"As the biorenaissance takes root across the world, competition and talent once again are key. American competitiveness is the envy of the world, widely emulated as the benchmark condition for a high-growth economy. The United States has regarded competitive success somewhat as a divinely ordained birthright, yet that birthright, with its roots in biblical scripture, the colonial world of the Puritans, and nineteenth-century manifest destiny, and expressed today by the exercise of preemptive military and economic power across the globe, is under scrutiny by the bioscience community.
'What we in the U.S. need to understand is that our domestic moral terrain is not readily exportable,' wrote Science editor-in-chief Donald Kennedy. 'U.S. politicians can't make the rules for everyone, and they don't have a special claim to the ethical high ground.' Science is, after all, an international activity."