'after humanity', prospect magazine issue 75 june 2002 - prin.

'After humanity', Prospect Magazine issue 75 June 2002 - Printer Fr.
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/printarticle.php?id=5284 Issue 75 / June 2002
After humanity
Biotechnology could be a tool of evolutionary improvement
GEOFF MULGANGEOFF MULGAN IS DIRECTOR OF THE FORWARD STRATEGY UNIT IN THE CABINET OFFICE AND THEAUTHOR OF CONNEXITY (VINTAGE) With the publication of his article "The End of History" in 1989, Francis Fukuyama, then a little- known official in the US state department, suddenly became one of theworld's most influential writers. His account, in what later became a book, of the end ofthe cold war as the triumph of liberal capitalism was perfectly timed and artful yconstructed. Since then successive books on trust and social order have maintainedFukuyama's reputation for combining cogent argument with a sound use of socialscience and a sharp sense of how to make ideas newsworthy. The End of History attracted an avalanche of criticism. The argument which hit homemost powerful y with Fukuyama himself was the claim that history could not end ifscience was continuing to make dramatic new discoveries. His new book, ThePosthuman Future, is an attempt to make amends. It is about how science, particularlybiotechnology, is not only making history but also remaking humanity, and why weshould be afraid of what is coming. What most concerns Fukuyama is the prospect that biotechnology wil transform whatit means to be human. Three sets of changes stand out, each of which wil castprofound doubt on some of our most cherished political beliefs: the effects on ourpersonalities of various new kinds of drug; the radical extension of the life span; andthe ability of genetic medicine to change and improve human beings. The first set of changes is almost upon us. Before long, biotechnology wil be able tochange not only our moods but also the very structure of our personalities.
Something of its potential power can be gauged from the influence of drugs likeProzac, Zoloft and Paxil, which have together been taken by some 10 per cent ofAmericans. Prozac works by increasing the levels of serotonin in the brain and hasproven a remarkable cultural as wel as medical phenomenon-albeit one on which theevidence is stil contested-turning nervous and depressed people into confident, happyand assertive extroverts. Ritalin is another character transformer: the wonder-drugsolution to attention deficit disorder. So successful is it that it is now used, usual yil egal y, by mil ions of students to increase concentration and energy levels and to fuel 'After humanity', Prospect Magazine issue 75 June 2002 - Printer Fr.
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/printarticle.php?id=5284 The advocates of both drugs argue that there is a biological cause and a chemicalsolution to personality problems, and it is true that pharmaceutical remedies topsychological problems have (to the chagrin of some) proved much more effective thanmany non-pharmaceutical therapies in treating conditions as varied as manicdepression and some forms of schizophrenia. The problems arise when you try todraw a line between an il ness needing treatment, and an everyday human flaw.
Depression, like the inability to concentrate, affects most people to varying degrees.
There is nothing intrinsical y wrong with redefining such relatively normal problems aspathologies which require therapy. For example, meditation techniques which teachpeople how to discipline their minds can be effective at holding low-level mentalil nesses at bay. But it is al too easy for therapy to turn into social engineering.
Fukuyama writes that "there is a disconcerting symmetry between Prozac and Ritalin.
The former is prescribed heavily for depressed women lacking in self-esteem; it givesthem more of the alpha-male feeling that comes with high serotonin levels. Ritalin onthe other hand is prescribed largely for young boys who do not want to sit stil in classbecause nature never designed them that way. Together, the two sexes are gentlynudged towards that androgynous median personality, self-satisfied and social ycompliant, that is the current political y correct outcome in American society." Current policy justifies restrictions on drug use mainly on the basis of harm. A trulysafe drug that simply makes people feel better, without side-effects, could,paradoxical y, be much harder to cope with. Huxley's Brave New World is a dystopiaprecisely because we are so suspicious of chemical routes to happiness, and would liketo believe happiness should be at least distantly related to virtue. For the samereasons, we are suspicious of chemical remedies for low self-esteem. Self-esteemshould bear some relationship to real qualities of character and achievement (althoughsome people enjoy unreasonably high self-esteem without either achievement ordrugs). The second big impact of biotechnology is likely to be a further radical extension of lifeitself. The rise in life expectancy over the last century already ranks as one of the greatachievements of modern science. When Europe's pension systems were created, veryfew could hope to live long enough to enjoy them. Now wel over 80 per cent of peoplecan expect to live to 65, and wel over a quarter are likely to be alive at 85. Combinedwith fal ing birth rates, the effect is a big demographic shift: according to thedemographer Nicholas Eberstadt by 2050 the median age wil be 54 in Germany, 56 inJapan and 58 in Italy. Much has been written about the impact of these shifts on pensions systems andlabour markets; rather less on politics. As Fukuyama points out, the character of 'After humanity', Prospect Magazine issue 75 June 2002 - Printer Fr.
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/printarticle.php?id=5284 societies is likely to be changed by ageing, with more rigidity and resistance to change.
Elderly women in particular wil emerge as one of the most important blocs of votersand their views-less supportive of defence spending and using force abroad, accordingto US surveys-wil gain in influence. These arguments can be overdone. In the 1960s, swinging Britain was the oldestsociety in the world; conservative Japan one of the youngest. There is no simplecorrelation between age and politics. Yet just as it is intuitively likely that the risingimportance of social order and inflation (which causes more harm to older savers thanyounger borrowers) over the last 20 years reflects ageing societies, so is it reasonableto expect that a further "greying" of society wil change the political agenda-forexample bolstering the constituency for higher spending on healthcare. The forecasts on ageing, dramatic as they are, take no account of possible medicaladvances which could achieve a further sharp rise in life expectancy. Scientists havealready identified some of the genetic foundations of mortality: the SIR2 gene, isolatedby Leonard Guarente at MIT, plays a decisive role in the longevity of yeast and couldpossibly lead to ways of extending human lives. Stem cel s created through therapeuticcloning could, in theory, be used to generate entirely new body parts identical to thecel s in the host body, and so free from immune reactions. Some scientists doubt whether anyone wil ever find a simple key to the ageingprocess. But even if they are right, governments look certain to be condemned to hardchoices. The continuing debate about whether the retirement age should rise in stepwith longevity may prove to be one of the easier issues. Much tougher ones wil includehow to manage access to new medical technologies, especial y if they turn out to bevery expensive, and how to strike the right balance between keeping people alive andkeeping them lively (what of the prospect of an extra 50 years of life but no cure forAlzheimer's disease?). The third big area of advance, and potential difficulty, is genetics. In recent years it hashad a largely benign impact on political debate-notably stressing the genetichomogeneity of the human race. But much that may become known in the future wilnot be so comfortable. The most obvious example is the heritability of intel igence.
Although this remains a complex issue because of the interactions of culture andbiology, there is now a fairly wide consensus that some 40-50 per cent of manycharacteristics, including intel igence, are in some sense heritable, which if true hashuge implications for how we think about social mobility and opportunity. Another example is crime. It is easy now to mock the 19th-century Italian professorCesare Lombroso, who identified a criminal physical type with a sloping head that wasa throwback to an earlier stage of human evolution. But this does not mean that 'After humanity', Prospect Magazine issue 75 June 2002 - Printer Fr.
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/printarticle.php?id=5284 criminal behaviour, or characteristics that are associated with it such as impulsiveness,have no genetic basis. The idea that there might be genes for crime has beendiscredited, not least for ignoring the extent to which crime is social y determined. Yetthere is a growing body of evidence which is harder to discount, such as a large studyin Denmark which found that identical twins had a 50 per cent chance of sharingcriminal behaviour, versus 21 per cent for non-identical. If this sort of finding isaccepted, it wil be hard to ignore its implications for crime prevention and punishment.
One of its effects could be a further chal enge to the idea of free wil and personalresponsibility: for criminals there may be grounds for claiming diminished responsibility,the "genetic defence"; for states there may be grounds for taking pre-emptive actionto restrain prospective criminals. The way we think about sexuality is also likely to change. Imagine, Fukuyama says,that in 20 years time there is reliable evidence that exposure to certain levels oftestosterone in the uterus correlates with homosexuality, and that mothers could takea pil to significantly reduce the chances of a child becoming gay. How many parentswould take it? How many governments would let them? Mil ions of parents have already used amniocentesis and sonograms to diagnoseDown's syndrome or cystic fibrosis. Geneticists expect that in the foreseeable futuremothers wil be able to produce dozens of embryos, screen them for genetic profileand choose the characteristics they want. Cloning may eventual y be possible. Thisspring it was rumoured that three women were pregnant with cloned embryos. If thisis true, the children have only a slim chance of survival. But what sounded like sciencefiction only a few years ago is starting to sound almost commonplace. Genetic engineering poses huge risks especial y given how little we know about howgenes interact with each other. For some, this confirms the virtue of the precautionaryprinciple: we should avoid tinkering with complex ecologies that we barely understand.
But there wil be competing pressures. Parents wil often do whatever they can tomaximise their children's life chances. Global markets are likely to find legal or il egalways of linking scientific supply to what may be desperate demand. Governments mayconclude that, far from banning the technologies, they should use them to reduceinequalities or raise the IQ of their people. The above are just a few examples of how biotechnology could change us. Theysuggest how hard it is likely to be for societies to find their way amidst a confusingscientific and moral landscape. The first half of Fukuyama's book works wel , providinga clearly written description of this landscape. Unfortunately, in the second half, as hetries to provide a moral compass, his clear-headed confidence dissolves. The centralthesis is straightforward enough: that human nature is so fundamental to our notionsof justice, morality and the good life, that any attempts to modify it wil have 'After humanity', Prospect Magazine issue 75 June 2002 - Printer Fr.
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/printarticle.php?id=5284 disastrous consequences. Yet each successive step of the argument takes him furtherfrom solid ground. His first chal enge is to define human nature. Fukuyama argues that "human natureexists, is a meaningful concept and has provided a stable continuity to our experienceas a species." Behavioural genetics and cross-cultural anthropology have, indeed,together done much to paint a picture of a human race that shares many morecommon traits than earlier generations of relativists al owed. So far, so good. Theproblems arise however when he tries to load a moral weight onto this picture. Theability to speak, the tendency to bring children up in families, and even belief in God,may al be typical of the human species and not explicable solely in cultural terms, butthat does not make them in any strong sense constitutive of human nature. Nor is itclear why we should want to preserve al of these behaviours. Fukuyama weaklyconcludes that what he cal s Factor X, our "essential humanness," is a cluster ofcharacteristics that go to make up a whole. At no point does Fukuyama answer the most powerful implicit claim of thebiotechnologists. If we could-and it is a big "if"-change the behaviour andcharacteristics of some human populations in ways that were widely accepted asmoral y advantageous (perhaps with more optimistic, cooperative and less impulsivepeople on average) would this be a bad thing? After al , our inherited natures wereshaped in a radical y different environment, and have left us often il -suited for modernlife. There are many reasons for being nervous about any serious attempt to changeour nature. But to defend our inherited makeup as the last word in evolution is justdogmatic. Fukuyama criticises much Enlightenment thinking for having ignored human nature,and rightly argues that no political philosophy can be entirely credible without acoherent view of it. However, he is quite wrong to criticise today's political philosophieson these grounds. Much traditional conservative philosophy has a very clear view ofhuman nature: our vulnerability to evil is the justification for a strong authority to holdus in check. Much socialist and liberal political philosophy is founded on a clear view ofhuman beings as inherently benign and cooperative, just as neoliberalism (andneoclassical economics) is founded on an equal y clear view of human beings asprimarily self-interested. In none of these cases is the problem the lack of a view ofhuman nature. The problem is rather that these views of human nature are simplisticcaricatures, and devoid of any reference to the now very substantial empirical evidencewe have about human psychology. Moreover, it is by no means clear that our deepest understandings of justice, equalityand morality are firmly founded on human nature. A more accurate claim would be thatour deepest understandings of justice, equality and morality have arisen not as 'After humanity', Prospect Magazine issue 75 June 2002 - Printer Fr.
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/printarticle.php?id=5284 reflections of human nature, but rather from the tension between ideals and reality,between our ability to imagine a more perfect world and the "crooked timber" of realpeople. This tension is dynamic, not static; what Norbert Elias cal ed the civilisingprocess is a story of how some aspects of our nature-impulsive behaviour,violence-have been reined in, while others-discipline, sociability, loyalty to the group,honesty-have been rewarded. In essence, Fukuyama's argument is a secular version of Pope John Paul II'sacknowledgement in 1996 that the church could accept that humans are descendedfrom non-human animals, but that there is an "ontological leap" that occurssomewhere in this process, a point at which the soul is created. The idea of such a leap is flattering. It implies that we are safe from competition fromthe computers and artificial intel igence systems which a generation ago might havebeen expected to chal enge our monopoly on recognition and rights. And it providesprotection from the claim that animals, particularly those like goril as which aregenetical y very close to humans, should be treated as having rights. Unfortunately,despite much effort, it turns out to be very hard to construct a convincing argument infavour of this "leap." As the animal rights theorist Peter Singer has repeatedly shown,if our ideas of rights are founded on a view of human beings' moral capacity then it isil ogical to exclude animals that are very similar to us from the domain of rights, just asit is il ogical to treat a severely mental y incapacitated adult, or a foetus, as having thesame rights as a ful y formed adult. Fukuyama at one point concedes that Singer's position is probably logical y strongerthan his own, but attacks it instead for where it leads. He argues that if we give up theidea that humans are unique, and that al humans share equal y in this uniqueness, orif we al ow some people to use genetic engineering to alter their biological natureradical y, then we risk destroying the very ideas of equal rights and dignity on whichmuch that is best in our civilisation rests. This is a big claim which left me unconvinced. Equal dignity and rights are not, andnever have been, empirical facts. Some of the authors of the American constitutionand the declaration of the rights of man may have believed that al men were literal ycreated equal. But these ideas are much better understood as valuable fictions whichencourage people to respect each others' needs and interests, guarantee ourprotection from oppression and hold diverse communities together. It is quite possibleto believe in them, while also recognising how very unequal y people are endowed.
Greater genetic variability might make it harder to sustain arguments for equal rights,equal treatment or equal opportunity. But it is not self-evident that they would. In anycase, it is just as likely that genetic engineering wil reduce genetic diversity as that itwil increase it, just as it is likely that societies with greater genetic knowledge wil do 'After humanity', Prospect Magazine issue 75 June 2002 - Printer Fr.
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/printarticle.php?id=5284 more, rather than less, to pool risks. The fact that increased insight into eachindividual's genetic distinctiveness opens up the prospect of more personalised healthcare, wil strengthen not weaken the case for socialised medicine because thealternative, in which everyone would buy their own insurance based on their owngenetic predispositions, runs so counter to any sense of fairness or community. Suchan outcome does not require anyone to believe that people are equal; instead it wouldreflect a majority choice that we would rather live in a society which treats people as ifthey are of equal worth. Fukuyama's central claim is that biotechnology wil be uniquely dehumanising. In aliteral sense he is right; biotechnology wil change our nature. But when we describesomething as dehumanising we mean that it wil destroy our most cherished values,and people's capacity to act as moral beings. This distinction matters because fornearly two centuries successive generations of critics have warned thattechnologies-the railway, the telephone, the television and the computer-would bedehumanising. Yet when we look back, each of these technologies has done far moreto enrich life than to impoverish it, and the worst crimes against humanity have beencommitted by al -too-human institutions, often with scant support from technology.
The very human nature which Fukuyama extols is as likely to threaten us in the futureas any technology that we may create. Fukuyama might have been on stronger ground if he had warned that the effects ofbiotechnology are likely to be as unequal y distributed as those of previous industrialrevolutions. But as in his other work, he hardly mentions words like "power" or"interest." This absence is particularly evident in a final group of chapters which turn to the policyimplications of the new technologies. Each year legislatures and politicians devote muchtime to the task of establishing the rules of a game that few ful y understand. A greatdeal of the argument is polarised between laissez faire advocates of scientific progress,and sceptics whose primary purpose is to impede the new technology at al costs.
Usual y the battles take place in obscure committees and commissions. But theexperience in Europe over GM crops shows how quickly issues at the intersection ofscience, economics and values can burst to the surface. Most of the pressure for greater regulation is likely to come from consumer groupsand environmentalists. However, some of it could come from pragmatic businessleaders. Monsanto, for example, asked the first Bush administration to introducestronger regulatory rules for genetical y engineered products, including label ing. Theproposal was subsequently dropped, but might have saved them from the disastrousbacklash in Europe. 'After humanity', Prospect Magazine issue 75 June 2002 - Printer Fr.
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/printarticle.php?id=5284 Governments wanting to regulate utilities or financial institutions can make use of anextensive body of theory and years of experience. In biotechnology, by contrast,governments and legislatures are making it up as they go along, mainly guided by theprevailing national climates of opinion. These are surprisingly varied. Britain, forexample, has general y opted for cautious optimism, and has legalised therapeuticcloning and the use of stem cel s harvested from human embryos. In the US, thereligious right has made common cause with the radical left to oppose biotechnology ingeneral and stem cel research in particular. In Germany, the unhappy history ofeugenics has led to a very restrictive stance, while many southeast Asian countrieshave taken a liberal approach, primarily for economic reasons. The principles which should guide regulators in the future are worryingly elusive. Takefor example the argument that therapeutic technologies should be acceptable, whereastechnologies for enhancing desirable attributes (like intel igence) should not be. Thisseems attractive, yet on closer inspection the distinction melts away: why for exampleshould the enhancement of intel igence be so much less acceptable if it takes place in aclinic than in a school? Fukuyama gives up on the attempt to define the boundaries. "As in other areas ofregulation, many of these decisions wil have to be made on a trial and error basis byadministrative agencies based on knowledge and experience not available to us atpresent." Instead, he suggests, we should be thinking about how decisions are made.
One decision-maker held up as a model is Britain's Human Fertilisation and EmbryologyAuthority. Its main role is to regulate such things as IVF and donor insemination. Itsstrength is that it brings together the many incommensurable dimensions of humanbiotechnology-scientific, medical, economic and ethical-in one institution which isresponsible for control ing research and regulating what can be done. Crucial y, too, itcombines lay members, doctors and scientists in a transparent approach to makingdecisions. I doubt whether members of the HFEA would share Fukuyama's conclusion that "wewant to protect the ful range of our complex, evolved natures against attempts atself-modification" and that "we do not want to disrupt either the unity or thecontinuity of human nature, and thereby the human rights that are based on it." Sofar they have taken a pragmatic, but ethical y sophisticated approach, to ensure thatwe maximise the benefits and minimise the risks associated with biotechnology. That issurely the best position to take. To describe research on fertility, the preservation andextension of life as dehumanising wil strike most people as odd. Similarly, the idea thatwe should block whole fields of technology just because of what they might do atsome point in the future, flies in the face of the rather successful ways in whichsocieties have managed to regulate and shape past technologies, from nuclear powerto television. 'After humanity', Prospect Magazine issue 75 June 2002 - Printer Fr.
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/printarticle.php?id=5284 But many observers wil share Fukuyama's anxiety. The new technologies elicit a senseof vertigo, perhaps appropriately since far from coming to an end, history may onlyjust be gathering speed, as humanity learns how to control its own evolution, not justcultural y but biological y too. In the end Fukuyama's argument peters out. No guiding principles are offered, no firmconclusions drawn. Yet for al its flaws his book is a brave attempt to grapple withsome profoundly difficult issues.

Source: http://www.stoa.org.uk/topics/nature/after-humanity.pdf