JOSHUA LEDERBERG 
widely appreciated. For example, many therapeutic measures 
are at present barred or restricted by the possibility of damage 
to some organs in the course of therapy. 
The medical revolution should begin to arouse anxieties over 
its orderly progress.) We must recall that the homograft 
‘“‘barrier’’ has preserved the personality of the body. We have 
not hitherto had to think deeply about the technology and ethics 
of allocating precious organs for lifesaving transplantations. 
The potential dehumanizing abuses of a market in human flesh 
are fully anticipated in imaginative literature and modest 
proposals have been wryly recorded for the furtherance of 
international trade. Ultimately we must also reserve some con- 
cern for the identification of the person: what is the moral, 
legal, or psychiatric identity of an artificial chimera? 
This is an alarmist and ungracious reaction to a gift of life. 
But we cannot overlook what medical progress has already 
done for the species in the name of humanity—for example, 
the catastrophic leap in world population through the uncom- 
pensated control of early mortality. We must try to anticipate 
the worst anomalies of biological powers. To anticipate them 
in good time is the first element of hope in developing institu- 
tional and technological antidotes. Only preliminary sugges- 
tions are possible, but even imperfect ones may help to illuminate ~ 
the possibilities: 
(1) Accelerated engineering development of artificial organs, 
e.g. hearts, which may relieve intolerable economic pressures 
on transplant sources. 
(2) Development of industrial methodology for synthesis of 
specific proteins: hormones, enzymes, antigens, structural pro- 
teins. For example, large amounts of tissue antigens would 
furnish the most likely present answer to the homotransplanta- 
tion problem and its possible extension to heterotransplantation 
from other species. Structural proteins may also play an impor- 
tant role in prosthetic organs. 
(3) A vigorous eugenic programme, not on man, but on 
some non-human species, to produce genetically homogeneous 
material as sources for spare parts. The technical problem of 
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