Sure it’s going to happen. Science will provide the know-how and parents who can afford it will do the best they can to predispose their children genetically to be handsome strong geniuses. The question isn’t IF it happens; it’s WHEN it happens, how will Christians respond? And how will we handle the instances when the intended predisposition goes horribly wrong and we get a stupid homocidal monster instead of the planned blond-haired blue-eyed physicist?

In faith, Dave
Viva Texas

One can understand the temptation, but the case cited here involves such a ‘normal’ deficiency, that you have to wonder about the Greenwoods’ priorities. I know families in my parish community who have children with far more serious ‘deficiencies’ and I also know – on a personal level – the struggle that comes from being self-limited to natural (pro-life) methods of enhancing fertility. If only all our problems were on the level of those of the Greenwood family.

Finally, finally, we get to the matter that is - or should be - most important to Anglicans and all Christians, the ability of science and technology to engineer biological process. What is there in scripture that will help up determine what should and should not be done?

  Peirce is correct. Such engineering will be done because there are so many who believe in the value of perfectability in this life. The question then become what the government should do, on the one hand, and what religion should do on the other. The dangers here are enormous, and the issue of releasing teratagens is the least of them. You know that someone will succesfully clone a human being. Well, why not? But for a Christian, this poses terrible questions, since such a child is a duplicate. Does it have a soul? Is it even a human being, since there has been no egg/sperm union which is the uniform inception of all humanity? Has it inherited man’s sinful nature? And if the clone has been genetically enhanced - taller, blonder, stronger, brighter - who is his maker? To whom, spiritually, does he owe allegiance? Who are his parents? Can he even be baptised? The questions roil every water, spiritual and secular, and as far as I can see, our church has not even begun to face the inevitable. Why worship a God, when you can be like a god yourself?

  For a starter, see “Beyond Therapy,” Kass et al. A Report by the President’s Council on Bioethics. This is essential reading. Wht will it take for the Anglican communion to wake up to the freight train that is bearing down on it even as I write? Larry