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Book Reviews
Our Posthuman Nature; & Redisigning Humans
by Francis Fukuyama; & Gregory Stock
Profile Books, London, 2002
Fearing the future
Our Posthuman Nature: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution
By Francis Fukuyama, Profile Books, London, 256 pages; GBP17.99; ISBN 1-86197-297-0; 2002.
&
Redesigning Humans: Choosing Our Children’s Genes
By Gregory Stock, Profile Books, London, 277 pages; GBP17.99 ISBN 1-86197-242-3; 2002.
On receiving the above books for reviewing, I started first with Fukuyama’s much publicized doom’s day rhetoric. There was not a single moment of boredom during the next few days of interrupted reading – a period, which however, was punctuated by several fits of irritation, anger and provocation. One phrase that kept on short-circuiting my brain during this studious journey was the “fear of the future”. I checked several internet lists of phobias, but did not find this phobia mentioned anywhere. By the time I finished reading Fukuyama’s oracle, I felt like locked up in the company of eternally depressed people for whom any straw – however irrational, mystic or conservative – to hang on to was a saviour. But, I quickly broke out of this spell when I started reading Gregory Stock’s much more realistic, rational and sensible explorations of the exactly the same issues as those in Fukuyama’s fears.
It cannot be a mere coincidence that the publisher Profile Books brings out almost simultaneously two books whose subjects are the same but whose treatments and messages are so different. Whatever the publisher’s socio-economic-political reasons for doing this may have been, it would have been a greater achievement and an intellectual breakthrough if these two authors were encouraged to discuss and debate these issues either face-to-face or page-to-page, and come out with a treatise of dialogues. Instead, we have these two independent-pretending but highly inter-twined books in which, strangely enough, both authors completely ignore even citing each other’s well-known and previously published works (except one citation of Stock and Campbell in Fukuyama’s bibliography!).
The central issue debated by Fukuyama and Stock is that now that human beings are capable and ready to alter the basic Homo sapiens genetic blueprint, then do we still remain human or not. Do the possibilities of major heritable alterations at the level of intelligence, memory, mood and lifespan, which are qualitatively different from the prevention or treatment of genetic diseases, make us super-human (Stock) or post-human (Fukuyama)? Should we then legally stop or regulate such possibilities of alteration temporarily or forever? Of course, these and related questions immediately raise another question regarding what is human, and what is meant by human nature, human dignity and human rights? Do we really need to consider ourselves much better than any other life form, and does that consideration then give us certain special rights, privileges and responsibilities?
Fukuyama would like us to believe that there was something sacrosanct and divine about being human, and therefore every measure should be taken to preserve that essentiality. He almost declares the human genetic macromolecule DNA as holy, and as something qualitatively different from the DNA of other organisms. If Fukuyama is too much worried about preserving the purity, originality, authenticity and holiness of the human genome, he should know that alterations such as the addition, deletion, substitution and rearrangements of the genomic sequences for the purposes of prevention, treatment or even so-called improvements are not going to defile it. This is because there is no single idealised human genome, and already within it there are at least three million (0.1%) differences between any two individuals, except in the case of monozygotic twins. Gregory Stock, on the other hand, takes the scientific and positivist stance, demolishes the “man in the image of God” myth and reminds us that it is in the very “nature” (if there is some such thing) of human beings to break any constraints imposed by its nature. The history of human beings is the history of going beyond its genetic limits. In comparison with any other life form, the position of human beings today – for better or worse, mostly better – is mainly due to their ability to challenge their limitations. Using Stock’s terminology, we are already quite advanced functional cyborgs (fyborgs), who have developed numerous epigenetic and non-genetic means of transcendence, including biomedical technology. Future redesigning of human beings and other animals and plants is a logical extension of that.
Of course, there are several important issues to be resolved as regards what can and cannot be done technologically and biologically. Genetic manipulation to prevent the onset of certain diseases is one thing, but trying to “improve” upon something such as intelligence, state of mind and even the length of the lifespan is a matter of ever-changing socio-cultural priorities. In addition, constraints imposed by the interacting factors genes, milieu and chance (GMC), practically determine the feasibility and outcome of any manipulation. Both Fukuyama and Stock present their fears, concerns, visions and arguments about these. Whereas one of them would like to advocate layers and layers of rules, laws and regulations, the other one prefers further education and open debate about all those issues so that collectively accurate decisions can be made. Stock’s “Appendix 2” with eight hypothetical scenarios of genetic manipulation is a starting point to test one’s own feelings and thoughts about these issues and to initiate discussion around them. Fukuyama gives us no such choice of discussion and debate. He just tells us what should be done.
In my opinion, read Fukuyama’s dooms day warnings, but beware of his trappings; and read Stock’s concerns and re-think about your own holdings on that. Creating fear does good to only those few who have some other personal and political agenda to follow. And by the way, my Greek friends tell me that if I want to coin the term for the fear of the future, it can be “mellontophobia”, which, like most other phobias, is not a desirable state of mind. Fukuyama frightens, Stock stimulates!
- Suresh I. S. Rattan
(reprinted with permission from EMBO Reports)
Review by rattan
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