Enough
by Bill McKibben. New York: Henry Holt,
2003.
$25.00 hardcover. ISBN:0-8050-7096-6
Reviewed by George Gessert
Will biotechnology give us wings? Make us
posthuman? Damage us irreparably? These
are a few of the possibilities that Bill
McKibben considers in Enough. According
to McKibben biotechnology will soon be able
to deliver better health, greater intelligence,
longer lives, genetically-determined happiness,
and maybe even dazzling good looks. However,
if we pursue these goals through germline
engineering the costs will be prohibitively
high. According to McKibben, germline engineering,
which involves making genetic changes that
can be inherited, will "break us free from
the bonds of our past and present", and
make our children into "putty." This will
lead to an "arms race" of all against all
in which parents will be forced to engineer
their offspring or practice neglect comparable
to child abuse. Every engineered baby will
be followed by more advanced models. "Once
the game is under way," McKibben warns,
"there wont be moral decisions, only
strategic ones." A host of unprecedented
family problems will arise. Children will
acquire characteristics of consumer products.
There will be children seen as "upgrades"
from older siblings, and "lemon" engineered
children. Some parents will suffer buyers
remorse. Consumer decisions will create
a genetically-based class system, and this
will eventually lead to new, posthuman species,
with interspecific violence to follow.
McKibbens warnings about keep-up-with-the-Joneses
genetic engineering bear consideration if
only because his picture of the future derives
from predictions made by advocates of germline
engineering. For example, in his 1997 book
Remaking Eden Lee Silver, a molecular
biologist at Princeton, wrote that germline
engineering to eliminate severe inherited
disease would "ease societys trepidation"
and open the door to other sorts of gene
enhancement, such as improving intelligence.
Silver "conservatively" speculates that
by 2350 society may be divided into 10%
"GenRich", or genetically enhanced individuals,
and 90% "Naturals" or unenhanced individuals.
The GenRich would control everything: the
economy, the media, entertainment, "the
knowledge industry", art. Silver envisions
Homo sapiens divided into four species by
2600, and by 2750 into more than a dozen.
Eventually millions of human-derived species
may be scattered across the galaxy. Silvers
vision of the distant future is epic, and
he is a lucid writer, especially when he
describes biotechnological techniques. However,
he has a weakness for absurdly grandiose
statements such as "We, as human beings,
have tamed the fire of life." He also gives
very limited attention to the suffering
that biotechnology is almost certain to
produce.
McKibben argues that germline engineering
will not only damage families and cause
social disruption, but will lead to widespread
loss of meaning. Biotechnology, he believes,
is the culmination of a long historical
process, greatly accelerated by the industrial
revolution, that favors individuals over
context, and leads to empowered but pitifully
isolated and disconnected people. Germline
engineering will eliminate the last source
of meaning: the individual self. This will
take place because an engineered "self"
is not a true self, but something more like
a robot. "We will float silently away into
the vacuum of meaninglessness."
McKibben doesnt use the word soul,
but that is what he suggests when he characterizes
the true self as a providentially-given,
unchanging essence and a primary source
of meaning. However, this concept of self
is a cultural construct. Buddhist and other
civilizations have flourished without cultivating
it, and without unleashing epidemics of
meaninglessness. Science conceptualizes
human beings as exquisitely intricate electro-chemical
phenomena operating within much larger,
almost infinitely complex material contexts.
According to common, present-day cultural
values, we already bear qualified comparison
to robots.
Since McKibbens concept of the self
is nostalgic and dubious, his argument that
engineered people will be essentially different
from the rest of us is also dubious. He
provides no convincing evidence that for
them life will not continue to be a succession
of surprises, intermittently a profound
mystery, and mathematically so improbable
as to constitute a miracle.
This is not to say that germline engineering
may not reshape our species or cause suffering.
Quite the contrary. McKibben does a service
by highlighting some profoundly troubling
possibilities. He argues that we may already
have gone far enough along certain technological
paths. He favors some kinds of innovation,
for example gene therapies that are somatic
and not inheritable, but draws a line at
germline engineering and at the world-destroying
potentialities of robotics and nanotechnology.
He believes that anything with the power
to make us posthuman should arouse our deepest
skepticism. The momentum of the new technologies
may be difficult to stop, but momentum is
merely inertia and has never had anything
to do with progress - that is, if progress
consists of movement toward human fulfillment.
More to the point, we cannot predict the
future. McKibben believes that flat statements
that technological innovation is inevitabl
are ruses to stop discussion before it can
begin.
What drives technological innovation? McKibben
quotes leading innovators to suggest that
in our time a basic force is hatred of life.
For example, robotics pioneer Hans Moravec,
reflecting on an Asmiov story about an android
who wanted to become a human, said (with
his typically aggressive use of the second
person) "Why in hell do you want to become
a man when youre something better
to begin with? Its like a human being
wanting to become an ape. Gee, I really
wish I had more hair, that I stooped more,
smelled worse, lived a shorter life span."
No doubt Moravec speaks for many. The very
widespread belief that we may go extinct
arises both from awareness of the immense
destructive power of high technology, and
from disgust with what we are, or have become.
Today there are plenty of reasons to loath
our species. Who has not felt at one time
or another that we deserve to go extinct?
McKibben acknowledges this inner crisis,
but does not address it. His appeals to
reason and essential goodness are inadequate
in the face of extinctions appeal,
and the misanthropy of leading scientists.
This is the most serious weakness of the
book.
I am less sanguine than McKibben about who
we are, which paradoxically makes me less
pessimistic about the prospect of germline
engineering. He points out that for awhile
germline engineering will be extremely expensive,
so only a small minority will be able to
afford it, but he does not explore implications
of this. From a Darwinian perspective, wealth
today functions counter-intuitively: it
affords no obvious evolutionary advantages.
In fact, there is an inverse relationship
between income and education on the one
hand, and number of offspring on the other.
As a group the poor, or rather the relatively
uneducated working poor, are indeed blessed
when it comes to progeny. The rich tend
to be Darwinian losers.
Furthermore, no one really knows how biologically
advantageous, as distinct from socially
advantageous, characteristics such as slimness,
athletic ability, and intelligence are.
Unless they produce more progeny, they have
no Darwinian advantages. A potato-shaped,
dimwitted nonentity with a swarm of children
is biologically superior to a brilliant
public figure, streamlined as a cheetah,
and childless. In other words, from an evolutionary
standpoint it may not matter whether most
of the germline manipulations that McKibben
mentions take place: they may amount to
genetic froth. The market has always generated
froth. Capitalism, which moved onto the
world stage with trade in sugar and tobacco,
involves bypassing our evolutionary defenses,
and exploiting our genetic weaknesses. We
are the animal who plays tricks on itself.
Consumer culture is the trickster spirit
incarnate.
McKibben makes a convincing case that we
would be wise to favor sustained public
debate about germline engineering, and to
exercise great caution about this immensely
powerful and potentially disruptive technology.
However, if our society does go down the
path of germline engineering, there is something
to be said for having the rich, the well-educated,
and the self-loathing conduct the first
experiments on their own children.
When the poet Edith Sitwell was a child
in the 1890s she had a slight curvature
of the spine. In her autobiography she tells
how her father, Sir George Sitwell, who
would tolerate no imperfections in his offspring,
had her subjected to the best available
medical treatment of the time. "The steel
Bastille" was a metal contraption that encased
young Ediths body, and caused her
excruciating pain. Only the rich could afford
this particular torture, or permit this
particular childhood. It is not inconceivable
that humanity will learn important lessons
from the rich about the consequences of
germline engineering, just as earlier generations
learned from the cruel and useless medical
treatments that premodern doctors inflicted
on aristocrats and their children. Today
most of what we need to learn is what not
to do.