I take a jealous pride in my Simian ancestry. I like to think that I was once a magnificent hairy fellow living in the trees, and that my frame has come down through geological time via sea jelly and worms and Amphioxius, Fish, Dinosaurs and Apes. Who would exchange these for the pallid couple in the Garden of Eden? Quoted in Albert Rosenfeld, "When Man Becomes as God," Saturday Review, December 10, 1977, p. 17; (W. N. P. Barbellion, biologist)
Given the limited choice between the noble beast and the pallid couple sentenced to unremitting toil and punishment, the choice is easy. I too would prefer to swing along with Barbellion! But Barbellion wrote in the early years of this century; his successors in the field of molecular biology and medical technology have refined the question. Modern biological techniques and the lifting of conventional restraints on human behavior have shortened immensely the gap between new developments and the repercussions they have on our lives.
A current observer writes in an article entitled "When Man Becomes as God": "Inherent in this molecular biology is a large spin-off potential for all the biomedical sciences . . . . Inherent in it also are risks and worries . . . . Beyond these concerns, the sociobiologists' emphasis on the genetic roots of human behavior raises fundamental questions about the human condition—past, present, and future—questions that are . . . ultimately religious." ibid.,;
