The last several years have seen a sharpening of debate in the United States regarding the problem of steadily increasing medical expenditures, as well as inflation in health care costs, a scarcity of health care resources, and a lack of access for a growing number of people in the national health care system. Some observers suggest that we in fact face two crises: the crisis of scarce resources and the crisis of inadequate language in the discourse of ethics for framing a response. Laurie Zoloth offers a bold claim: to renew our chances of achieving social justice, she argues, we must turn to the Jewish tradition. That tradition envisions an ethics of conversational encounter that is deeply social and profoundly public, as well as offering resources for recovering a language of community that addresses the issues raised by the health care allocation debate. Constructing her argument around a careful analysis of selected classic and postmodern Jewish texts and a thoughtful examination of the Oregon health care reform plan, Zoloth encourages a radical rethinking of what has become familiar ground in debates on social justice.
When I first wrote an essay about the environment, it was late in the game, 1996. I wrote it for an interfaith group of scholars of religion, gathered to consider the relationship between consumption, reproduction, and the environment. We did not discuss global warming, nor did we mention climate change and most of us did not know about the data about which scientists were already alarmed. We were concerned about pollution, food scarcity, the destruction of habitats, and the irreparable damage to a fragile ecosystem-- ecological issues. I had just finished my graduate school training and had completed a book about health care ethics. My training in bioethics had focused on the dilemmas of the clinical encounter: one doctor, one patient, the dramas of death, life and intimate choices, raising important ethical conflicts, questions and competing moral appeals in medicine and then suggests the best reasons for choosing amidst them. National debates in bioethics were emerging about end of life care, and reproductive technology, but also, increasingly about theoretical questions, like "what would happen if a technology that doesn't exist (human cloning) would become globally popular and fundamentally change the nature of our species?" or "what if brain scans could be done from afar and governments use fMRIs to know your thoughts?" Bioethicists in later decades would come to worry about the most arcane of issues, or the rarest of human conditions"--
An in-depth look at genetic alteration in the natural world and the oppositions to it, seen through the case study of a gene drive for malaria. May We Make the World? is an engaging reflection on the history, nature, goal, and meaning of using a new technological idea—CRISPR-based genetic engineering—to alter the genome of the mosquito that carries malaria. This technology, called a “gene drive,” can alter the sex ratio in Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes, the key vector for falciparum, the deadliest form of malaria. P. Falciparum kills 400,000 people a year, largely the poorest children in the world among them. In her sobering examination of the issue, Laurie Zoloth considers the leading ethical arguments for and against gene drives, explores the regulatory efforts that have emerged long in advance of the science, and considers the philosophical questions raised by the struggle to eliminate malaria. The development of a gene drive for malaria will have far-reaching implications for it represents the first use of genetic engineering in the natural world and the first creation of a genetic variant intended to spread in the African wild beyond human control. Drawing on two decades of work, Zoloth brilliantly argues that we can understand the complex moral issues at stake only by carefully reflecting on the science, the nature of the local and global discourse about genetic engineering, and the long history of malaria, which—as it transformed from a worldwide disease to a tropical one—reshaped the world as we know it.
An in-depth look at genetic alteration in the natural world and the oppositions to it, seen through the case study of a gene drive for malaria. May We Make the World? is an engaging reflection on the history, nature, goal, and meaning of using a new technological idea—CRISPR-based genetic engineering—to alter the genome of the mosquito that carries malaria. This technology, called a “gene drive,” can alter the sex ratio in Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes, the key vector for falciparum, the deadliest form of malaria. P. Falciparum kills 400,000 people a year, largely the poorest children in the world among them. In her sobering examination of the issue, Laurie Zoloth considers the leading ethical arguments for and against gene drives, explores the regulatory efforts that have emerged long in advance of the science, and considers the philosophical questions raised by the struggle to eliminate malaria. The development of a gene drive for malaria will have far-reaching implications for it represents the first use of genetic engineering in the natural world and the first creation of a genetic variant intended to spread in the African wild beyond human control. Drawing on two decades of work, Zoloth brilliantly argues that we can understand the complex moral issues at stake only by carefully reflecting on the science, the nature of the local and global discourse about genetic engineering, and the long history of malaria, which—as it transformed from a worldwide disease to a tropical one—reshaped the world as we know it.
When I first wrote an essay about the environment, it was late in the game, 1996. I wrote it for an interfaith group of scholars of religion, gathered to consider the relationship between consumption, reproduction, and the environment. We did not discuss global warming, nor did we mention climate change and most of us did not know about the data about which scientists were already alarmed. We were concerned about pollution, food scarcity, the destruction of habitats, and the irreparable damage to a fragile ecosystem-- ecological issues. I had just finished my graduate school training and had completed a book about health care ethics. My training in bioethics had focused on the dilemmas of the clinical encounter: one doctor, one patient, the dramas of death, life and intimate choices, raising important ethical conflicts, questions and competing moral appeals in medicine and then suggests the best reasons for choosing amidst them. National debates in bioethics were emerging about end of life care, and reproductive technology, but also, increasingly about theoretical questions, like "what would happen if a technology that doesn't exist (human cloning) would become globally popular and fundamentally change the nature of our species?" or "what if brain scans could be done from afar and governments use fMRIs to know your thoughts?" Bioethicists in later decades would come to worry about the most arcane of issues, or the rarest of human conditions"--
The last several years have seen a sharpening of debate in the United States regarding the problem of steadily increasing medical expenditures, as well as inflation in health care costs, a scarcity of health care resources, and a lack of access for a growing number of people in the national health care system. Some observers suggest that we in fact face two crises: the crisis of scarce resources and the crisis of inadequate language in the discourse of ethics for framing a response. Laurie Zoloth offers a bold claim: to renew our chances of achieving social justice, she argues, we must turn to the Jewish tradition. That tradition envisions an ethics of conversational encounter that is deeply social and profoundly public, as well as offering resources for recovering a language of community that addresses the issues raised by the health care allocation debate. Constructing her argument around a careful analysis of selected classic and postmodern Jewish texts and a thoughtful examination of the Oregon health care reform plan, Zoloth encourages a radical rethinking of what has become familiar ground in debates on social justice.
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