ORRIN JUDD seems to think that my article talking about the greater danger posed by neuroscience relative to cloning means that I have something in common with Francis Fukuyama. Well, at an appropriate level of abstraction, I do. We’re both carbon-based bipeds.

Okay, not quite that high a level of abstraction, but still pretty high. But Judd seems to (1) misunderstand my position; and (2) miss my point.

Judd seems to think that it’s a big deal for me to admit that there are dangers in bioscience, or science in general. But I’ve never doubted that — I’ve been writing about it for over a decade. (Here is a recent example). I don’t think that there are any significant dangers involved in cloning: the objections to cloning make sense mostly in terms of a particular religious frame of reference that I don’t share. Neuroscience is somewhat more dangerous.

But in both cases — let’s pick the standard reference here and mention Brave New World — the danger is stuff being done without people’s consent. That’s where I differ from Judd. He looks at Brave New World and is unhappy to see cloning and psychoactive drugs. I look at Brave New World and am unhappy to see cloning and psychoactive drugs forced on people by a totalitarian world government. For me, it’s the force part that’s upsetting. If people want to clone themselves, or become “Happy Harrys” with psychoactive medication, that’s okay with me. I just don’t want them forced to do so. Fukuyama, by contrast, wants to stop science because he knows what’s best for everyone. That’s a position that’s closer to the totalitarian-world-government model than to my own.

Judd also misses my main point, which was that all the scrutiny that the Medical Ethics Establishment has directed at cloning — and hasn’t directed at neuroscience — hasn’t made much difference. Neuroscience abuses, despite the lack of Ethics Establishment scrutiny, are largely nonexistent unless you reach back to the 1950s or so for lobotomies and CIA drug experiments, neither of which have much to do with modern neuroscience. My mention of neuroscience wasn’t so much to trumpet its dangers as to illustrate that the Ethics Establishment, a group of nattering nabobs of which Fukuyama seems determined to become natterer-in-chief, has been precisely useless. What’s worse, that may be the most anyone can say in its favor.