Sir, - The prediction by Dr. Patrick Dixon (The Irish Times, October 20th) that headless human clones will be used to grow organs for transplant surgery highlights, the misgivings that many people - not just Greens and radical ecologists - have about genetic engineering. If science has got it so wrong in the past with DDT, CFCs, thalidomide, nuclear energy etc., what guarantees have we that the gene engineers are going to get it right?
The question is particularly urgent, given that the main motive appears to be financial rather than scientific. If this was not the case, there would not be such widespread resistance to labelling foods which have been genetically manipulated. If - like Flann O'Brien's policeman who was part-bicycle - there are tomatoes which are part-fish, then at the very least I want to know which ones they are, so I can avoid them. What is the problem with making this kind of information available?
The development of gene technology raises not just ethical and health issues but also aesthetic considerations, exemplified horrifically in films like Cronenberg's The Fly.
Pre-modern culture left many things to be desired in an intellectual sense, but it gave us Chartres Cathedral. The gene manipulators have given us headless frogs and a mouse with an ear on its back. It is hardly surprising that so many of us have problems with their work. - Yours, etc.,
Christchurch, Dublin 8.