WHITEHEAD INSTITUTE 
Letter to W. Gartland 
September 26, 1984 
page 2 
A fourth reason for my opposition derives from the previous one. 
Where genes do not function well in a foreign environment they will be 
deleterious. Therefore, the creation of animal chimeras is an 
experimental procedure and can have no effect on wild animal 
populations. In fact, virtually all of our domesticated species are 
selected for properties that fit them poorly to wild environments. 
Domesticated and experimental animals are strains bred and selected 
for their value to humans. The insertion of new genes into them can 
help fit them even better for our purposes but removes them even 
further from their wild progenitors. 
My fifth reason for opposition relates to Rifkin’s second 
amendment, the one dealing with insertion into human germ line. 
Here, I can agree that putting animal genes into human heredity 
is a poor idea but my grounds are^moral repugnance. We would have to 
have very strong reasons to believe that such an insertion of a 
foreign gene would be beneficial to carry out such an insertion and it 
is hard to see such an argument being made in the foreseeable future. 
But I oppose "prohibitions" on the grounds that they provide an 
apparent simplicity that often leads to difficulty. I also oppose 
writing into regulations statements about "morally and ethically 
unacceptable" practices because those are subjective grounds and 
therefore provide no basis for discussion. There are good scientific 
grounds for not putting any new genes into the human germ line today 
and I believe that we should rest our behavior on such rational 
assessments not on the shifting and personal grounds of morality. 
In short, the grounds of Rifkin’s proposal are religious and 
their adoption by RAC could even violate church/state separation. 
His proposals represent an attempt to substitute dogma for rational 
discussion. As such I oppose them and I would hope that any group of 
people devoted to the scientific consideration of questions would 
oppose them. A rational assessment of these new capabilities will, I 
believe, conclude that they are valuable and pose little in the way of 
hazard. 
Sincerely, 
David Baltimpre 
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