Gene editing is no longer science fiction

While everyone was focused on the border, some shocking news emerged from China. A scientist there laid claim to the first in utero genetically edited babies. If true, this is a huge breakthrough with gargantuan ramifications.

Over twenty years ago I envisioned a novel in which the doctor not only found the elusive gay gene (if there really is such a thing, but this is science fiction), he developed a technique to change it in utero. It was eventually published as a novel some twenty years later as The God Players. In the novel gay rights activists join forces with Christian fundamentalists to stop the procedure. The gay rights folks have an obvious aversion to it, and the fundamentalists are opposed to anyone playing God (thus the title).

From the Associated Press

There was nothing like this when I first conceived of the book. Now it appears to be reality. The upside is we may be able to cure horrible diseases like spina bifida before the child is ever born. The downside is the misuse of this technology to create super-humans. Hitler’s master race, if you will. The question is what should be done about it?

That’s something the characters in the book wrestle with. There’s no clear-cut answer. Imagine the genetic disorders that could be cured while the child is still developing in the womb. “Special needs” would essentially be a thing of the past. What a blessing to those afflicted with these diseases as well as their families. But how do you balance that with the temptation to create the perfect child?

One would think it would be a simple matter of limiting gene therapy to diseases. But what constitutes a disease? That’s the dilemma faced in The God Players. Is homosexuality a disease? Lawyers for the scientist argue that it is. They argue that anything that veers too far from nature can be considered a disease. They argue that sex, at its basic level, is for procreation, thus arguing that anything that runs counter to that can be considered a disease.

The lawyers for the plaintiffs argue that homosexuality is intertwined with a person’s personality. They argue that some of our greatest art and literature may not have happened had the scientist been there to change the genetic makeup of people like Michelangelo or Oscar Wilde or Tchaikovsky.

It’s an interesting argument and makes for an intriguing courtroom battle, but the day of reckoning is here. This is no longer a thrilling plot line for a novel. It’s real, and we have to deal with it. What are we going to do?

We can begin by limiting gene therapy to diseases, but inevitably altering the genes of a homosexual baby will be just the first argument. How about a baby prone to be short. How about one who’s redheaded? Or left-handed? Nothing against you short left-handed redheads, but you’ve heard the arguments that tall, blond, and right-handed is more desirable. I’m not making that argument here. I’m just pointing out all sorts of normal traits that could be changed by people who find them less than desirable. Then where does that leave us?

How about this one? Suppose someone claims it’s a disadvantage to be born black and science can fix that? Scary, isn’t it? 

This problem isn’t going away. With the reported advancement in China it’s only going to accelerate. Even if we as a society decide its not a road we want to go down, what about another Hitler taking control of this technology? Hmmm. I may have just stumbled upon my next novel.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Ivanka and Hillary: They're both wrong

A public records request has revealed that Ivanka Trump sent hundreds of e-mails regarding government business from her personal e-mail account. This has prompted cries of “Lock her up!” from the left and defense of the violation from the right. Allow me to be the adult in the room.

First, it’s unconscionable that anyone in government, on the right or the left, is so unaware about government e-mail protocol that this could happen. Least of all the daughter of the man who made this a major campaign issue in the 2016 election. One would think that after the media attention of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails that everyone in the Trump administration would make doubly sure they were following the letter of the law. Apparently they didn’t. This is an embarrassment to the president and Ivanka should face the consequences just like anyone else.

There are two major distinctions between Ivanka’s scandal and Hillary’s. First, Ivanka wasn’t using a private server. Using one would appear to be a deliberate attempt to deceive. The second distinction—and this is a big one—is that there’s no evidence at this time that anything Ivanka e-mailed through her private account was classified. The fact that a secretary of state did that is monumental.

But what’s interesting is how the left circled the wagons around Hillary and are now demanding full prosecution of Ivanka. That reeks of hypocrisy. They had completely moved past Hillary’s debacle and now are fixated on Ivanka’s. That’s part of what’s wrong with today’s political discourse. It’s all about “gotcha” as long as the one being “got” ain’t their own.

And this applies to the right as well. While it’s proper to draw distinctions between the two cases, it’s not at all fair to ignore Ivanka’s and point to Hillary’s. Especially someone who should’ve known better. She claims to have not understood the protocol. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

Another related story got very little traction in the press. Turns out James Comey used his personal e-mail to conduct official FBI business, as we learned from another Freedom of Information request. That story got virtually no play in the mainstream media. Anyone who looks at this objectively would have to concede that the FBI director doing this is certainly more serious than an unpaid advisor to the president. It also brings more into focus Comey’s actions in July of 2016 when he made the unilateral decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton despite revealing that she had sent or received 110 classified e-mails to and from her private servers. Yes, that’s plural because they discovered more than one. Perhaps prosecution of such a crime hit a little too close to home for Mr. Comey.

Letting someone skate because the investigator found himself in a similar situation does not mean that someone is innocent. It only means she wasn’t prosecuted at the time. The more serious laws Hillary may have broken have a statute of limitations of ten years. That means if laws were broken during her first year as secretary of state the clock is winding down on prosecution.

The solution to all of this is we investigate both Hillary and Ivanka. And I would throw James Comey in the mix while we’re at it. If either of those three is found to have violated federal statutes then they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Hiding from the law should not be determined by what position you hold in government. Nor should it be determined by who your daddy is.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Trump was right about California wildfires

I’ll be the first to admit that President Trump’s tweet about forest management in the midst of a wildfire catastrophe was not the most artful thing to do. However, it doesn’t change the fact that he’s right. Governor Jerry Brown blames ‘climate deniers’ for the devastation. The truth is he had a chance to minimize the destruction, but he chose instead to bow to extreme environmentalists.

It’s instructive to understand what causes wildfires. It’s not spontaneous combustion because the earth is warming. An estimated 90 percent of wildfires are caused by humans. This includes campfires left unattended, cigarettes being tossed out of automobiles, and arson. The remaining ten percent are caused either by lightning or lava. The environmentalists will claim that wildfire devastation is exacerbated by drought. That’s certainly true, but California’s droughts these days are mere blips compared to historic droughts.

Scott Stine is a professor of geography and environmental studies at Cal State East Bay. He told the Mercury News, “We continue to run California as if the longest drought we are ever going to encounter is about seven years. We’re living in a dream world.” There have been multiple droughts over the last 1,000 years that have lasted 10 to 20 years. There was a drought around 850 AD that lasted 240 years. After a 50-year respite, another one lasted 180 years.

Contrary to what the alarmists tell you about this being the driest time in California’s history, Professor Stine says the past century has been among the wettest in the past 7,000 years.

Perspective is what so many knee-jerk environmentalists lack. They get locked in a world they can only remember, or a world that goes back to when the first records were kept. That’s a tiny world compared to the big picture. The longest droughts in recent California history occurred between 1928 and 1934, and another between 1987 and 1992. The problem is as more people overbuild California the property loss is naturally going to be greater.

Here’s why President Trump is right when he tweeted, “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor.” The policy from the U.S. Forest Service used to be quite simple. When a forest became too difficult to walk through it was thinned. They cut out underbrush and made space between large trees. Strategic logging was employed that not only made the forests less prone to wildfires, it actually made the Forest Service profitable. This all began to change in the ‘70s and accelerated during the ‘90s under President Bill Clinton. The Rio Earth Summit was the big turning point where prevention of forest management kicked into high gear and war was declared on the timber industry.

The Roadless Area Conservation Policy directive put a stop to nearly all logging and roadbuilding, not to mention coal, gas, oil, and other mineral leasing on 58 million acres of land. President George W. Bush tried to reinstitute common sense forest management but was stymied by a federal judge.

Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) told Canada Free Press that the forest service used to auction off national forest timber. He said this not only saved the forests, it helped the local economy. That has “all but dried up,” he said.

And Jerry Brown vetoed a 2016 bill that passed unanimously in the California Assembly and Senate that would’ve given locals more say-so when it comes to fire prevention.

Liberal politicians continue to run California into the ground, and, in typical fashion, they always blame somebody else.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Telling the truth about illegal aliens is not racist

The accusations of racism have been taken to a whole new level. Now it’s racist to run an ad featuring a convicted illegal alien cop killer bragging about his crime. This is where we are in America. The networks pulled a Trump ad just before the midterms that featured Luis Bracamontes, convicted of killing two cops, saying in a courtroom, “Only thing that I regret is that I just killed two.” CNN’s Wolf Biltzer called it a “rather racist ad.” NBC said in an e-mail, “After further review, we recognize the insensitive nature of the ad and have decided to cease airing it across our properties as soon as possible.” Fox News and Facebook pulled the ad as well.

Illegal alien cop killer Luis Bracamontes

Luis Bracamontes broke into our country. Two police officers would be alive today had we kept him out. The point of the ad is we have another caravan of potentially illegal aliens heading to our border. How many Luis Bracamonteses are among them?

Not fair, you say? Most of these people are fleeing poverty and violence? You would be right, but how many among them are criminals? DHS has already positively identified over 270 convicted criminals among them. Some news outlets have identified MS13 gang members and people who admit to having been deported from our country, some multiple times. Identifying a threat to our country is not racism.

If the people who support the caravan truly believe that most of the people in the caravan are decent people then they should welcome legal entry into the country. The truth is most will not be granted asylum because poverty, in and of itself, is no precondition. In fact, Mexico has already offered the caravaners asylum. They are out of Honduras. They are out of harm’s way. Why not take Mexico up on the offer? Because organizations like People Without Borders, who are coordinating the trek north, are not interested in the safety of these people. Their goal is to push the amnesty issue in America. Their goal is to push the agenda of open borders.

This economy is so red hot right now that we have more job openings than people to fill them. We’re told it’s the first time that’s happened since they started keeping records. Common sense would tell you that we’re going to have to import labor to fill the rest of those jobs. Most people have no problem with that. How do we do it? By allowing hordes of illegal aliens to stream across the border, or do we do this in an orderly fashion by matching laborers to jobs and making sure criminals are not taking those jobs? It’s just common sense.

Two-thirds of the people coming across our border from Mexico come legally. That’s a very important point to remember. If two-thirds can come the legal way, what’s up with the other third?

For anyone who thinks illegal aliens should be allowed to come to this country the wrong way I have a question for you. Do you believe a planeload of passengers from Paris should just get off the plane at JFK and bypass customs? If not, why not? What’s the difference between bypassing the border checkpoint at JFK and bypassing the border checkpoint at Laredo, Texas? Spoiler alert: There isn’t a difference. 

Illegal immigration is a public safety issue, pure and simple. No reasonable person can believe that allowing illegals to stream across the border without going through background checks is a safe thing to do. And no reasonable person can believe an ad that points that out is racist.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.