Garments of Skin

Product Description Stem-cell research, transgenic embryos, gene therapy... all promise potential breakthroughs from the curing of congenital and degenerative disorders to dramatically extending the human life span. Scientists using genomic technology are on the brink of rewriting the book as to what it means to be "human." Is man simply material that can be endlessly manipulated without consequence? What will be the sociological and political impact on this next step in human "evolution?" How will the Church respond as technology appears to be poised to empty the Cross of its power? Is a faithless science pushing humanity headlong into a metaphysical catastrophe, a genomic apocalypse? About the Author First and foremost, I am the husband of Janice and the father of two daughters, Megan and Breanna. Secondly, I have the privilege of being a teacher. I teach biology and chemistry at Reseda Science Magnet, a public high school in Los Angeles, California. I also have been given the opportunity to share my faith as a religious educator at my Roman Catholic parish, Saint John Baptist de la Salle. "What we need is the restoration of an epistemology that employs faith and reason. This is an epistemology that has the courage to seek truth and ultimate meaning. It acknowledges that technology does more than applies force through a distance, it has metaphysical consequence. It should also lead us back to an ethic which is our heritage as a people. This is an ethic that recognizes our rights originate from our being in the image of the Divine and not from legal positivism or judicial fiat. These are ideas that I have attempted to share in Garments of Skin. It is a warning that we should all take pause to consider where genomic technology is leading us. My hope is that the reader finds the novel to be a good "read" while challenging him to consider the consequence of a science and technology that is disengaged from an ethic rooted in divine and natural law."