Let us welcome the work of John Harris, (Professor of Bioethics, University of Manchester) in popularising the potential of enhancement in relation to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill would allow for inter-species embryos that will not only enable medical science to overcome the acute shortage of human eggs for research, but would provide models for the understanding of many disease processes, an essential precursor to the development of effective therapies.
Whilst I support many of the liberal arguments promoted by Harris in favour of enhancement, and understand that the limitations of an article in The Times circumscribes argument, the points that he raises point to his wider positions. They also denote a more political argument on how they should be debated at a popular level.
The first concern is Harris’s timeline for the future: with the replacement of homo sapiens sapiens with a posthuman speciation, that is more intelligent and better adapted than we are. This sits at odds with a picture of radical technologies that would allow the enhancement of existing individuals.
Darwinian evolution has taken millions of years to create human beings; the next phase of evolution, a phase I call “enhancement evolution”, could occur before the end of the century. The result may be the emergence of a new species that will initially live alongside us and eventually may entirely replace humankind.
There is an uncomfortable Darwinian ring to this replacement theory. It will discomfort many and undermines liberal arguments for enhancement at an individual level. Enhance now, die later. The solution is that we may indeed, as individuals, bridge the transition from old to new species, from human to posthuman: and that the inspiration for this concept is Moravec and Kurzweil, not some future genocide that we should welcome with open arms. If it were not, why should this differ from those green anti-humanists who support a dieback of our species.
Harris uses some extraordinary examples in support of his argument: and there is a neatness in looking back to simple but radical changes when supporting self-enhancement without restraint from the state.
Before fires, candles, lamps and other forms of man-made light, most people went to sleep when it got dark. Candles enabled social life and work to continue into and through the night and conferred all sorts of advantages on those able and willing to benefit from it, at the expense of those who couldn’t or didn’t.
Contemporary and future biological enhancements may create problems of injustice both in that they provide a means for some to gain an advantage (those who read by candlelight gain in a way that others do not), and because they may create unfair pressures as a result of the capabilities conferred by enhancement (like the pressure to stay up late and read or work because one can).
The solution is establishing “fair” working hours and provision, at public expense if necessary, of sources of light – not banning candles. The solution is a combination of regulation and distributive justice, not a Luddite rejection of technology.
Whilst disagreeing with Harris’s solution, which favours state regulation over market distribution, the clear thrust of his article is to open up the potential opportunities and benefits that could be denied to us by social democratic governments in the name of social equality. For further exploration, you can pick up his book here. One looks forward to an age of bootstrap enhancement.
Well I think this man’s views are a load of old cobblers. The one thing we know about the future is that it’s completely unpredictable and unimaginable. THe one certainty about futurological predictions is that they’re generally wildly wrong; they always transpose the society of today into the future, so in the 50s for instance it was imagined that a man might have a radio in his hat with which he would call his wife to put the dinner on. That’s laughable now, because everything changes, and we ridicule the sexist assumptions therein.
People make predicitons regarding how technologies will change the world. They’re usually some form of utopianism or dystopianism, and they’re always wrong. The telephone was going to end all wars, the television usher in an age of distributed learning. Nobody at the birth of the internet would have predicted its primary driver being porn, or predicted the blogosphere. People always imagine formal systems and ignore the informal individual chocies that are the real drivers e.g. the unexpected and surprising phenomenon of text messaging. Who, at the birth of the computer, predicted the personal computer? Why would everyone want a calculating device on their desk? Why would they bother with all the punched cards?
This man’s thinking is trapped in a certain science-fictional mindset. The idea of species has no utility when DNA can be arbitrarily altered. We don’t know where technology will take us; it seems highly likely to me that there’ll be the opportunity to drastically alter the already living body, not just before birth. Crude plastic surgery replaced with biological modifications at the cellular level, “I’d like to be 6 foot 2, green and with 4 arms, it’s a surprise for the wife”. Really, we just don’t know.
Trying to predict the social effects and inevitable demands for government intervention beloved of phDs when we don’t have the technology yet and have no idea what it’ll be is just a waste of time.
“7 million people will live in London a century from now? Egads! How will they dispose of all the horse manure?!”
Sorry, missed out the significant point that men don’t wear hats as a matter of course any more.
One of the most important attributes of a species is the genetic flexibility to adapt to change.Meddle with that and we will go the way of the dodo.History is littered with the disasters of science,add politics to the mix,who knows what madness will ensue.
The lates political scare is Anthropogenic Global Warming,now there is a suitable case for treatment..A heat resistant post-human with low carbon emissions.
I think Ian’s being very shortsighted here, he should be embracing any tehnology that promises the prospect of live action gay hobbit porn.
I don’t know. I read the article and didn’t think he was trying to either make a serious prediction of the future, or to suggest that only the following generation would benefit. His only point was to say that making healthier, more capable, better people was a good thing, and not the Franken-eugenic nightmare dystopia that some paint it as.
Sadly, in saying that post-humans could replace homo sapiens and still be good, he’s apparently given the impression I think he was hoping to dispel – that it would involve some sort of genocide of the ‘norms’.
I think what he’s trying to say is that it is no more a genocide than the replacement of people unfamiliar with technology by the modern, internet-savvy, mobile-connected, MP3-playing, GPS-tracking wired generation. It’s not that the older generation are not sometimes a bit alarmed at how fast things are moving, and how quickly they are falling behind. Just as their parents were with them, and just as we will be when we see what our children come up with. But it’s not like a war of annihilation, or anything.
There will be both personal enhancement, and germ-line enhancement that goes far beyond it (assuming it works). It is not the case that there would be nothing for us already alive (although it might be a bit like “the internet for old people”), but there are things you can do by starting from scratch that will be much harder to retro-fit. And if you do it by, say, adding an extra chromosome, then it is questionable whether they will be able to cross-breed without laboratory assistance, which would truly make them another species. Not that that will stop relationships – love will find a way. (A greater barrier to relationships would be the geek/techno-ignorant cultural barrier, but even that’s been known to be broken from time to time. :-))
But much of the market driving technology will be about people alive now, able to make the choices now. And they’re going to want stuff for themselves. There’s nothing in this article to say that can’t, won’t, or shouldn’t happen.
Or we may muddle along in much the same way as we have done up to now.
Really, man made global warming or disease is about to wipe out the most adaptive creature evolution has ever produced? I don’t think so!
And as for being replaced by our succesors. Tremendous work has been done in understanding DNA, but we’re still only studying the way the ‘black boxes’ are put together and guessing at how they interact. We haven’t really begun to understand the processes that take place inside the black boxes.
And as far as synthetic biology goes, we’re still at the stage of imagining how it might work, let alone how to make it work.
As Ian B points out, a lot has happened in the last hundred years and a lot will probably happen in the next, but I think that while we may make progress in fixing what goes wrong in humans that makes us age and die so quickly, I don’t see us developing into trans-humans any time soon.
I think I agree mostly with your point, Kevin. I think the immediate benefits of these technologies will first be seen in development of therapies that fix the ailments and frailties of the human body. I’m not sure that society (as individuals) will pursue a strategy that would clearly be contrary to the future of ‘natural’ mankind.
However, I’m not sure that I don’t fear the ‘Robocop’ mindset. Military technology is one of those wonderful areas where government is happy to leave its inept paws out of the process and let capitalism and free market initiative do the heavy lifting – then when all the R&D is done, spend our money on buying it.
Being the most adaptive creature evolution has ever produced doesn’t mean we’ll always be the one.
When the desire to develop products that can stand toe to toe against ‘inferior’ competition outweighs any moral qualms, I can see a huge temptation in leveraging what little knowledge we have of how DNA works and trying to build ‘people’ who might be considerably more resistant to battlefield conditions. And the justification will be ‘it’s for the good of our nation!’.
I’m not normally of a luddite disposition, but this is one area I think I have some justification in being one.
“Being the most adaptive creature evolution has ever produced doesn’t mean we’ll always be the one.”
Being top of the food chain does,unless there is some extinction event we won’t let anything else be ascendant.
If all that Dr. Harris suspects may happen, surely the governments of the successors will be petitioned for assistance in dealing with cockroaches, which ahve proved enormously adaptive, without much inter-species changes.
It is true that we are with biotechnology where we were with computers in the 1940s. Whether we will have the biotech equivalent of the modern PC in another 70 years time is not something we can foresee.
I don’t think the “RoboCop mentality” will be a problem any time soon – in the sort of countries likely to have the greatest access to the technology, it is most likely to be parents who say what’s to be done. (I shudder to think what the likes of Kim Jong Il might do with it, though.) But that sort of militarily-applicable ability would have other advantages that might well be of interest to parents too. They’re all the sorts of things people would probably want anyway. Resistance to disease, the ability to secrete your own antibiotics at need, the ability to subsist on contaminated food and water without sickness, the ability to do without sleep, to remember at will, to gain muscle without exercise, to increase the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood for greater endurance, to eliminate pain at will, to see in the dark like a cat or at a distance like a hawk, to smell like a bloodhound, or to connect direct to the electronic world, which will also continue to develop.
And those are just a few of the easier ones to predict. Parents will spend their money developing it, and the government may recruit the results in the normal way. The only encouragement and guidance the government need give is to give the best and most lucrative jobs to those with the talents they want. Parents will know what to do with that information.
As in any new technology, we will start with the easy stuff and work our way up. Immortality will probably have to wait, and some of the wackier transhuman modifications too. But we’ll start with curing clear genetic faults like muscular dystrophy and maybe that broken vitamin C gene, move on to generally better health with disease resistance, and then go from there.
The military may well have an interest. However, I think the military interest in biotechnology will be more in the line of offensive weaponry than in modifying their own soldiers. Tailored viruses and insect pests and suchlike. Possibly, the current trend of involving people less and remote control methods more will continue, and they will be able to fight wars without any soldiers at all, without ever leaving home, even. Who knows?
Dr Harris sounds as if he would be at home in the 1930s. Eugenics and a Master race anyone?
I think most parents will attest that children can already manage this without enhancement.
There will be other arenas where the drive to improve on the basic human model will be pushed. For instance, professional sports could certainly be in the lead if only to prevent the sort of thing which happened to Danny Cipriani today. It will start with bio-engineering to create stronger ligaments and cartilage to replace the torn and tattered remnants found in many a pro athlete’s knee or ankle, but may well develop into pro-active strengthening before any injury occurs. I for one will welcome any developments to strengthen the discs around the sciatic nerve, (and to rejuvenate my tired old body).
Of course sport will have to resolve it’s own bio-ethical dilemmas before such things are approved but with the legal precedents set by the Pistorius case it may not be long before suitably talented kids will be enhanced before they kick a ball in the pro leagues.
Achieving one’s own betterment does not impose any expense on others. When you light a candle, you are providing light for yourself, not casting darkness over others. If your neighbor buys a Lamborghini Murcielago, it does not cause your Fiat Punto to turn into a worthless pile of junk.
Human life is not a zero-sum game. It is crybabies like Harris who cause the lion’s share of human suffering on Earth, grind human progress to a standstill, beat the drums of war, and generally make the world sick.
This “distributive justice” is merely a precursor to outright Luddism–both ideas flow from the same zero-sum way of thinking. People who believe in distributive justice will never be comfortable living in a world inhabited by creatures nobler or better-off than they are.
They will never be comfortable with human progress, particularly this business of biotechnology and eugenics.
Never.
In almost all Western countries the fertility rate has dropped below two babies per women. There are groups in the population where the fertility rate is higher than that – but they tend to be groups who are hostile to the West.
Therefore (assuming there is not some restoration of traditional society – some counter 1960’s) the West will either eventually cease to exist or babies will be MANUFACTURED.
I am enough of a conservative to be uncomfortable with the MANUFACTURE of humans (or genetically developed “super humans”), but I can see no libertarian argument against it (as long as the manufactured beings had the same rights as “naturally born” humans), and if the alternative is the end of the West…..
The species genetic adaptability argument is dangerously wrong. If mankind is faced with an unprecedented threat, is it more likely to survive it by having a lot of genetic diversity or having a lot of technology and know-how? In the first case, the mechanism would be that loads of people die and some lucky ones survive. In the second case it would be that rational thought is applied to the problem and workable solutions are tried, tested and applied. Which way would you like us to handle bird flu – survival of the fittest or vaccinations/tamiflu 2.0/smart quarantines?
Harris point is really about a transition from natural evolution (fitness defined by nature, the unfit are killed off, mutations are random) to enhancement evolution (fitness defined by human thoughts, the unfit are not born, “mutations” are nonrandom and complex). It makes evolution humane. It becomes a moral activity because people are in charge of it and can be held accountable.
I doubt genetic modifications are the way to posthumanity (human generation times are too slow compared to other technology development; I’m betting on non-biological forms of intelligence in my research) but they help us enhance ourselves. Mainly in the form of stem cells, gene therapy and other kinds of biotechnology rather than germline engineering. I would not be surprised if much of our nanotechnology will in the end be more biotech than hard nanotech too. If we are going to have a shot at reaching at least a decent transhuman level (which may or may not allow us to upgrade further) we are going to need freedom to modify our bodies and minds. Without it I would expect an unenhanced humanity to deliberately or accidentally creating something much smarter/faster/adaptive that we have absolutely nothing in common with.
Ian B said: a man might have a radio in his hat with which he would call his wife to put the dinner on.
Apart from not putting it in a hat, what do you think a mobile phone is?
As to the substantive point, I agree with Pa Annoyed:
His only point was to say that making healthier, more capable, better people was a good thing, and not the Franken-eugenic nightmare dystopia that some paint it as.
Apart from not putting it in a hat, what do you think a mobile phone is?
I think it is the assumption about its primary function that Ian B was commenting on.
Ken said:
“Dr Harris sounds as if he would be at home in the 1930s. Eugenics and a Master race anyone?”
Spot on. This professor is a sick piece of trash. He looks forward to replacing humanity (N.B. that’s us, folks!) with some kind of genetically-engineered hybrid – and he’s happy to go on record to say it.
An argument against scientists playing God to ‘improve’ on nature can be made which matches Hayek’s argument in favour of free markets, namely that markets are too complex, and are better managed by the sum of millions of individual actions rather than a centrally-controlled committee, which vainly tries to anticipate all eventualities.
The example of artificial light is a telling one – it is profoundly unnatural, yet utterly normal. So is literacy – it is ‘natural’ to remember everything, not use machines (i.e books) to do it for us.
Enhancing humanity could be almost ‘invisible’, at first. We might have stronger immune systems, better memories, greater ability to heal from wounds etc.
Indeed, eliminating genetic disorders, which we all favour (?), could turn rather quickly into enhancement. Prone to schizophrenia? Right, that’s gone. Colour blind? Obvious nuisance. Keep forgetting phone numbers? Okay…
Not so sure about Cyborgs. It looks great in the movies, but if I were offered a super-duper enhancement running Vista, I think I’d pass.
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