China’s He Jiankui, who used Crispr to edit genome, says he is working on genetic diseases and suggests human embryo gene editing will one day be accepted
That’s a strawman fallacy, I did not say that. I did not make that argument.
He got lucky in doing something which is prohibited for a very good reason.
I can train for years to be a good air traffic controller. If I one day decide to have a plane take off from a runway while another is landing on it in the same direction and nobody notices or dies, I am still lucky despite all my training. Rules, especially safety rules, exist for a very good reason. They are written in blood.
Arrogant people defy such rules because they believe themselves to be better and other people suffer for it. The fact that this one person may have been lucky and succeeded makes no difference to the fact it should never have happened. It’s like looking at lottery winners as if they’re smart people for having sun the lottery and ignoring all the similar people who haven’t won but lost.
If I’m a trained electrician and I have no fuses on me, so I just stick in a piece of metal, it may work. People might live in that home to great satisfaction until it is torn down, none the wiser. But it’s not right. Because I’m taking unnecessary risks with their lives. One small oversight, failing appliance, or accident-prone cat and people will die in that house fire.
That’s a strawman fallacy, I did not say that. I did not make that argument.
He got lucky in doing something which is prohibited for a very good reason.
I can train for years to be a good air traffic controller. If I one day decide to have a plane take off from a runway while another is landing on it in the same direction and nobody notices or dies, I am still lucky despite all my training. Rules, especially safety rules, exist for a very good reason. They are written in blood.
Arrogant people defy such rules because they believe themselves to be better and other people suffer for it. The fact that this one person may have been lucky and succeeded makes no difference to the fact it should never have happened. It’s like looking at lottery winners as if they’re smart people for having sun the lottery and ignoring all the similar people who haven’t won but lost.
If I’m a trained electrician and I have no fuses on me, so I just stick in a piece of metal, it may work. People might live in that home to great satisfaction until it is torn down, none the wiser. But it’s not right. Because I’m taking unnecessary risks with their lives. One small oversight, failing appliance, or accident-prone cat and people will die in that house fire.