A Manifesto for Playing God with Human Evolution

Fancy living forever, or uploading your mind to the net? The Proactionary Imperative embraces transhumanist dreams, but reminds why we need medical ethics

IN THE early 1960s prank comedy duo James Coyle and Mal Sharpe wandered the streets of San Francisco with a tape recorder making outrageous proposals to strangers. They had a special fondness for bizarre medical experiments. "Doctors have discovered that human beings, like birds, have the capacity to grow feathers," they would say. "Would you be willing to exchange your clothing for plumage like a pheasant?" Or, "Would you be opposed to the idea of having a portion of your head surgically modified and used as a storage place for sugar?"

There is more than a little of Coyle and Sharpe in the contemporary movement known as transhumanism, which advocates a radical research agenda to transform the human condition. If you've ever fantasised about uploading your mind to the internet, or gestating your genetically modified children in an artificial womb, or living forever in a community of immortal, hyper-orgasmic superbeings, you'll find friends among the...