"We are as gods, and we might as well get good at it."  -Kevin Kelly, author and techno-utopian

The most important technological advance of recent times is not the Internet, but rather the biotech revolution-which promises to give us unprecedented power to transform human nature. How should we use that power? A group of cutting-edge scientists, entrepreneurs, and  intellectuals has a bold answer. This group-I call them the techno-utopians-argues that science will soon give us the means to straighten the crooked timber of humanity, and even to remake our species into something "post-human."

One of the leading techno-utopians is Lee Silver, who teaches molecular biology at Princeton University. Silver reports that biotechnology is moving beyond cloning to offer us a momentous possibility: designer children. He envisions that, in the not too distant future, couples who want to have a child will review a long list of traits on a computer screen, put together combinations of "virtual children," decide on the one they want, click on the appropriate selection, and thus-in effect-design their own offspring. "Parents are going to be able to give their children . . . genes that increase athletic ability, genes that increase musical talents . . . and ultimately genes that affect cognitive abilities."

But even this, the techno-utopians say, is a relatively small step: People living today can determine the genetic destiny of all future generations. Some writers, including physicist Stephen Hawking, have suggested that genetic engineering could be used to reduce human aggression, thus solving the crime problem and making war less likely. James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, argues that if biological interventions could be used to "cure what I feel is a very serious disease-that is, stupidity-it would be a great thing for people." Silver himself forecasts a general elevation of intellectual, athletic, temperamental, and artistic abilities so that we can over time create "a special group of mental beings" who  will "trace their ancestry back to homo sapiens," but who will be "as different from humans as humans are from the primitive worms with tiny brains that first crawled along the earth's surface."

These ideas might seem implausible, but they are taken very seriously by some of the best minds in the scientific community. The confidence of the techno-utopians is based on stunning advances that have made cloning and genetic engineering feasible. In theoretical terms, biotechnology crossed a major threshold with James Watson and Francis Crick's 1953 discovery of  the structure of DNA, but practical applications were slow in coming. In 1997, an obscure animal-husbandry laboratory in Scotland cloned a sheep named Dolly; today, the knowledge and the means of cloning human beings already exist, and the only question is whether we are going to do it. And why  stop there? As the scientific journal Nature editorialized shortly after the emergence of Dolly, "The growing power of molecular genetics confronts us with future prospects of being able to change the nature of our species."

In 1999, neurobiologist Joe Tsien boosted the intelligence of mice by inserting extra copies of a gene that enhances memory and learning; these mouse genes are virtually identical to those found in human beings. Gene therapy has already been successfully carried out in people, and now that the Human Genome Project has made possible a comprehensive understanding  of the human genetic code, scientists will possess a new kind of power: the power to design our children, and even to redesign humanity itself.

The fact that these things are possible does not, of course, mean that  they should be done. As one might expect, cloning and genetic engineering are attracting criticism. The techno-utopians have not yet made their products and services available to consumers; but one can reasonably expect that a society that is anxious about eating genetically modified tomatoes is  going to be vastly more anxious about a scheme to engineer our offspring and our species.

A recent book communicating that sense of outrage is Jeremy Rifkin's The Biotech Century. Rifkin alleges that we are heading for a nightmarish future "where babies are genetically designed and customized in the womb, and where people are identified, stereotyped and discriminated against on the basis of their genotype." How can living beings be considered sacred, Rifkin asks, if they are treated as nothing more than "bundles of genetic information"? Biotechnology, he charges, is launching us into a new age of eugenics. In Rifkin's view, the Nazi idea of the superman is very much alive, but now in a different form: the illusion of the "perfect child."

Although Rifkin has a propensity for inflammatory rhetoric, he is raising some important concerns: The new technology is unprecedented, so we should be very cautious in developing it. It poses grave risks to human health. Cloning and genetic engineering are unnatural; human beings have no right to do this to nature and to ourselves.

These criticisms meet with derision on the part of the techno-utopians. Every time a major new technology is developed, they say, there are people who forecast the apocalypse. The techno-utopians point out that the new technology will deliver amazing medical benefits, including cures for genetic diseases. How can it be ethical, they ask, to withhold these technologies from people who need and want them?

Lee Silver, the biologist, is annoyed at critics such as Rifkin who keep raising the specter of Hitler and eugenics. "It is individuals and  couples, not governments, who will seize control of these new technologies," Silver writes. The premise of the techno-utopians is that if the market produces a result, it is good. In this view, what is wrong with the old eugenics is not that it sought to eliminate defective types and produce a superior  kind of being, but that it sought to do so in a coercive and collectivist way. The new advocates of biotechnology speak approvingly of what they term "free-market eugenics."

The champions of biotechnology concede that cloning and genetic  engineering should not be permitted in human beings until they are safe. But "safe," they say, does not mean "error-free"; it means safe compared with existing forms of reproduction. And they are confident that the new forms of reproduction will soon be as safe as giving birth the natural way.

The techno-utopians are also not very concerned that the availability of enhancement technologies will create two classes in society, the genetically advantaged and the genetically disadvantaged. They correctly point to the fact that two such classes exist now, even in the absence of new therapies. Physicist Freeman Dyson says that genetic enhancement might be costly at first, but won't remain permanently expensive: "Most of our socially important technologies, such as telephones, automobiles, television, and computers, began as expensive toys for the rich and afterwards became cheap enough for ordinary people."

Dyson is right that time will make genetic enhancements more widely available, just as cars and TV sets are now. But the poor family still drives a secondhand Plymouth while the rich family can afford a new Porsche. This may not be highly significant when it comes to cars, because both groups can still get around fairly well. What about when it comes to genetic advantages conferred at birth? Democratic societies can live with inequalities conferred by the lottery of nature, but can they countenance the deliberate introduction of biological alterations that give some citizens a better chance to succeed than others?

The techno-utopians have not, to my knowledge, addressed this concern.  They emphasize instead that it is well established in law, and widely  recognized in society, that parents have a right to determine what is best for their children. "There are already plenty of ways in which we design our children," remarks biologist Gregory Stock. "One of them is called piano lessons. Another is called private school." Stock's point is that engineering their children's genes is simply one more way in which parents can make their children better people.

Some people might find it weird and unnatural to fix their child in the same way they fix their car-but, say the techno-utopians, this is purely a function of habit. We're not used to genetic engineering, so it seems "unnatural" to us. But think about how unnatural driving a car seemed for people who previously got around on horses and in carriages. "The smallpox virus was part of the natural order," Silver wryly observes, "until it was forced into extinction by human intervention." Diseases and death are natural; life-saving surgery is unnatural.

Nor are the techno-utopians worried about diminishing the sanctity of  human life because, they say, it isn't intrinsically sacred. "This is not an ethical argument but a religious one," says Silver. "There is no logic to it." Biologist David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate, argues that "statements about morally and ethically unacceptable practices" have no place in the biotechnology debate "because those are subjective grounds and therefore provide no basis for discussion." Silver and Baltimore's shared assumption is that the moralists are talking about values while they, the hard scientists, are dealing in facts.

In this view, the subjective preferences of those who seek to mystify  human life do not square with the truths about human biology taught by science. The cells of human beings, Silver points out, are not different in their chemical makeup from the cells of horses and bacteria. If there is such a thing as human dignity, Silver argues, it derives exclusively from consciousness, from our ability to perceive and apprehend our environment. "The human mind," Silver writes, "is much more than the genes that brought it into existence." Somehow the electrochemical reactions in our brain produce consciousness, and it is this consciousness, Silver contends, that is the source of man's autonomy and power. While genes fully control the activity of all life forms, Silver writes that in human beings "master and slave have switched positions." Consciousness enables man to complete his dominance over nature by prevailing over his human nature. Silver  concludes that, in a bold assertion of will, we can defeat the program of our genes, we can take over the reins of evolution, we can choose the genetic code we want for our children, and we can collectively determine the future of our species.

This triumphant note is echoed by many techno-utopians. Biotech, writes journalist Ronald Bailey, "will liberate future generations from today's limitations and offer them a much wider scope of freedom." Physicist Gregory Benford is even more enthusiastic: "It is as though prodigious, bountiful Nature for billions of years has tossed off variations on its themes like a careless, prolific Picasso. Now Nature finds that one of its casual creations has come back with a piercing, searching vision, and its own pictures to paint."

These are ringing statements. But do they make sense? Clearly there are many problems with Silver's definition of human dignity as based in consciousness. Animals are conscious; do they deserve the same dignity as human beings? Moreover, are human beings entitled to dignity only when  they are conscious? Do we lose our right to be respected, and become legitimate subjects for discarding or medical experiments, when we fall asleep, or into a coma? Surely Silver would disavow these conclusions. They do, however, flow directly from his definition, which is, in fact, just as heavily freighted with values as are the statements of his opponents.

There is, behind the proclamations of scientific neutrality, an ideology that needs to be spelled out, a techno-Nietzschean doctrine that  proclaims: We are molecules, but molecules that know how to rebel. Our values do not derive from nature or nature's God; rather, they arise from the arbitrary force of our wills. And now our wills can make the most momentous choice ever exercised on behalf of our species: the choice to reject our human nature. Why should we remain subject to the constraints of our mortality and destiny? Wealth and technology have given us the keys to unlimited, indeed godlike, power: the dawn of the post-human era.

What is one to make of all this? In many respects, we should celebrate the advent of technologies that enable us to alleviate suffering and extend life. I have no problem with genetic therapy to cure disease; I am even willing to endorse therapy that not only cures illness in patients but  also prevents it from being transmitted to the next generation. Under certain circumstances, I can see the benefits of cloning. The cloning of animals can provide organs for transplant as well as animals with medicinal properties ("drugstores on the hoof"). Even human cloning seems defensible when it offers the prospect of a biological child to married couples who might not otherwise be able to have one.

But there is a seduction contained in these exercises in humanitarianism: They urge us to keep going, to take the next step. And when we take that step, when we start designing our children, when we start remaking human beings, I think we will have crossed a perilous frontier. Even cloning  does not cross this frontier, because it merely replicates an existing genetic palate. It is unconvincing to argue, as some techno-utopians do, that giving a child a heightened genetic capacity for music or athletics or intelligence is no different from giving a child piano, swimming, or math lessons. In fact, there is a big difference. It is one thing to take a person's given nature and given capacity, and seek to develop it, and  quite another to shape that person's nature in accordance with one's will.

There is no reason to object to people's attempting brain implants and somatic gene enhancements on themselves. Perhaps, in some cases, these  will do some good; others may end up doing injury. But at least these people have, through their free choices, done it to themselves. The problem  arises when people seek to use enhancement technologies to shape the destiny of others, and especially their children.

But, argues Lee Silver, we have the right to terminate pregnancy and control our children's lives in every other way; why shouldn't parents be permitted to alter their child's genetic constitution? In the single instance of gene therapy to cure disease, I'd agree-because, in this one limited case, we can trust the parents to make a decision that there is every rational reason to believe their offspring would decide in the identical manner, were they in a position to make the choice. No child would say, "I can't believe my parents did that to me. I would have chosen to have Parkinson's disease."

But I would contend that in no other case do people have the right to bend the genetic constitution of their children-or anyone else-to their will. But they might, in good conscience, be tempted to do so; and this temptation must be resisted. Indeed, it must be outlawed-because what the techno-utopians want does, in fact, represent a fundamental attack on the value of human life, and the core principle of America.

The scientific-capitalist project at the heart of the American experiment was an attempted "conquest of nature." Never did the early philosophers of science, like Francis Bacon, or the American Founders conceive that this enterprise would eventually seek to conquer human nature. Their goal was  to take human nature as a given, as something less elevated than the angels, and thus requiring a government characterized by separation of offices, checks and balances, limited power. At the same time, the Founders saw human nature as more elevated than that of other animals. They held that human beings have claims to dignity and rights that do not extend to animals: Human beings cannot be killed for sport or rightfully governed without their consent.

The principles of the Founders were extremely far-reaching. They called into question the legitimacy of every existing government, because at the time of the American founding, no government in the world was entirely based on the consent of the governed. The ideals of the Founders even called into question their own practices, such as slavery. It took the genius of Abraham Lincoln, and the tragedy of the Civil War, to compel the enforcement of the central principle of the Declaration of Independence: that we each have an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit  of happiness, and that these rights shall not be abridged without our consent.

The attempt to enhance and redesign other human beings represents a flagrant denial of this principle that is the basis of our dignity and rights. Indeed, it is a restoration of the principle underlying slavery, and the argument between the defenders and critics of genetic enhancement is identical in principle, and very nearly in form, to the argument  between Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln on the issue of human enslavement.

In that tempestuous exchange, which laid the groundwork for the Civil War, Douglas argued for the pro-choice position. He wanted to let each new territory decide for itself whether it wanted slavery. He wanted the American people to agree to disagree on the issue. He advocated for each community a very high value: the right to self-determination.

Lincoln challenged him on the grounds that choice cannot be exercised without reference to the content of the choice. How can it make sense to permit people to choose to enslave another human being? How can self-determination be invoked to deny others the same? A free people can disagree on many things, but it cannot disagree on the distinction between freedom and despotism. Lincoln summarized Douglas's argument as follows: "If any one man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed  to object."

Lincoln's argument was based on a simple premise: "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master." Lincoln rejects in principle the subordination implied in the master-slave relationship. Those who want freedom for themselves, he insists, must also show themselves willing to extend it to others. At its deepest level, Lincoln's argument is that the legitimacy of popular consent is itself dependent on a doctrine of natural rights that arises out of a specific understanding of human nature and human dignity. "Slavery," he said, "is founded in the selfishness of man's nature-opposition to it, in his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely . . . convulsions must ceaselessly follow." What Lincoln is saying is that self-interest by itself is too base a foundation for the new experiment called America. Selfishness is part of our nature, but it is not the best part of our nature. It should be subordinated to a nobler ideal. Lincoln seeks to dedicate America to a higher proposition: the proposition that  all men are created equal. It is the denial of this truth, Lincoln warns, that will bring on the cataclysm.

Let me restate Lincoln's position for our current context. We speak of  "our children,"

but they are not really ours; we do not own them. At most, we own ourselves. It is true that Roe v. Wade gives us the right to kill our unborn in the womb. The right to abortion has been defended, both by its advocates and by the Supreme Court, as the right of a woman to control her own body. This is not the same as saying the woman has ownership of the fetus, that the fetus is the woman's property. The Supreme Court has said that as long as the fetus is occupying her womb, she can treat it as an unwelcome intruder, and get rid of it. (Even here, technology is changing the shape of the debate by moving up the period when the fetus can survive outside the womb.) But once a woman decides to carry the pregnancy to  term, she has already exercised her choice. She has chosen to give birth to the child, which is in the process of becoming an independent human being with its own dignity and rights.

As parents, we have been entrusted with our children, and it is our privilege and responsibility to raise them as best we can. Undoubtedly we will infuse them with our values and expectations, but even so, the good parent will respect the child's right to follow his own path. There is something perversely restrictive about parents who apply relentless pressure on their children to conform to their will-to follow the same professional paths that they did, or to become the "first doctor in the family." These efforts, however well intentioned, are a betrayal of the true meaning of parenthood. Indeed, American culture encourages a certain measure of adolescent rebellion against parental expectations, precisely  so that young people making the transition to independence can "find themselves" and discover their own identity.

Consequently, parents have no right to treat their children as chattels; but this is precisely the enterprise that is being championed by the techno-utopians. Some of these people profess to be libertarians, but they are in fact totalitarians. They speak about freedom and choice, although what they advocate is despotism and human bondage. The power they seek to exercise is not over "nature" but over other human beings.

Parents who try to design their children are in some ways more tyrannical than slaveowners, who merely sought to steal the labor of their slaves. Undoubtedly some will protest that they only wish the best for their children, that they are only doing this for their own good. But the slaveowners made similar arguments, saying that they ruled the Negroes in the Negroes' own interest. The argument was as self-serving then as it is now. What makes us think that in designing our children it will be their objective good-rather than our desires and preferences-that will predominate?

The argument against slavery is that you may not tyrannize over the life and freedom of another person for any reason whatsoever. Even that individual's consent cannot overturn "inalienable" rights: One does not have the right to sell oneself into slavery. This is the clear meaning of the American proposition. The object of the American Revolution that is  now spreading throughout the world has always been the affirmation, not the repudiation, of human nature. The Founders envisioned technology and capitalism as providing the framework and the tools for human beings to live richer, fuller lives. They would have scorned, as we should, the preposterous view that we are the servants of our technology. They would have strenuously opposed, as we should, the effort on the part of the techno-utopians to design their offspring; to alter, improve, and perfect human nature; or to relinquish our humanity in pursuit of some post-human ideal.

Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein describes a monster that is the laboratory creation of a doctor who refuses to accept the natural limits  of humanity. He wants to appropriate to himself the traditional prerogatives of the deity, such as control over human mortality. He even talks about making "a new species" with "me as its creator and source." In his rhetoric, Frankenstein sounds very much like today's techno-utopians. And, contrary to what most people think, the real monster in the novel isn't  the lumbering, tragic creature; it is the doctor who creates him. This is the prophetic message of Shelley's work: In seeking to become gods, we are going to make monsters of ourselves.

LOAD-DATE: January 18, 2001