Nation’s supply of nerds threatened. “Human life always has been a struggle against the limits of nature,” writes University of Chicago law professor Martha Nussbaum in the New Republic (December 4), reviewing the recent book From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice. She worries that parents-to-be may use genetic technologies to seek the superficial best for their progeny. “We know that many of the most creative and valuable human lives are the result of particularly difficult struggles that forced people out of the mainstream and made them the targets of contempt and abuse. Anyone who has ever been bad in sports, or the wrong body type for some sexual stereotype, knows that genuine suffering is involved in these ‘impairments’–and so a caring parent might well demand genetic alterations to prevent them, thus producing a nation of large-busted women and muscle-bound men. But shouldn’t culture be changed rather than nature?”
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Third City again. According to a recent report from the American Electronics Association (Philanthropy News Network Online, December 8), as of the end of 1998, San Jose had 252,888 high-tech workers, Boston had 234,822, and Chicago had 180,400.
