Right-Wing Biological Dread:

The Subhumans are coming! The Subhumans are coming!

‘Mary Shelley, move over. Conservative intellectuals William Kristol, Francis Fukuyama, and J. Bottum are spinning far darker visions than the author of Frankenstein in their frantic campaign to stop medical progress by derailing biotechnological research. In a recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Kristol and co-author Eric Cohen were horrified that “in trying to make human beings live indefinitely, our scientists have begun mixing our genes with those of cows, pigs, and jellyfish.”

(…) These conservative intellectuals have confused being human with merely having human DNA. They are treating human DNA as though it were sacred. But DNA is merely the chemical on which the digital code for how to make proteins is inscribed. Inserting a human gene in a pig or a petunia is not an act of sacrilege. Human DNA in a pig or petunia will make a protein, not a human being. Human beings really are more than the recipe it takes to make them.’ Reason