There have been extraordinary advances in the life sciences over the

past half-century, culminating in the discovery of deoxyribonucleic acid

(DNA), and the pace has quickened of late with the widespread
application of biotechnology in the lives of much of the world’s
population. As Francis Fukuyama observes in his very significant
ethical work Our Posthuman Future, it will soon be routinely possible
for parents to screen their embryos for a wide range of disorders and
have only those with desirable genes implanted in the mother’s womb.
While this process might be acceptable for aborting embryos with
severe disabilities, as is done today, it is another matter when it
comes to aborting female babies, as is also done today in China.
Fukuyama asks his readers to pause with him and consider the
consequences of the biotechnology revolution.

Fukuyama’s approach is thoughtful and thorough. He works hard to

avoid the easy choice of science fiction melodrama. He begins with
what is already commonplace in the brave new biotechnological world
—the widespread and massive administration of such drugs as Prozac
and Ritalin to children and young people. While medical intervention is
certainly called for in cases of clinical aggressiveness or depression,
Fukuyama observes that some psychiatrists see attention-deficit
hyperactivity disorder everywhere and that some 15 million young
boys are said to be suffering from the problem. He denies the
massiveness of the epidemic and argues that attention-deficit
hyperactivity disorder is but a small tail on the normal curve of young
male behavior. Young human beings, especially males, are supposed
to run, jump, shout, and play games, not sit quietly at a desk all day.
By injudiciously administering such drugs as Prozac and Ritalin, society
is turning its youth into androgynous beings and tinkering dangerously
with basic human nature.

Pharmaceuticals are not the only threat to human nature posed by the
biotechnical revolution. The process of prolonging human life is in full
sway. While no one wants to see another human die, advances in
medical technology and information have produced an ever-aging
population that is not replenishing itself at the same rate as in the
past. Moreover, biotechnology is also on the verge of making even
more significant breakthroughs that will permit the engineering of
babies with unlimited resistance to disease and aging, who thus may
look forward to indefinitely long life.

Genetic engineering begins with decisions about which embryos to

save and which to discard. If females are routinely discarded simply
because they are females, as they now are in some parts of Asia,
China will find itself in a situation before the middle of the twenty-first
century in which as much as one fifth of its male population will not be
able to find brides. In other parts of the world, genetic engineers will
clone and grow embryos simply to obtain stem cells or desirable genes
that will then be grafted on to other embryos. Since this is an
expensive process, Fukuyama posits that the genetically best-endowed
children will be purchased by the wealthiest parents. What of simply
reproducing oneself? Cloning is, and seems certain to remain, an
extremely expensive process. Consequently, only the very richest of
the rich would be able to clone themselves. In this situation, is seems
possible that an Albert Einstein might be lost but that a person whose
wealth came about by accident might be preserved.

Fukuyama feels that genetic manipulation is worrying for two

significant reasons. It has not always been practiced ethically in the
past, and it poses the very real danger of destroying the very thing
which makes people significant: human nature. As for past ethical
problems, he cites Nazi Germany’s experiments in eugenics, as well as
similar experiments throughout the world. There is also the matter of
religious opposition to genetic manipulation. However, the overriding
issue is the destruction of humankind by seemingly well-meaning
efforts at improving biological structures.

The question is: What is human nature? The answer to this query is
the major burden of Fukuyama’s book, and he does a masterful job of
exploring this complicated and perplexing issue. He begins with a
question concerning the definition of human rights, as cited in the
Declaration of Independence. Rights may be said to derive from three
possible sources: God, nature, or humans themselves. Fukuyama,
citing the philosophers John Locke (1632-1704), Thomas Hobbes
(1588-1679), and even Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), points out that
in today’s liberal democracies, the divine source of rights is not widely
accepted. Rights based on human nature have also been under attack
since the eighteenth century; the argument from human nature is
usually referred to as the “naturalistic fallacy,” which states that
nature itself cannot provide any discernable basis for the concept of
human rights. Rights based on the human assertion of rights—that is,
that human rights are what humans say they are—is also highly
questionable. Fukuyama’s position is to reject both the naturalistic
fallacy and the human assertion of rights and calls for a return to the
pre-Kantian philosophic position that grounds rights and morality in
nature.

Maintaining that human nature is far too complicated to be defined by

simple terms such as pleasure and pain, Fukuyama returns to Plato (c.
428-348 or 347 b.c.e.) and Aristotle (384-322 b.c.e.) to capture the
term thymos: spiritedness or pride, which the Greeks believed to be
the primary component of a human being. Thymos is accompanied by
two other components to make up the total human being. These are
eros, or desire, and nous, or rationality. It is human pride and emotion
that determine whether actions are beautiful or repulsive, desirable or
infuriating, humane or inhumane, providing freedom or creating
oppression. This range of sensitivity is then tempered by rationality to
construct a working moral system or culture that may be altered by
extraordinary change in time or circumstance, such as a world war or
a widespread famine. According to this view, human nature is
grounded in the useful and good, with the ability to adjust to given
social circumstances. This is the position held by Thomas Aquinas
(1224 or 1225-1274) and most Western philosophers and moralists
until the advent of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who maintained a
radical Protestant view that human nature is basically sinful and that
high moral good can be obtained only by oppressing the natural.
Kant’s position was embraced and reinforced throughout modern
history by moralists and dictators who sought to enslave, oppress, or
destroy the individual.

Human nature, however, is neither good nor bad. It does contain an

innate tendency toward competitiveness and even violence, an
evolutionary trait that it shares with other primates, but it also
contains the rational means to control such tendencies, and because
human nature is grounded in a desire for individual freedom and
dignity, it is also capable of recognizing that desire for freedom and
dignity in other individuals and groups. Humans are also, through
evolution, social animals, and most will adjust the demands of their
individual natures to remain part of a social group. This aspect of
human nature, according to Fukuyama, is the factor which has led to
the creation of liberal democracies throughout the world. In these
constructs, Fukuyama is building on the work of contemporary thinkers
such as John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and John Robinson, as well as
the nineteenth century rebel philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-
1900). It is the need for freedom and dignity, and thus the ability to
recognize those essential human needs in others, upon which people
must depend as they face the very real potential danger of a
posthuman society, a society in which biotechnological success might
well rob humanity of its most precious commodity—its human nature.
As Fukuyama observes, it is well worth pondering what the creation of
a genetic overclass might do to this most precious attribute: universal
human dignity.

What is to de done? First, people must not fall prey to the idea that
there is no human nature. They must be careful of falling under the
spell of those who argue that in the future, people will no longer be
slaves to their genes but their master. People must take control, not of
their genes, but of the political process. This control must begin at the
level of state- nations, since international control is more difficult to
organize. Such control is nothing new. Many countries, including
Japan, Germany, France, India, and the United Kingdom, have already
banned reproductive cloning. As long ago as 1938, the United States
established the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which controls
which foods and drugs can be marketed to U.S. citizens. The powers of
the FDA were greatly increased following the thalidomide scandals of
the 1950’s and 1960’s, in which babies were born with horrifying birth
defects caused by their mothers using the drug during pregnancy.
Joint international actions will be more difficult, but Fukuyama is
heartened by such past events as the extensive international
agreements to limit the production and use of nuclear weapons. He
cites movements already underway, such as the Cartagena Protacol on
Biosafety, adopted by scores of countries in 2000, which restricts the
distribution and sale of biologically modified organisms (BMOs)
throughout Europe and other parts of the world.

There is no doubt that major changes are pending in the human

condition through the power of the life sciences. Fukuyama calls for
political good will, hard work, and vigilance in the sensible control of
biotechnology so that a dismal posthuman future may be avoided, but
the problem is far from simple. There is the reasonable desire to be
healthy and the responsibility of the medical community to heal illness.
There is the responsibility of the scientific community to seek truth and
knowledge, no matter what the opposition, religious or otherwise.
There is the entrepreneurial passion of the pharmaceutical industry to
promote and sell its products. Everyone has a basic human right to
health and enhancement. Above all, “red lines” must be drawn around
the most important quality of all: human nature, with its need for the
dignity and equality for each individual. This can only be done through
a determined political process of control of biotechnology at national
and international levels. The United States, as world leader, has the
ethical obligation, in Fukuyama’s view, to spearhead such a process.
Sources for Further Study

Choice 40 (October, 2002): 298.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 5, 2002, p. 3.

The New York Review of Books 49 (May 9, 2002): 28.

The New York Times Book Review 107 (May 5, 2002): 11.

Publishers Weekly 249 (February 18, 2002): 82.