A biography for Leon Kasshasn’t been written yet.
“There were certain questions about the foundations of morals that advances in science all threaten to make more complicated.”
“The technological way of thinking has infected even ethics, which is supposed to be thinking about the good.”
“There is a lot of hype and fear about this much-talked-about prospect of designer babies.”
“Almost everybody is enthusiastic about the promise of biotechnology to cure disease and to relieve suffering.”
“We are somehow natured, not just to reproduce, but for sociality and even for culture.”
“There's an ancient tension between wanting to savor the world as it is and wanting to improve on the world as given.”
“One should proceed with caution. We may simply not be wise enough to do some of the kinds of engineering things that people are talking about doing.”
“Limits have to be set on how far one can simply use the... cleverness that we have to make changes.”
“The benefits of biomedical progress are obvious, clear, and powerful. The hazards are much less well appreciated.”
“One could look over the past century and ask oneself, has the increased longevity been good, bad or indifferent?”
“I don't believe that efforts to prohibit only so-called reproductive cloning can be successful.”
“Cloning looks like a degrading of parenthood and a perversion of the right relation between parents and children.”
“It's a short step from the belief that every child should be wanted to the belief that a child exists to satisfy our wants.”
“The technical is not just the machinery. The technical is a disposition to life.”
“If you have easy self-contentment, you might have a very, very cheap source of happiness.”
“The abortion controversy is important for what it says about our stance toward procreation and children altogether.”
“Is it possible to covet a much longer life for one's self and be as devoted to the well-being of the next generation? It's a long argument.”
“My job is to provide the president with the richest possible consideration, so that he knows what is at stake in whatever decision he makes.”
“It's very hard to make arguments about the effects of cloning on family relations if family relations are in tatters.”
“We are enmeshed in a lineage that came from somewhere and is going to make way for the next generation.”