Since the discovery of the structure of DNA and the birth of the genetic
age, a powerful vocabulary has emerged to express science's growing
command over the matter of life. Armed with knowledge of the code that
governs all living things, biology and biotechnology are poised to edit,
even rewrite, the texts of life to correct nature's mistakes.
Yet, how far should the capacity to manipulate what life is at the
molecular level authorize science to define what life is for? This
book looks at flash points in law, politics, ethics, and culture to
argue that science's promises of perfectibility have gone too far.
Science may have editorial control over the material elements of life,
but it does not supersede the languages of sense-making that have helped
define human values across millennia: the meanings of autonomy,
integrity, and privacy; the bonds of kinship, family, and society; and
the place of humans in nature.