Richard Dawkins Quotes

There is a lot of hype and fear about this much-talked-about prospect of designer babies.

As a Christian, but also as a scientist responsible for overseeing the Human Genome Project, one of my concerns has been the limits on applications of our understanding of the genome. Should there be limits? I think there should. I think the public has expressed their concern about ways this information might be misused.

If we could honestly promise young couples that we knew how to give them offspring with superior character, why should we assume they would decline? Common sense tells us that if scientists find ways to greatly improve human capabilities, there will no stopping the public from happily seizing them.

If any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power.

The time to talk about it in schools and churches and magazines and debate societies is now. If you wait, five years from now the gene doctor will be hanging out the MAKE A SMARTER BABY sign down the street.

Personally, I don't think it is acceptable to manipulate the human germline for the purpose of changing some genetic traits that will be transmitted over generations.

In the 1920s and 1930s, scientists from both the political left and right would not have found the idea of designer babies particularly dangerous - though, of course, they would not have used that phrase.

The only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man.

No one really has the guts to say it, but if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we?

Of course it is a very simple matter to identify genes which might modify intelligence or memory and start thinking about whether you want to enhance a human, and the next generation is going to have to deal with that issue. Should we be trying to enhance humans rather than trying to educate them and so on?

Can we develop so sound and extensive a genetics that we can hope to breed, in the future, superior men?

The science of improvement of the human race germ plasm through better breeding

Renegade scientists and totalitarian loonies are not the folks most likely to abuse genetic engineering. You and I are--not because we are bad but because we want to do good. In a world dominated by competition, parents understandably want to give their kids every advantage. ... The most likely way for eugenics to enter into our lives is through the front door as nervous parents ... will fall over one another to be first to give Junior a better set of genes.

The advance of genetic engineering makes it quite conceivable that we will begin to design our own evolutionary progress.

There's always been trying at some stage to design people. And it will always be presented initially as a positive thing, as a way to weed out diseases. Of course you know it ultimately will be used in a bad way too, to create slaves or servants.

Many families would like to avoid burdening future generations with inherited diseases such as haemophilia or severe developmental disorders. But most would think it wrong to edit the genes that influence the 'normal' range of human variation, from eye colour to intelligence or athletic ability.

Genetic engineering is a result of science advancement, so I don't think that in itself is bad.

No one may have the guts to say this, but if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we?

We're dabbling in eugenics all the time, breeding ideal crops to replace less aesthetic or nutritious or hardy varieties; leveling forests to graze cattle or erect shopping malls and condos; planting groves of a few familiar trees that homeowners and industries prefer.

The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.

Traits acquired during one's lifetime - muscles built up in the gym, for example - cannot be passed on to the next generation. Now with technology, as it happens, we might indeed be able to transfer some of our acquired traits on to our selected offspring by genetic engineering.

Our increasing ability to alter our biology and open up the processes of life is now fueling a new cultural war.

We should place priority on the development of safeguards against unwise, permanent alterations in the human gene pool. Now that we have become principle agents of evolution, it is crucially important to recognize that the pursuit of short-term goals through human modification can be dangerously inconsistent with the long-term best interests of the human species.

Man has no right to claim the role of the creator of his likes or to choose their genetic prototypes, thus determining their personal characteristics .

Genetic engineering of are own species is not a question of if, but only a question of when….The human race may bifurcate into two subspecies of humans: Enhanced and Unenhanced.