Scientific American April 2003 [antikvár]

SA Perspectives Get Real When the cloning of a human was announced last December, political and spiritual leaders condemned it as an affront to the "dignity of man." That kind of rhetoric is popping up all over the place. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama warns that genetic engineering and Prozac-like drugs augur "a 'posthuman' stage of history." Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, frets over robotics and nanotechnology: "On this path our humanity may well be lost." Even the Economist, a magazine not usually given to apocalyptic predictions, worries that neuro-science could "gut the concept of human nature." Like their counterparts in earlier ages, these commentators argue that technology is running ahead of our ability to deal with it; although scientific progress is all well and good, we have to rein it in. Such views are often called neo-Luddism, but frankly, that does not do justice to the Luddites. Those machine-smashing textile workers were reacting to immediate threats, such as losing their jobs. Today's concerns tend to be abstract, and that is their problem. A science magazine is all in favor of abstract thinking, but at some point abstraction needs to make contact with realiry. And the reality of research bears little resemblance to the technocynics' horror stories. Will cloning, for example, open the door to "designer babies"? Maybe one day. For now, though, researchers are struggling to develop cloning just to grow tissues that a patient's immune system won't reject. Even would-be baby doners don't purport to fiddle with the genome. Are people supposed to give up the prospect of life-saving therapies to avoid a distant, hypothetical threat? ANXIETY over genetically modified food often reflects abstract worries about science. The answer from technocynics is yes. In his book last year Fukuyama drew a line between medical therapy (OK) and genetic enhancement (not OK) but went on to advocate a ban on all cloning, even the therapeutic kind. Similarly, Joy has called for a "relinquishment" of all—all—research into robotics, nanotechnology and genetic engineering. Where does this absolutist stand leave the rest of us? We have watched our parents and grandparents waste away from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. We have seen children die of diabetes and friends fall to depression, malaria and HIV. If it comes down to a choice between the vague unease that emerging technologies conjure up or the very un-vague suffering they could cure, we know how we would decide. The technocynics basically want us to grin and bear it, lest our attempts at self-improvement do more harm than good. Yet if history is any guide, fears about the impact of new technologies generally wind up sounding pretty silly. Thoreau regarded trains, telegraphs, newspapers and even mail delivery as dehumanizing. Late Victorians predicted that industrialization and urbanization would cause our species to degenerate to a prehuman state. In the 1970s critics of in vitro fertilization said it would create monstrous or deranged babies. In all these cases, abstract worries gave way to mundane ones. New technologies did bring new problems, but people worked around them. Few would, in retrospect, ditch the technologies altogether. The biggest danger, then, is not that science will run ahead of ethics, but the opposite: that ethical hair triggers will paralyze worthy research. Striking a balance is not easy. Bioethicist Gregory Stock offers a sound prescription: "We should deal with actual rather than imagined problems." To stop research is to give up trying to make the world a better place. It denies human nature in order to save it. the editors editorsllisciam.com