ABSTRACT
Science has at least two other problems to confront, namely the speed of progress and how the risks brought about by the new biotechnological possibilities (Hans Jonas spoke about bio-genetic arts) could impact human beings. The rapid pace of progress in the field of biotechnology and other domains has become commonplace. for example, in the early 1980s, embryonic stem cell lines in mice were derived for the first time. it took seventeen years (1998) for this procedure to succeed in human beings. And recently, human embryos were even derived from cloned embryos. Here is another case. When the suggestion was made to sequence the human genome in the mid-1980s – that is, to read it building block for building block – it would have taken ten thousand years to finish this project with the technology available back then. However, it was completed in 2001, or rather 2003. Meanwhile, genetic data for more than 130 living organisms is now available, among them the genomes for mice and rice.
