Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution.

• Author: Carbone, June
• Position: Book Review

OUR POSTHUMAN FUTURE: CONSEQUENCES OF THE BIOTECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION. By Francis Fukuyama. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. 2002. Pp. xiii, 256. $25.

With The End of History and the Last Man, (1) Francis Fukuyama (2) established himself as the prophet of liberal democracy and free markets, heralding their triumph as the only form of governance capable of commanding legitimacy. Asked to reflect on his predictions a decade later, Fukuyama concluded that the greatest threat to liberalism comes from biotechnology because it alone has the potential to remake the human nature that liberal democracy was designed to serve. Fukuyama makes a compelling case that biotechnology may produce developments that should concern us; he is ironically less persuasive in articulating a liberal-democratic framework for governing the developments he fears.

Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution is provocative. It establishes the breadth of the threat Fukuyama perceives by linking four areas of biotechnology rarely discussed together: neuroscience and the ability to determine the genetic basis of traits like homosexuality or intelligence, pharmacology and the transformation of human psyches made possible by drugs such as Ritalin or Prozac, (3) the potential to unlock the secrets of aging that could usher in revolutionary changes in demographics, and genetic engineering with its prospect of designer babies. Examined individually, each of these developments has the potential to relieve human suffering. Considered collectively, Fukuyama argues, they threaten to alter fundamentally human nature.

Given the breadth of the challenge, Fukuyama maintains that it is essential to consider not just the propriety of individual applications, but the governance of biotechnology more generally. His clarion call, to weigh the implications of the decentralized, globalized, free markets in which decisions on such technologies might otherwise be made, is in many ways prescient. Such decisions produced the revolution in information technology and information technology in turn accelerated the decentralization of power associated with it. Public discussion of the implications of the new technology is occurring only now that the information-technology revolution is largely complete.

Biotechnology, in contrast, touches more directly on people's hopes and fears than the computing power of the next generation of silicon chips. Biotechnology, after all, involves food, drugs, and medicines. It is no accident that one of the first of the alphabet agencies that became the hallmark of the regulatory state was the Food and Drug Administration ("FDA"). Authorized in 1906, the FDA appeared a generation earlier than the New Deal institutions associated with government growth. It is similarly no accident that stem-cell research, though still in an embryonic stage, touched off a firestorm of controversy unlike anything in the computer world. In contrast, Napster, though fully developed, implemented, and dismantled, never commanded the attention of popes or presidents. Biotechnology is and will continue to be governed differently as it takes place within a heavily regulated marketplace far more dependent on government funding and approval and the vagaries of public support or condemnation.

If Fukuyama is therefore right that biotechnology presents a different type of challenge than information technology and prescient in his call for an examination of its governance, his book nonetheless disappoints in its examination of the framework for resolution. Fukuyama's project is incomplete, and it is understandable that he reserved a more detailed blueprint for other work. Less forgivable, however, is his failure to confront the problem central to governance: it may be necessary to destroy liberal democracy in order to save it or, more prosaically, it may be necessary to curtail scientific exploration and the application of lifesaving treatments to preserve human nature as Fukuyama defines it.

The dilemma of stopping the threats to human nature without derailing the scientific freedom and curiosity central to it arises from two sources, one following from the way Fukuyama defines the threat and the other from the intrinsic nature of biotechnology. Fukuyama is concerned about anything that would undermine the human essence, which he describes as the sum of human unity and continuity (pp. 130, 172). He takes great pains to explain how an "ought"--thou shalt not alter human nature--can be derived from an "is"--our existing human nature establishes the values on which human institutions and judgments are based (pp. 114-17). He never quite says, however, what it is about human nature as it presently exists that is so valuable. In failing to do so, his reasoning becomes circular: we should not change human nature because doing so will necessarily change the values it produces. And changing those values appears to be wrong even if it makes us smarter, happier, and wiser--and inclined to value the improvements.

Because Fukuyama's definition of the human essence is so elusive, it can be used to oppose anything that changes us or our societies. Modern sanitation or the transformation in women's roles have arguably altered human society as much as Prozac or a revolution in the treatment of aging. To prevent such broad-based changes, to forestall effects that result from the culmination of thousands of otherwise innocuous decisions, indeed, to return women to the kitchen or prevent parents from seeking Ritalin for their hyperactive children, requires a response as draconian as Marx's response to capitalism. If human values reflect the human condition, then only preserving human conditions in all their misery will preserve those values. In his zeal to defend the essence of what it means to be human, Fukuyama must necessarily be dogmatic in opposing scientific advances, however seemingly benign, that threaten it. Fukuyama has thus become a fundamentalist in his defense of secular humanism. (4)

The dilemma for governance remains even if we relax Fukuyama's definition of the problem. Biotechnological innovations--the discovery of the human genome, new drug treatments for AIDS, gene therapies--typically involve large initial investments in risky enterprises whose ultimate products may be hard to predict. Once the basic science has been developed, however, individual applications may be relatively easy and inexpensive. AIDS drugs that cost a billion dollars to develop may be duplicated for pennies. Promising scientific developments may therefore be relatively easy to derail while their more questionable applications may be impossible to stop.

Although Fukuyama's prescriptions are mild ones--preventing, for example, preimplantation-embryo selection to favor world-class sprinters--his call to action is most likely to empower those who oppose broad categories of scientific research (p. 211). Consider the potential of stem-cell research. If the secrets of embryonic development will facilitate the existence of athletes with greater endurance, Fukuyama will oppose the development. But where would he draw the line: At prohibition of the basic research that might also lead to new techniques to fight heart disease? At public funding of animal trials? At implementation in humans? And more fundamentally, who is to decide? Fukuyama's greatest failing in Our Posthuman Future is that he does not convincingly address the question of whether governance of biotechnology on the terms he advances is possible at all.

The obstacle to Fukuyama's project comes from human nature itself. We are messy, stubborn, contentious beings, with authoritarian tendencies that require constant vigilance--or so Fukuyama argues in his other work. (5) In a monograph that he wrote for the Rand Corporation in 1999 that summarized the results of his early research for this book, Fukuyama argued that information technology had produced a rapidly changing, globalized, decentralized, privatized world that had outflanked the possibility of government control. (6) Yet, Fukuyama's project--to prevent the overuse of Prozac, the prolongation of life expectancy, the preimplantation selection of healthier embryos--requires a degree of government regulation at odds with the developments Fukuyama describes in his other work. And while he personally favors nuanced determinations that distinguish creation of bioengineered mathematicians from treatments for dyslexia, it is not so clear either that those sitting next to him on government-created bioethics panels will share the same views, or that he can really stop the developments he opposes without derailing the basic research that makes them possible. (7) In a book that celebrates and tries to preserve human nature, Fukuyama does not seriously consider how that nature will inevitably influence the shape and success of his efforts.

This Review considers the implications of Fukuyama's work for the future regulation of biotechnology. First, the Review maintains that Fukuyama is almost certainly right that biological innovations span a continuum of developments that range from vitamins enhancing infant cognition to research unlocking the secrets of cellular aging.

Second, the Review argues that the value of Fukuyama's analysis cannot lie in the precision of his prescriptions, which are in any event vague. Instead, discussion of human nature can contribute to a reexamination of how technology can serve human institutions. Biotechnology has potentially dangerous implications precisely because it may transform us and because we are likely to make decisions about its implementation on the basis of our most primal emotions--hope, fear, love, grief, and the desire for immortality. The insight into human nature most critical for biotechnology's future is the one that explains how individually unobjectionable decisions may produce collective calamities.

Finally, the...