Humanity: The Remix

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A similar spirit pervades the growing popular literature on the topic -- books like Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future (Houghton Mifflin, 2002) by UCLA biophysicist Gregory Stock and Remaking Eden (Avon, 1997) by Princeton biologist Lee M. Silver. In More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement (Broadway, 2005), Ramez Naam, a software engineer turned futurist, catalogs the new developments that could soon put designer bodies, minds, and children within our reach. He sees them as our next step in the human journey from cave art to the stars. "This hunger, this reach that exceeds our grasp, this aspiration to attain something 'which cannot be attained in earthly life' is the force that has built our world," he writes. "Never to say enough, always to want more -- that is what it means to be human."

Curiously, Bill McKibben and Francis Fukuyama list the same enhancements in their books to argue against the posthuman future. They also assert a radically different view of human nature. "What makes us unique is that we can restrain ourselves," McKibben writes. "We can decide not do something that we are able to do. We can set limits on our desires. We can say 'Enough.' "

TRANSHUMANISTS LIKE HUGHES dismiss what he calls "bio-Luddite" concerns as just another case of future shock. At any major shift, they say, the change-fearing masses first rebel and then get over it. What's more, with our contact lenses, artificial heart valves, and cell phones, we're already cyborgs anyway. Smallpox vaccine and anesthetics for childbirth pain were once both renounced as insults to God. How is Bush's effort to limit federal funding for stem cell research, and the wider crusade against cloning, any different?

Some liberals as well as conservatives insist that these issues are different. In The Biotech Century (Tarcher/Putnam, 1998), Jeremy Rifkin has suggested that modern molecular biology is creating a political order that's beyond left and right. As he noted in a phone interview, the new divide, in his view, falls between those who believe life has "instrinsic" value and those who see it in purely utilitarian terms as "reducible to material for manipulation." Citing respect for life as his motivation, Rifkin says he parts company with many liberals by opposing embryo cloning in all forms, even the "therapeutic" cloning that can be used to generate stem cells. (He is not opposed to research involving adult stem cells, which can be drawn from bone marrow.)

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