Doctors hope to someday use embryonic stem cells as a source of perfectly matched transplants to treat diseases such as cancer, Parkinson's and some injuries. [emphasis added]
Currently, doctors are already using adult stem cells to treat diseases such as Parkinson's and some forms of cancer.
Which lends me to believe that the debate about embrionic stem cell research has very little to do with actually creating cures for diseases. It seems to me that the debate is more about the role of science in society than the actual results it produces. It would seem to some that science is man's highest endeavor, capable of doing no wrong. To them, anything, no matter how horrible, is justifiable in the name of science.
But what is really interesting is that the opposition to embrionic stem cell research is not an opposition to science or discovery, but rather an affirmation of the dignity of the human being. They see science as the servant of mankind, not mankind as the servant of science. The fundamental objection of embrionic stem cell research is not an objection to discovery, but rather that the research is being done with a secondary objective of allowing science to arbitrarily redefine what it means to be human.
And this is the fundamental battle over embrionic stem cell research. It has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with removing the role of the church from ethical decisions in public policy.
Interestingly, I still find it ironic that some people believe there is a conflict between science and religion:
Religion finds answers the ethical questions facing all of mankind.
Science explains the natural world.
Together, with the ethical guidelines provided by religion, and the knowledge provided by science, society can make decisions which preserve both the dignity of the individual and benefit society as a whole.
I still find it strange that some people believe that science alone can answer all of the questions facing mankind, or that religion alone can sufficiently explain the natural universe. It's all knowledge folks; it enlightens those who are willing to accept it. Insisting that science somehow "proves" God doesn't exist, or that an ancient religious text "scientifically describes" the creation of the world benefits no one and only shows one's ignorance.
he intends to string together genes to create from scratch novel organisms that can produce alternative fuels such as hydrogen and ethanol. [emphasis mine]
Um, we already have a novel organism which can produce ethanol.
It's called yeast.
And it is well understood and has a low risk of becoming an ecological disaster.
Why would we invent a new organism?
Perhaps because we want to extend our energy dependence on foreign oil?
Perhaps we're craving an ecological disaster that can spread far beyond the initial contamination site?
Perhaps we'd like to pay someone patent royalties for a process which has been free for the past 5000 years?
Perhaps we'd like to make it impossible for the third world to utilize native fuel sources without paying royalties to a multinational corporation?
Really, I don't see anything good coming out of this. It's nothing more than reinventing the wheel.
Specificity does. A good search engine will find all relevant pages. A great search engine will list the page you're looking for in the first ten results.
Often times, the only thing a bigger index does is make the user scan more results before finding the page they want.
What was wrong with barcodes? It seems to me that for the intended uses, barcodes would have worked just as well without the attendant privacy implications. Why on earth would the U.S. voluntarily give criminals and terrorists the tools to target people according to their nationality?
"It is our belief that the information that Lynn presented at Black Hat this morning is information that was illegally obtained and violated our intellectual-property rights,"
Lynn decompiled Cisco's software for his research and by doing so violated the company's rights, Noh said. [emphasis added]
So basically, Cisco is claiming that decompiling their object code is illegal.
Isn't it a greater violation of the customer's rights to prohibit them from decompiling the code on their own equipment to check for security vulnerabilities?
We've come to the point where corporations believe they have the right to impose conditions of operation on equipment they no longer own. If Cisco sells someone a router, the customer now owns it. Cisco doesn't have any right to impose any conditions of use on the new owner, because they no longer legally own the product. The owner has the right (and some would claim even the responsibility) to decompile their router's code to check for potential vulnerabilities.
It seems that Cisco believes that even after they've sold it to you, they still own your router. And who knows, maybe this vulnerability was deliberately placed so they could own your router anytime they pleased...
I rarely, if ever, download music - legally or not.
Interestingly, I haven't bought a CD for myself in years...
I wonder if the RIAA assumes I'm a pirate because I'm not feeding their monopoly. I wonder if the RIAA is even aware that people like me have stopped buying music because we got sick and tired of being treated like criminals - copy restricted CD's, lawsuits against music fans, etc...
I wonder if it ever occurs to the **AA's that their revenue shortfalls are due more to the manner in which they treat their customers than piracy. Face it - while the average Asian may have a good reason to commit music piracy, the average American is affluent enough that they'd rather buy music than steal it. Yet, most Americans want to know they like something before they buy it. And this is what P2P provided.
I don't use P2P. I don't buy music, either. Wonder how long it will take the likes of the RIAA to figure out the connection between the two...
Vail Unified School District's decision to go with an all-electronic school is rare, experts say. Often, cost, insecurity, ignorance and institutional constraints prevent schools from making the leap away from paper.[emphasis added]
I'm guessing that ignorance will still prevail, and Windows will be installed on the laptops, with its usual compliment of security and stability issues.
But that's not my point. Only an ignoramus would assume that a transition to laptops would be better. In many respects, paper is still superior to its electronic counterpart:
Computers provide for easy cheating on an unprecedented scale. In areas such as math and science (which have only one right answer), issuing laptops only makes cheating all that much easier. Why wouldn't the class trade answers over IRC?
Computers also remove a substantial academic challenge from the student. Rather than teaching a student to think for themselves and learn to solve problems, the computer simply presents them with the ability to easily find someone else's solution to the problem and copy that.
Laptops present an attractive target to thieves, making it more likely that children will become victims of theft, or worse.
Yes, computers can do some really amazing things. But in the end, they are still a machine, nothing more. What irks me is that parents and school districts fawn over computers in the classroom, with the mistaken belief that the computer will turn their son or daughter into some kind of genius. It won't. Real education (that is, learning) requires effort, and if you remove the effort, so goes the education.
That quite a few businesses cannot patch their systems because:
Testing the patches takes time, and:
Downtime is expensive, consequently, they may have to wait a month or more for a "downtime window" to install the patch, and
Sometimes patches break key software - in which case the business can't install them at all until they find a workaround.
I'm sick of this "blame the users" attitude - yes, it may be appropriate for a home user, but to a business which depends on its computers for day to day operations, patching is a big deal, and it can't always be done at the pace we'd like. It isn't the fault of the business that Microsoft didn't do it right the first time.
Kid writes a worm because he's too dumb to know any better, and:
Microsoft's ignorance of security allows such worm to cause millions of dollars in damages.
So who is really responsible for the damages? Is is the kid who didn't know any better, or is it Microsoft who chose to sell insecure software.
I understand the fact that he exploited an insecure operating system. However, there will always be juveniles in the world, and to sell a mass-market operating system with full knowledge that it can be compromised by an 18 year old with a modicum of intelligence is criminally negligent. Granted, this 18 year old wrote the Sasser worm, but without Microsoft's deliberate negligence regarding security, it would have been merely an academic curiosity or petty nuisance.
Michigan - Zonk was charged with posting dupes to slashdot, where apparently a dupe is considered a third degree felony. From the article: "...xperts believe there are scores of dupes occurring undetected, sometimes to frightening effect. People have used the cloak of dupes to troll, spam, and send death threats, according to slashdot editors. For as worrisome as it seems, duping is easily preventable by actually reading what gets posted to the front page. The problem, slashdot editors say, is many people do not take the time to read posts, or are unsure how to prevent dupes. Dinon knew what to do. 'But I never did it because my neighbors are older, and no one reads the articles on slashdot anyway'"
As I write this, the markets have dipped only 3 percent. While the news media is trying to play this up as the result of terrorism, it's really not a considerable drop - it happens on a regular basis.
How invading Iraq was supposed to stop the terrorists in London, or any other country, for that matter.
Granted, I understand Bush says he's against terrorism. But how did invading Iraq make the world safer from terrorism when the bombings are occuring in Spain and the UK?
It seems to me that invading countries only further helps the cause of terrorism by providing the enemy with propaganda to further their cause. Perhaps our efforts would be better spent actually listening to, and working with the Muslim world to turn them against their terrorist brethren. The "we must invade your country because of terrorism" policy doesn't seem to be working.
Just because Hitler didn't play GTA doesn't mean GTA doesn't cause violence.
I would say it is very difficult to draw a causal link between GTA and violence given the relatively large popularity of the game and the relatively few players who actually act out gameplay in real life.
Before I proceed, let me say that I'm not a fan of GTA - I could care less about the issue. My problem is that the GTA issue isn't central to the problem of violence. While GTA may contribute to violence, the causes of violence are much deeper rooted than mere playing of games. For example, if gameplay really did unduly influence behavior:
We'd have an epidemic of grid-face caused by angry tennis players hitting people in the face with rackets.
We'd be banning baseball bats because of the propensity for teenage bullies to play baseball with your head.
Teenagers would be banned from playing soccer because of the sport's undue emphasis on kicking things - which is dangerous behavior.
Football would be banned after an elderly lady was tackled during a purse snatching, because clearly the thieves learned the technique from the sport...
Sounds absurd, doesn't it? But this is what we'd expect to see if gameplay unduly influenced real world behavior. Most people can differentiate between killing a live human being and an animated character that can be brought back to life with the flick of a switch.
Now, create a situation in which one group feels threatened by another, and I can gaurantee that they won't need GTA for ideas about how to respond with violence. GTA didn't introduce any new criminal concepts to the world. And it is hardly any different from the scores of movies produced each year with graphic violence and glamorized killing.
Of course, whether or not it is healthy to promote violence is a valid discussion, but the subject reaches far beyond a mere video game. Our nation's history is replete with examples of using violence to subjugate others, and I doubt that banning GTA (or any other video game) is going to change this element of our culture. While GTA might not be helping, it is certainly not the underlying cause. If anything, the GTA issue is more of a diversion from the real societal problems - for which the answers aren't easy.
Yes, I did mean Stalin, but for some reason wrote Lenin.
Incidentally, many years ago I saw a proposed stamp commemorating Lennon and Marx - John Lennon and Groucho Marx - as a parody of a Soviet stamp honoring Lenin and Marx.
It's the fact that mankind has an inborn propensity for violence. The problem isn't violent video games, but that we haven't addressed the fundamentally violent nature of mankind.
Lenin and Hitler killed millions before the first video game had been invented; our violent nature is as old as recorded history.
Instead of blaming a scapegoat (video games), parents would be better off recognizing this fundamental trait (propensity for violence) of human nature and teaching their children to overcome it. After all, keeping the kids away from violent video games won't keep the bullies from bullying, nor will it keep them from getting angry... The ability to take revenge isn't limited to those who have played violent video games.
When after approving software patents, they find their software industry being sued into bankruptcy by American firms who have already patented the software equivalent of the wheel?
I agree that hardcopy is probably the best preservation format, but in this day of ever-increasing hard drive capacities, it might not be unreasonable to include source code for a rudimentary document reader in the document file itself. Someone with a hex editor
This whole "everybody can check out the code thing" is really just idealistic fluff to make people feel better, honestly.
Except, of course, that it is the same model that the scientific community uses. Granted, you don't have to believe science, either, but they both use a peer-reviewed approach. With Open Source, the source is reviewed by hundreds, if not thousands, of other programmers intimately familiar with the code. While a bug in the code might not be obvious to you, it is easily found by someone who spends their life writing code for a living.
Open Source produces high-quality software because:
Buggy or poorly written Open Source projects do not become popular. There is no Open Source monopoly bludgeoning manufacturers into using defective or poorly written software. While someone might use a buggy piece of proprietary software to get "the full value of their investment", Open Source software suffers no such false-incentives.
Open Source software is often written by those with a passionate interest in their work. The authors have a financial interest in producing good code because it will reflect on their professional reputation.
With Open Source, a disagreement with the developers doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do without a much-needed function or bug fix.
Contrast this with the closed-source, profit-driven model of commercial software:
The vendor has a financial incentive to do as little testing as possible.
The vendor has a financial incentive to issue as few bug fixes and patches as possible.
Should the vendor disagree with you about the existence of a bug, your only recourse is to live with the bug or stop using the software completely. With open source, even if you can't write code, you could at least hire someone to fix the software (and perhaps add features that you'd like).
Changing prices is generally lawful unless doing so discriminates against a consumer's race or gender or violates antitrust or price-fixing laws. [emphasis added]
IANAL, but IRC, it is in fact illegal to charge different customers different prices for the exact same product - and this irrespective of any differences in race or gender, etc... The only time when a company may legally charge different prices to different customers is when there exists a substantial difference in the market - i.e. shipping costs, etc.
Now, granted, that doesn't change the fact that a company can get around this by simply changing the packaging to produce a different product targeted at a different market. Nor does it prevent a company from dynamically adjusting prices to market conditions. But charging different customers differing prices is in general illegal. The fact that it's hard to prove, and many businesses get away with it, doesn't make it legal.
The motor is revolutionary in that it contains no bulky permanent magnets.
The armature may revolve, but this is hardly a revolutionary design.
IIRC, GM has been making starter motors without permanent magnets for more than 30 years. In fact, it's hard to find a vehicle which uses a permanent magnet starter motor any more.
Actually, I think just the opposite would occur. In fact, it would probably be the worst thing that could happen for the gay rights movement.
The crux of the argument against homosexuality is that homosexual acts are chosen behavior. Conservatives would love to raise a "gay" child as heterosexual (or at least celibate) to show that biology is not destiny. If a "genetically gay" child grew up and embraced a celibate lifestyle, it would only reinforce the right-wing position that homosexual lifestyles are an immoral, chosen behavior.
And that would do far more damage to gay rights movement than finding a "gay gene" could ever do to support it.
giving a person a chance at life simply because they're human?
Are people really so arrogant that they believe their subjective judgement is infallible? Do they believe that a child with a genetic condition would thank them for being killed in the womb? How could they know if their child would rather live with the condition or die? Why even consider abortion when it is our genetic diversity which contributes to the survival of the species as a whole? Even though people with genetic abnormalities may be considered "defective" by some, it is these abnormalities that keep diversity in the gene pool and ultimately strengthen the race as a whole. To eliminate genetic diversity would almost certainly doom the human race to extinction. And this doesn't even address the moral dimension of the question.
How interesting that people will look at the differences among us and immediately attempt to classify groups with a particular trait as better or worse than those without it. I wonder if it ever occurs to them that such differences contribute to the betterment of society. It is in seeing people overcome inborn difficulties that we witness the great triumph of the human spirit.
Slashdot Mirror
Doctors hope to someday use embryonic stem cells as a source of perfectly matched transplants to treat diseases such as cancer, Parkinson's and some injuries. [emphasis added]
Currently, doctors are already using adult stem cells to treat diseases such as Parkinson's and some forms of cancer.
Which lends me to believe that the debate about embrionic stem cell research has very little to do with actually creating cures for diseases. It seems to me that the debate is more about the role of science in society than the actual results it produces. It would seem to some that science is man's highest endeavor, capable of doing no wrong. To them, anything, no matter how horrible, is justifiable in the name of science.
But what is really interesting is that the opposition to embrionic stem cell research is not an opposition to science or discovery, but rather an affirmation of the dignity of the human being. They see science as the servant of mankind, not mankind as the servant of science. The fundamental objection of embrionic stem cell research is not an objection to discovery, but rather that the research is being done with a secondary objective of allowing science to arbitrarily redefine what it means to be human.
And this is the fundamental battle over embrionic stem cell research. It has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with removing the role of the church from ethical decisions in public policy.
Interestingly, I still find it ironic that some people believe there is a conflict between science and religion:
- Religion finds answers the ethical questions facing all of mankind.
- Science explains the natural world.
- Together, with the ethical guidelines provided by religion, and the knowledge provided by science, society can make decisions which preserve both the dignity of the individual and benefit society as a whole.
I still find it strange that some people believe that science alone can answer all of the questions facing mankind, or that religion alone can sufficiently explain the natural universe. It's all knowledge folks; it enlightens those who are willing to accept it. Insisting that science somehow "proves" God doesn't exist, or that an ancient religious text "scientifically describes" the creation of the world benefits no one and only shows one's ignorance.he intends to string together genes to create from scratch novel organisms that can produce alternative fuels such as hydrogen and ethanol. [emphasis mine]
Um, we already have a novel organism which can produce ethanol.
It's called yeast.
And it is well understood and has a low risk of becoming an ecological disaster.
Why would we invent a new organism?
Really, I don't see anything good coming out of this. It's nothing more than reinventing the wheel.
Specificity does. A good search engine will find all relevant pages. A great search engine will list the page you're looking for in the first ten results.
Often times, the only thing a bigger index does is make the user scan more results before finding the page they want.
What was wrong with barcodes? It seems to me that for the intended uses, barcodes would have worked just as well without the attendant privacy implications. Why on earth would the U.S. voluntarily give criminals and terrorists the tools to target people according to their nationality?
"It is our belief that the information that Lynn presented at Black Hat this morning is information that was illegally obtained and violated our intellectual-property rights,"
Lynn decompiled Cisco's software for his research and by doing so violated the company's rights, Noh said. [emphasis added]
So basically, Cisco is claiming that decompiling their object code is illegal.
Isn't it a greater violation of the customer's rights to prohibit them from decompiling the code on their own equipment to check for security vulnerabilities?
We've come to the point where corporations believe they have the right to impose conditions of operation on equipment they no longer own. If Cisco sells someone a router, the customer now owns it. Cisco doesn't have any right to impose any conditions of use on the new owner, because they no longer legally own the product. The owner has the right (and some would claim even the responsibility) to decompile their router's code to check for potential vulnerabilities.
It seems that Cisco believes that even after they've sold it to you, they still own your router. And who knows, maybe this vulnerability was deliberately placed so they could own your router anytime they pleased...
I rarely, if ever, download music - legally or not.
Interestingly, I haven't bought a CD for myself in years...
I wonder if the RIAA assumes I'm a pirate because I'm not feeding their monopoly. I wonder if the RIAA is even aware that people like me have stopped buying music because we got sick and tired of being treated like criminals - copy restricted CD's, lawsuits against music fans, etc...
I wonder if it ever occurs to the **AA's that their revenue shortfalls are due more to the manner in which they treat their customers than piracy. Face it - while the average Asian may have a good reason to commit music piracy, the average American is affluent enough that they'd rather buy music than steal it. Yet, most Americans want to know they like something before they buy it. And this is what P2P provided.
I don't use P2P. I don't buy music, either. Wonder how long it will take the likes of the RIAA to figure out the connection between the two...
Um, dude, you're wrong. Ford claims that the air conditioning compressor alone will use 25 HP on a hot day.
Your headlights, OTOH might use 10 or 20 amps. At 13.5 volts, thats 270 watts max. Or about 1/3 of one horsepower.
Vail Unified School District's decision to go with an all-electronic school is rare, experts say. Often, cost, insecurity, ignorance and institutional constraints prevent schools from making the leap away from paper.[emphasis added]
I'm guessing that ignorance will still prevail, and Windows will be installed on the laptops, with its usual compliment of security and stability issues.
But that's not my point. Only an ignoramus would assume that a transition to laptops would be better. In many respects, paper is still superior to its electronic counterpart:
Yes, computers can do some really amazing things. But in the end, they are still a machine, nothing more. What irks me is that parents and school districts fawn over computers in the classroom, with the mistaken belief that the computer will turn their son or daughter into some kind of genius. It won't. Real education (that is, learning) requires effort, and if you remove the effort, so goes the education.
I'm sick of this "blame the users" attitude - yes, it may be appropriate for a home user, but to a business which depends on its computers for day to day operations, patching is a big deal, and it can't always be done at the pace we'd like. It isn't the fault of the business that Microsoft didn't do it right the first time.
So who is really responsible for the damages? Is is the kid who didn't know any better, or is it Microsoft who chose to sell insecure software.
I understand the fact that he exploited an insecure operating system. However, there will always be juveniles in the world, and to sell a mass-market operating system with full knowledge that it can be compromised by an 18 year old with a modicum of intelligence is criminally negligent. Granted, this 18 year old wrote the Sasser worm, but without Microsoft's deliberate negligence regarding security, it would have been merely an academic curiosity or petty nuisance.
Michigan - Zonk was charged with posting dupes to slashdot, where apparently a dupe is considered a third degree felony. From the article: "...xperts believe there are scores of dupes occurring undetected, sometimes to frightening effect. People have used the cloak of dupes to troll, spam, and send death threats, according to slashdot editors. For as worrisome as it seems, duping is easily preventable by actually reading what gets posted to the front page. The problem, slashdot editors say, is many people do not take the time to read posts, or are unsure how to prevent dupes. Dinon knew what to do. 'But I never did it because my neighbors are older, and no one reads the articles on slashdot anyway'"
As I write this, the markets have dipped only 3 percent. While the news media is trying to play this up as the result of terrorism, it's really not a considerable drop - it happens on a regular basis.
How invading Iraq was supposed to stop the terrorists in London, or any other country, for that matter.
Granted, I understand Bush says he's against terrorism. But how did invading Iraq make the world safer from terrorism when the bombings are occuring in Spain and the UK?
It seems to me that invading countries only further helps the cause of terrorism by providing the enemy with propaganda to further their cause. Perhaps our efforts would be better spent actually listening to, and working with the Muslim world to turn them against their terrorist brethren. The "we must invade your country because of terrorism" policy doesn't seem to be working.
I would say it is very difficult to draw a causal link between GTA and violence given the relatively large popularity of the game and the relatively few players who actually act out gameplay in real life.
Before I proceed, let me say that I'm not a fan of GTA - I could care less about the issue. My problem is that the GTA issue isn't central to the problem of violence. While GTA may contribute to violence, the causes of violence are much deeper rooted than mere playing of games. For example, if gameplay really did unduly influence behavior:
Sounds absurd, doesn't it? But this is what we'd expect to see if gameplay unduly influenced real world behavior. Most people can differentiate between killing a live human being and an animated character that can be brought back to life with the flick of a switch.
Now, create a situation in which one group feels threatened by another, and I can gaurantee that they won't need GTA for ideas about how to respond with violence. GTA didn't introduce any new criminal concepts to the world. And it is hardly any different from the scores of movies produced each year with graphic violence and glamorized killing.
Of course, whether or not it is healthy to promote violence is a valid discussion, but the subject reaches far beyond a mere video game. Our nation's history is replete with examples of using violence to subjugate others, and I doubt that banning GTA (or any other video game) is going to change this element of our culture. While GTA might not be helping, it is certainly not the underlying cause. If anything, the GTA issue is more of a diversion from the real societal problems - for which the answers aren't easy.
Well at least I didn't spell it Lennon...
Yes, I did mean Stalin, but for some reason wrote Lenin.
Incidentally, many years ago I saw a proposed stamp commemorating Lennon and Marx - John Lennon and Groucho Marx - as a parody of a Soviet stamp honoring Lenin and Marx.
It's the fact that mankind has an inborn propensity for violence. The problem isn't violent video games, but that we haven't addressed the fundamentally violent nature of mankind.
Lenin and Hitler killed millions before the first video game had been invented; our violent nature is as old as recorded history.
Instead of blaming a scapegoat (video games), parents would be better off recognizing this fundamental trait (propensity for violence) of human nature and teaching their children to overcome it. After all, keeping the kids away from violent video games won't keep the bullies from bullying, nor will it keep them from getting angry... The ability to take revenge isn't limited to those who have played violent video games.
Resistance is the quotient of voltage and current.
So it took 20 years for ITER to make a decision? That would make even Washington D.C. bureaucrats proud...
When after approving software patents, they find their software industry being sued into bankruptcy by American firms who have already patented the software equivalent of the wheel?
I agree that hardcopy is probably the best preservation format, but in this day of ever-increasing hard drive capacities, it might not be unreasonable to include source code for a rudimentary document reader in the document file itself. Someone with a hex editor
Except, of course, that it is the same model that the scientific community uses. Granted, you don't have to believe science, either, but they both use a peer-reviewed approach. With Open Source, the source is reviewed by hundreds, if not thousands, of other programmers intimately familiar with the code. While a bug in the code might not be obvious to you, it is easily found by someone who spends their life writing code for a living.
Open Source produces high-quality software because:
Contrast this with the closed-source, profit-driven model of commercial software:
IANAL, but IRC, it is in fact illegal to charge different customers different prices for the exact same product - and this irrespective of any differences in race or gender, etc... The only time when a company may legally charge different prices to different customers is when there exists a substantial difference in the market - i.e. shipping costs, etc.
Now, granted, that doesn't change the fact that a company can get around this by simply changing the packaging to produce a different product targeted at a different market. Nor does it prevent a company from dynamically adjusting prices to market conditions. But charging different customers differing prices is in general illegal. The fact that it's hard to prove, and many businesses get away with it, doesn't make it legal.
The armature may revolve, but this is hardly a revolutionary design. IIRC, GM has been making starter motors without permanent magnets for more than 30 years. In fact, it's hard to find a vehicle which uses a permanent magnet starter motor any more.
Actually, I think just the opposite would occur. In fact, it would probably be the worst thing that could happen for the gay rights movement.
The crux of the argument against homosexuality is that homosexual acts are chosen behavior. Conservatives would love to raise a "gay" child as heterosexual (or at least celibate) to show that biology is not destiny. If a "genetically gay" child grew up and embraced a celibate lifestyle, it would only reinforce the right-wing position that homosexual lifestyles are an immoral, chosen behavior.
And that would do far more damage to gay rights movement than finding a "gay gene" could ever do to support it.
giving a person a chance at life simply because they're human?
Are people really so arrogant that they believe their subjective judgement is infallible? Do they believe that a child with a genetic condition would thank them for being killed in the womb? How could they know if their child would rather live with the condition or die? Why even consider abortion when it is our genetic diversity which contributes to the survival of the species as a whole? Even though people with genetic abnormalities may be considered "defective" by some, it is these abnormalities that keep diversity in the gene pool and ultimately strengthen the race as a whole. To eliminate genetic diversity would almost certainly doom the human race to extinction. And this doesn't even address the moral dimension of the question.
How interesting that people will look at the differences among us and immediately attempt to classify groups with a particular trait as better or worse than those without it. I wonder if it ever occurs to them that such differences contribute to the betterment of society. It is in seeing people overcome inborn difficulties that we witness the great triumph of the human spirit.