The course of genetic engineering from 1952 until 1970
This experiment immediately led to intense speculation about its applicability to humans. Two famous novels appeared: Charles Eric Maine’s World Without Men, and Poul Anderson’s Virgin Planet. These anticipated a future World without sex, inhabited by genderless clones. Yet any cloning of viable human embryos would not be announced until 1993. Meantime speculation anent human eugenetical engineering ran rife. Weird cloning experiments were commenced, and were continued, upon mammals.
Already during 1958, in his work The Control of Life, Dr. Anthony Waterson, Professor of Microbiology at St. Thomas’ Hospital Medical School, had insisted: “The segregation or sterilization of those who are thought to be undesirable as breeders is a serious offence to human freedom…. The ultimate logic of the adoption of eugenic measures would lead to mass artificial insemination by selected donors (AID).”
