Gerald R. Lucas

This has been a biotech news kind of week. Scientist David Gelernter reviews Bill McKibben’s latest book Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age in Wired. McKibben forcasts “a frightening catastrophe brought on by human obliviousness” from casual genetic modifications to human beings. He sees designer babies as bound to backfire, like buying the latest computer and expecting it to be relevant or even able to compete as technology improves: “If you upgrade your child with 25 bonus IQ points, you can count on a 50-point boost becoming available by the time your children have kids of their own. You’ve just made Junior obsolete.” In addition, what right do we have to further modify or children — we’re already giving them our genes, do we need to futher determine who they are by including a strong desire to read poetry or play football: “you are wiring your own tastes into their genes, literally twisting their minds and bodies into the shape you have chosen.”

Points taken, but I wonder what he’ll have to say about the idea of the “human”? Only a cursory and somewhat alarmist and religiously tinged mention appears in the article which suggests that we find nothing particularly significant about the human today. Might be worth a read, unless it’s mired in outmoded discussions of religion and the sancity of human life. Good stories all, but we’ve never let that stop progress before, only severely hamper it.