Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle over Women's Freedom by Janice Raymond

Author:Janice Raymond [Raymond, Janice]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Health, Environment., The Body, Technology
Publisher: Spinifex Press
Published: 1994-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

Accusations of Antitechnology and the Reign of the Experts

Critics of technologies who warn about potential or existing damage and complications are generally termed Luddites (those who want to destroy technology), doomsayers, and antitechnological Cassandras (prophets who predict disaster but are not believed). The most tragic consequence of this name calling is that the defenders of reproductive technology are more concerned with criticizing the critics than they are with investigating the risks to women.

In his keynote address to the 1988 American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, David Baltimore, who later became president of Rockefeller University (after having been implicated in a widely publicized case of scientific fraud, and eventually was forced to resign his presidency), said, “To me…the most powerful retrograde forces are outmoded ideas and concepts that clash with progressive thinking, attempting to suppress new knowledge and new concepts.”40 As the newly installed president of this scientific organization, Baltimore was taking up the cudgels to answer those critics of science who, in his opinion, are trying “to stop all DNA research…pitting laboratory investigators against those who see only hazards in new technology.”41 Along with the critics of DNA, Baltimore lumped in animal rightists, critics of biotechnology, critics of the human genome project and clone banks, and the creation science movement.

Baltimore sidestepped the real issues that underlie the critique of science: expertise versus elitism, entrenched professional priorities versus sociopolitical priorities, and lack of accountability versus the responsibility of scientists to the public. Journalists convey very little about the ethics and politics of science, the structure of scientific institutions, the priorities that guide technological decisions, and the ideologies of science in the making. The accusations of antitechnology portray critics as having a primitive mindset that stands in the way of progress.

For example, legislation regulating experiments on human embryos in Victoria was branded as “holding back research that could lead to important medical advances….”42 People who raise moral, social, and political objections to reproductive engineering are “rigid thinkers.” Science writers quote self-serving sources like Dr. Richard Seed, proprietor of a fertility clinic in Chicago, who brands the critics:

There’s no controversy…. Forget this business about “that’s illegal, immoral, and let’s stop and think.” …We should charge ahead and do it and forget about the moral minority who wants to live in the fifth century…. The greatest menace to progress is rigid thinking.43

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