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    scient

    the fetal tissue research that may cure patients of Parkinson's disease; those

    claiming an expertise in "scientific ethics" labor daily to stop the use of

    biotechnologies designed to feed the starving; animal rights activists bomb

    labs housing studies that could relieve the permanent impairments caused

    by head injuries; and Afro American interest groups have succeeded in

    virtually banning conclaves on new empirical approaches to violence.  In

    many intellectual circles, even the concept of progress has been turned into a

    dirty word.

    Biologically-produced endorphins anesthetize a helpless rat to his pain

    by disabling his senses.  Like endorphins, ignorance would help us feel

    better...for a price.

    Other countries have attempted the strategy of perceptual shutdown

    and found it fatal.  One of them is China.  In 1405, China was geographically

    enormous, militarily powerful and internally stable.  Her advanced ways put

    the European world to shame.  China experienced unity while the European

    countries, each a tiny fraction of the size of China, were squabbling like

    children.  Her cities had amenities like specialty restaurants and sidewalk

    snack vendors.115 Her citizens were blessed with immense iron, ceramics and

    printing industries, cookbooks, encyclopedias, medical texts and widespread

    education.116  Her government sponsored a massive--and

    successful--program of agricultural research and development which had

    just nearly doubled the country's production of rice.117  What's more, Chinese

    technology was amazing.  Paddle-wheeled warships 360 feet long carrying

    800 men moved up and down her major rivers.118  When her emperor

    stepped into the rooms of his palace, automatically-operating doors and

    window blinds opened before him.

    The barbarians from the edge of the world, the Europeans, soon

    arrived with signs that they were catching up.  These peculiar-looking people

    from insignificant lands had solved problems of the calendar that diligent

    Chinese sages found insoluble, possessed answers to astronomical enigmas

    that totally baffled the Chinese, and displayed miraculous devices like

    portable clocks.119  More ominously, though China's weapons specialists had

      ific advancement: for roughly twelve years, fundamentalists eliminated

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