Goya Prints Defaced

ThinkShop: Goya Prints Defaced: During the Napoleonic occupation of Spain the Spanish artist Francisco Goya created a series of powerfully evocative prints – The Disaster...

Interview with Professor Lee Silver

What is your reaction to the words of Professor Lee Silver?


Genetic engineering could be used to provide unbelievable advantages to children. You could put genes in that provide a total protection against cancer, total protection against heart disease, increased longevity. We already know that these genes could be put into children. We know that it can be done, it has already been done in animals and yet there is this barrier that exists within our consciousness as human kind to broaching the line into genetic modification. This barrier exists because we have this notion that the genome, which defines us is somehow interlinked with the human soul and it would be completely immoral to infringe upon the human soul and people think therefore it must be infringe upon the human genome. The problem with this way of thinking is that the human genome causes horrible diseases in so many people. And so many people die of heart disease and lung disease and other kinds of diseases. This technology could let parents give protective genes to their children. What’s wrong with that? Well, the problem is the soul, I think that’s what people are afraid of...

... the problem is that generation after generation after generation of genetic enhancements makes evolution go at a much more rapid pace then it went in the past. It has taken seven million years to go from a chimp-like ancestor to human beings today. And we’re looking at a series of differences that occurred by natural selection that could be compressed into perhaps a few hundred years or perhaps a few thousand years that are going to make the difference between the genetically and socially enriched class so different from the genetically and socially natural and deprived class. And as the differences get larger and larger and larger between these two classes of people there will be much less interest for children from these classes to come together and marry. And eventually even if they want to come together, the genetic differences will be so great that they won’t be able to have children with each other. That’s the way that species are formed, that even when the animals mate with each other, there will be no offspring. And once that happens, there is a permanent rift in the human population. There’s a permanent rift that is akin to having different species of human descendence in the world. So what took 7 million years in the past could take a few hundred years or a thousand years in the future. And the problem with this is a very serious problem. It’s that people of one human species won’t feel any kinship to people of the other human species and won’t feel a need perhaps to treat them with the dignity and respect that people give to every human being today as a part of their ethic.

Food, Glorious Food

Is the manner in which we produce food today ethical?
You might want to read this post that I wrote on my personal blog, about the world's biggest pig farmer.

Peter Singer and Eating Animals

Professor Peter Singer of University of Princeton (on the right)

Peter Singer is a consequentialist ethicist.

Do you find his views on the ethics of eating animals to be persuasive?



Designed and made in TOK

What can we learn from a work of art?



Designed and made in TOK

K. David Harrison receently explained to The Economist was is lost when we lose languages.

This week he visited our school. What interesting TOK connections did K. David Harrison make?