Ian Wilmut, "Cloning People," and:

• Jane Goodall, "Selections from Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe"
• Michael Pollan, "Playing God in the Garden"

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Wilmut and Goodall: Animal Experimentation and the Quality of Human Life

Jane Goodall describes chimpanzees as "more like us than is any other living creature." But if Ian Wilmut and his colleagues are successful in creating animals who can generate donor organs for humans, will Goodall's statement be true any longer? How is one to decide when using animals to improve the quality of life for humans is acceptable? Is this a spiritual decision, an ethical choice, or something one comes to through reasoned argument?

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Pollan and Wilmut: The Ethics of Playing God in the Barnyard

In "Playing God in the Garden," Michael Pollan discusses recent efforts to alter the genetic makeup of plants. With Pollan's essay in mind, we might say that Wilmut is engaged in the next logical step in this process--that he and his fellow researchers are engaged, in effect, in "playing god in the barnyard." What dangers are posed by these projects and what possibilities are opened up? Should ethics be allowed to play a role in deciding whether work of this kind is allowed to go forward? At what point in the process do ethical considerations become significant for you: do you make a distinction between the biogenetic reengineering of plants and the biogenetic reengineering of animals?

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