Bizarre crimes and punishment

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), April, 1993

Rapid advances in biotechnology promise to revolutionize crime in the years ahead by creating bizarre new types of lawlessness and punishment. New discoveries about human aging, for example, may lead to black markets in drugs that retard--or accelerate--the aging process, Gene Stephens of the University of South Carolina's College of Criminal Justice predicted to the World Future Society.

"Such products could also be used by the criminal-justice system. One form of punishment might be to speed up a person's aging process. A hot-headed 25-year-old could be 'sentenced' to being turned into a more sedate 50-year-old. Older criminals might be punished by being deprived of anti-aging drugs."

The criminal-justice system also will have to deal with the issues posed by the use of transplanted body parts. "If the demand for body parts exceeds supply, laws may be enacted to deal with rich people who want to barter with poor people for their 'spare parts.' Stealing organs... may become a major issue." Parents might try to sell their children's body parts, Stephens warns. Already, parents have produced additional offspring as a source of bone marrow for transplants for themselves or their other children. News reports from Brazil tell of street beggars being killed for their body parts.

Even more bizarre developments could be in the offing. Biologists are transferring genes from one species of animal or plant to another, so that chimeras--creatures formed from two or more species--may appear. "Human genes may soon be mixed with plant genes, so that people might be capable of photo-synthesis--converting light into chemical energy usable by the human body. Would these 'little green men' still be classed as human, or would they be placed in some new category of creature? Add a few fish genes to the equation, and the creature is suddenly green and gilled.... And what if a human genetically altered with bird genes swoops down and swallows a little green man with gills? Is it murder--or just lunch?"