So aparently Dubya was read a passage from [which is hilarious - he never read this $hit himself?] Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and ‘learned a lesson’ from the book – which was to ban further stem cell research.
What?
First and foremost – this ninja here really thinks we believe that he took anything away from Brave New World, other than some racy talk of promiscuous women and ‘savages’? My ninjas, PLEASE.
In a new [PMNP: as of Dec. 2007] piece in Commentary magazine, Jay Lefkowitz — who advised Bush on stem cells — reveals how the President formulated his 2001 policy. While Bush heard from a variety of groups on both sides of the issue, the turning point appeared to come when Lefkowitz read from Aldous Huxley’s fictional novel, Brave New World, and scared Bush:
A few days later, I brought into the Oval Office my copy of Brave New World, Aldous Huxley’s 1932 anti-utopian novel, and as I read passages aloud imagining a future in which humans would be bred in hatcheries, a chill came over the room.
“We’re tinkering with the boundaries of life here,†Bush said when I finished. “We’re on the edge of a cliff. And if we take a step off the cliff, there’s no going back. Perhaps we should only take one step at a time.â€
[FYI to Lefkowitz: anti-utopian novel = dystopian]
Seriously though – thanks for using this piece of literature to justify something that has nothing to do with the novel. Stem cells and Brave New World? This research isn’t about making test-tube babies, my ninjas – and even if it is in some cases, we can legislate against that specifically by addressing the problems we’ll undoubtedly be facing soon enough with designer babies, genetic engineering, etc. Not to mention that Bush and his administration have probably helped bring us closer to the real issues that Huxley was getting at – like an increasingly powerful government using technology to oppress/control it’s people, and the effects of excessive consumerism [I mean, $hit - they worship Henry Ford in the book] on a society. Using this as an example for your position against stem cell research is like citing Frankenstein while condemning the use of prosthetics.
And I just had to toss this in here, my favorite comment from the ‘Think Progress’ article:
Apparently no one has taken a copy of “1984″ into the oval office.
- G
Sure they did ‘G’ – Bush + Cheney just thought Orwell had written a ‘How To’.
::original article from Think Progress, via The New Republic:
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