-made for
individuals, predictive testing, improved understanding of disease along
with gene therapy to put in-built wrongs to right.
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- Others fear the possible misuse of science in man's drive
to create a perfect world and say few will benefit.
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- ``It's the difference between using genetics to correct
something that has gone wrong and using them to create something considered
perfect,'' said Jenkins, who trained in science. ''The idea of designing
humans from scratch along with the prospect of an enormous increase in
abortion is not the world we want.''
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- While the scientists emphasized their so-called ``book
of life'' was just the beginning of a long road ahead, doubters said it
would benefit few and could turn out to be a giant step back to the sort
of eugenics practiced in Nazi Germany.
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- BLOND OR BRUNETTE, MADAME?
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- ``Mapping the human genome is a great human achievement,''
Richard Nicholson, editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics, said. ``Like
climbing Mount Everest, it will benefit few people, leaving most untouched.
But unlike climbing Mount Everest, it has the potential to damage large
numbers of people.''
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- Designer babies could be created, flawed fetuses killed.
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- The stigma of being anything less than perfect could
soar.
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- ``Disabled people feel a responsibility to raise the
alarm,'' said Agnes Fletcher of the Royal Association for Disability and
Rehabilitation. ``'New hope' for disabled people is accompanied by the
danger of disabled people and others experiencing increased discrimination
in employment, insurance, healthcare provision and education.''
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- U.S. lawmakers have already raised the alarm about medical
insurers screening out high-risk groups and employers passing over genetically
flawed staff.
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- ``Social policy must keep pace with science. The abuse
of genetic information must be prevented,'' said New York Democrat Louise
Slaughter, who is pushing for a bill to outlaw genetic discrimination.
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- Yet scientists say they are a long way from making sense
of their new alphabet soup and putting it to practical use. They point
out that the anatomy of the heart was worked out in 1543, while the first
heart transplant did not come until 1967.
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- New Scientists Up To Old Tricks
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- Yet man has been dabbling in eugenics for centuries.
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- Plato's Republic depicts a society chasing self-improvement
through selective breeding while references to eugenic ideals appear as
far back as the Old Testament.
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- English statistician Francis Galton took it further in
1869 by proposing a system of arranged marriages between men of distinction
and women of wealth to produce a gifted race.
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- Indeed it was Galton who coined the term ``eugenics,''
and the American Eugenics Society took up his baton in 1926 by proposing
restrictions on immigrants from ``inferior'' stock, along with sterilization
for the insane, retarded and epileptic.
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- The German Nazi party of the 1930s went to the wildest
extremes, using eugenics to justify its attempted extermination of European
Jews and other groups of people.
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