Our biotech bodies, ourselves
What if, by taking a drug, you could possess an IQ of 250? Or by tinkering with your genes, have the athletic prowess of a decathlete? Or by injecting yourself with stem cells, live to be 160? Would you do it? Would these enhancements make you less human? If everyone did this, would the world become a paradise full of self-actualized superpeople? Or a dystopian Stepford society devoid of essential human values such as compassion for the less blessed?
What seems like fodder for a science fiction potboiler has become a matter of deadly serious debate among scientists and ethicists. In a speech last year before a gathering of enhancement advocates, William Sims Bainbridge, a deputy director at the National Science Foundation who studies the societal impact of technology, warned that "scientists may be forced into rebellion in order to carry out research prohibited unnecessarily by powerful institutions."
A few months later, Leon Kass, chair of the President's Council on Bioethics, was expressing the advisory panel's profound "disquiet" with a biotech-enabled, post-human future that "cheapens rather than enriches America's most cherished ideals." The council's 325-page report, "Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness," takes a decidedly dim view of the impact of such issues as radical life extension, mood and intelligence-enhancing drugs, and genetic therapies.
At the core of the conflict lies a fundamental question: How far should homo sapiens be allowed to go? Nascent technologies like genetic engineering, stem-cell therapy, and neuropharmacology promise not only to cure our diseases but to enhance our bodies, even to turn us all into the Six Million Dollar Man--better, stronger, and faster.
Clash. But not everyone thinks humans should be bioengineered. "Our increasing ability to alter our biology and open up the processes of life is now fueling a new cultural war," says Gregory Stock, director of the University of California-Los Angeles's Program on Medicine, Technology, and Society and author of the proenhancement book Redesigning Humans.
Yet isn't arguing about whether mankind should transform itself into a race of superhumans a little like arguing about whether the first Mars colony should have a bicameral or unicameral legislature? Kass doesn't think so. "These topics are not futuristic," he says. "Some of these issues are already here. Choosing the sex of your children is here. The use of stimulants on children to improve performance is here. Steroid use is here. Drugs that affect mood and temperament are here. . . . There is something profound going on here that will affect our identities and the society we live in."
Indeed, there are hints that genetic engineering might be able to alter mankind in some astounding ways. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have boosted levels of a protein in mice that makes them more muscular throughout life. Southern Illinois University scientists extended one mouse's life span to nearly twice the normal length.
But governments around the world are already putting brakes on this type of research, especially as it applies to humans. President Bush famously banned the federal funding of research on new embryonic stem-cell lines in 2001. A year later, the South Korean government raided BioFusion Tech, a company backed by the Raelian religious sect, after the group announced that a Korean woman would give birth to a clone--even though cloning isn't illegal there. And at least 17 countries have banned germ-line modification, which alters reproductive cells so that genetic tweaks will be passed down to future generations.
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