The Quiet Campaign for Genetically Engineered Humans
By Richard Hayes,
Earth Island Journal, Spring 2001
| 11. 30. 2000
We are fast approaching the most consequential technological threshold in all of human history: the ability to directly manipulate the genes we pass on to our children.
Development and use of these technologies would irrevocably change the nature of human life and human society. It would destabilize human biological identity and function. It would put into play a wholly unprecedented set of social, psychological and political forces that would feed back upon themselves with impacts quite beyond our ability to imagine, much less control.
These technologies are being developed and promoted by an influential network of scientists who see themselves ushering in a new epoch for human life on Earth. They look forward to the day when parents can quite literally assemble their children from genes listed in a catalog. They celebrate a future in which our common humanity is lost as a genetically enhanced elite increasingly acquires the attributes of a separate species.
There is little public awareness of the full implications of the new human genetic engineering (HGE) technologies or of the campaign to promote them. There are...
Related Articles
Not the species, certainly, but the Institute of that name, which was founded by transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2005 as a research group at Oxford University. According to a recently posted Final Report, its goal was “to pursue the big questions in a transdisciplinary way” by pulling together “researchers from disciplines such as philosophy, computer science, mathematics, and economics.” This evolved before long into the study and promotion of “effective altruism” and “longtermism” as...
By Yelena Biberman and Jonathan D. Moreno, Bioethics Forum | 04.16.2024
A quiet biological revolution in warfare is underway. The genome is emerging as a new domain of conflict. The level of destruction that only nuclear weapons could previously achieve is fast becoming as accessible as a cyberattack.
Now for the...
By Tristan Manalac, BioSpace | 04.02.2024
Verve Therapeutics has suspended enrollment in the Phase Ib Heart-1 study evaluating its lead gene editing program VERVE-101 following a serious adverse event, the company announced Tuesday.
A patient, who received a 0.45-mg/kg dose of VERVE-101, developed a grade 3...
By Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres, First Monday | 04.14.2024
The stated goal of many organizations in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) is to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), an imagined system with more intelligence than anything we have ever seen. Without seriously questioning whether such a system can...