Biotechnology and the Future of Humanity

Week of Monday, September 30, 2002

In 1989 Francis Fukuyama, professor of International Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University, published an article that eventually became a book by the title The End of History and the Last Man. In that book Fukuyama argued that humanity had made no significant political progress since the principles of the French Revolution, and that the collapse of communism in 1989 signaled the end of history. By the “end” of history Fukuyama meant that liberal democracy had triumphed whereas all other political options had exhausted themselves.

Fukuyama's book was controversial, especially given the recent vigor of anti-western sentiments of some (not all) Islamic forms of government and society that encompass large parts of our world. More recently Fukuyama has revised his argument, not at all in deference to the growth of Islamic radicalism, which he thinks will eventually be swept away by modernity, but to acknowledge that history will never end until science ends, because in our modern world science, and not just politics, is perhaps the chief engine that drives human history.¹ Thus, his most recent book, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (2002), the purpose of which is to argue that

...the most significant threat posed by contemporary biotechnology is the possibility that it will alter human nature and thereby move us into a “posthuman” stage of history. This is important...because human nature exists, is a meaningful concept, and has provided a stable continuity to our experience as a species. It is, conjointly with religion, what defines our most basic values. Human nature shapes and constrains the possible kinds of political regimes, so a technology powerful enough to reshape what we are will have possibly malign consequences for liberal democracy and the nature of politics itself (p. 7).

Science drives technological, economic, ethical and social interests, but what concerns Fukuyama most is how science increasingly drives our political life. Our political equality depends upon the affirmation of our human equality, but the latter is precisely what the biotechnology revolution might drastically alter.

Consider the political implications of the heritability of intelligence, crime, sexuality, and the prolongation of life (pp. 25ff). In 1994 Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein were savaged as racists for their book The Bell Curve which argued that although environment and nurture play important roles, intelligence is largely inherited, and that African-Americans scored lower in intelligence tests because of their genetic makeup. In crime, what, if anything, should we do if we discover a genetic marker for aggression?² The genetics of sexuality provides an especially interesting example of just how complex and volatile these political issues can become. When it comes to intelligence and crime, the liberal left generally opposes genetic, determinative explanations, whereas when it comes to homosexuality they argue just the opposite, that one's sexual orientation is not left to personal choice or social conditioning but is instead determined by biology. The conservative right faces the same contradiction when it argues in the opposite direction, saying that sexual orientation is merely a matter of choice that can be changed, whereas intelligence and criminality are largely determined. Finally, one of the greatest contributions of biotechnology and medicine has been the prolongation of life. In 1900 life expectancy in America was about 46–48 years, whereas today it is 74–79 years. This, combined with falling birth rates, signals drastic demographic shifts and political challenges.

Fukuyama acknowledges the middle ground, affirming both nature and nurture; his point is that “scientific knowledge about causation will inevitably lead to a technological search for ways to manipulate that causality” (p. 39). The examples show the distinctly political implications, both good and bad. Perhaps government policy would choose to ameliorate environmental factors that disadvantaged people (eg, poor diets or dangerous environments), exonerate people for matters deemed beyond their control, pay for powerful drugs to alter undesirable behavior (Prozac and its cousins, for example, have been taken by 28 million Americans), or require people to retire at a certain age. Perhaps some of these conditions will be construed as legal disabilities that require compensation from the public coffers?

What Fukuyama fears most about biotechnology are not its unintended consequences or costs, but that by altering human nature we also alter our commonly accepted notions of human rights, justice and morality: “The more science tells us about human nature, the more implications there are for human rights, and hence for the design of institutions and public policies that protect them” (p. 106). He argues for the unpopular notion that there is some essential human nature, even though he admits that it is hard to define, the implication being that human nature is not a social construction. The ramifications for human rights (the concern of the Left) and human dignity (the concern of the Right) are enormous (p. 177).

What should we do? We should resist the defeatist pessimism that thinks technology will advance unabated no matter what we do. We must discover ways to transcend the many ways the debate has become polarized between “libertarians” who countenance no restraints on technology and conservatives who would impose severe restrictions. Fukuyama calls both extremes “misguided and unrealistic.” Rather, he argues that we must regulate biotechnology by creating political institutions that will discriminate between advances that promote human rights and dignity, and those that threaten them (p. 182). Commercial interests are too powerful and the scientific community too invested for self-regulation to work. Finally, Fukuyama argues with a sense of urgency, insisting that we need to move “from thinking to acting, from recommending to legislating. We need institutions with real enforcement powers” (p. 204).

I enjoyed Fukuyama's book. Unlike some radical critics of biotechnology like Jeremy Rifkin, Fukuyama acknowledges that our challenge is to balance the “undisputed promise” of biotechnology with whatever reservations and questions we might have. As with Huxley's Brave New World, our chief danger might reside in the fact that with biotechnology we will get precisely what we want and desire, rather than what we fear. Further, while Fukuyama acknowledges that one can and even should critique biotechnology on the basis of religious convictions, he recognizes that we cannot expect most of society that does not share those convictions to find our arguments compelling; most of society treats religious arguments like an irrational prejudice. One of the main goals of his book is to demonstrate that there are significant non-religious arguments that one can make to caution us about biotechnology.³ Finally, as a member of President Bush's Council on Bioethics (www.bioethics.gov), Fukuyama is an important participant in what one might argue is our society's most important social, political and religious debate—the radical political implications of the biotechnology revolution.