Cuban cows

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 Cuban cows
by Devine, James
22 May 2002 21:57 UTC


>
> ^^^^^^^^
>
> CB: How does the alleged cloning plan violate the dogma of no
> inheritance of acquired characteristics ?

it doesn't at all. The problem is that the whole cloning field has had all
sorts of hype, utopian or dystopian implications, etc., but is turning out
to be much more mundane. It turns out that clones have all sorts of medical
problems, while there are many deaths in the process that produces a living
clone. The Cubans (like many others) seem to have gone for the hype, though
it's likely they'll figure out the reality.

Put another way, Lysenko himself wasn't a bad egg or a bad scientist. The
problem was the hype, and even worse, the Stalinist imposition of an ism
named after him as the True Orthodoxy. (Perhaps I was too poetic: the "ghost
of Lysenko" refers to Lysenkoism, not to the man himself.)

^^^^^^^^^

CB: I follow you now. I thought you were referring to the criticisms of Lysenko's ideas as a form of a LaMarckian theory.  But I believe you were more referring to the role of Castro as political leader ( specifically a Communist leader)  involving himself in a  scientific question.

This situation also raises the issue of experts and the power of experts. It would seem to me that in striving for "science for the People", a socialist country must also try to develop "science _by_ the People". In other words, even the politicization of the scientific questions in the Lysenko episodes was not inherently a bad goal. It is in fact a pursuit of a higher level of democracy in which there is a high enough average level of education in society, that more than experts can effectively think out scientific questions with big social impact. Given the high level of democracy and education in Cuba ( not to mention that Castro is smart enough that he may have developed some biological and medical expertise in that Cuba has so much emphasis on medicine), it may very well be the good ghost of Lysenko involved here.

On the Cubans "going for the hype", I wouldn't be too sure that they don't know more about the issues and problems ( and solutions of the problems) of cloning than the bourgeois scientists do.