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Questing For Grails: Duplicity, Betrayal And Self-Deception Postmodern Medical Research, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Contemporary physicians and scientists often describe their experi-
ments as part of a search for the "Holy Grail." Sometimes this quest is
expressed more specifically, as when the Human Genome Project is de-
scribed as a search for the "Holy Grail of biology."1 This rhetoric sug-
gests that experimental work is holy, God's work, and that the results will
prove miraculous and good for everyone. But this type of blind devotion
produces uncritical action that can ultimately destroy values essential to
human dignity.