Phillippe Verdoux on the enhancement paradox

IEET contributor Phillippe Verdoux wonders if enhancing is necessary in order to decide whether or not enhancing is a good idea:

Many transhumanists are enthusiastic about the possibilities of cognitive enhancement. Such enthusiasts might say something like: “I want to use advanced technologies – from genetic engineering and psychoactive pharmaceuticals to neural implants and even mind-uploading – to increase my intelligence, to make me ‘smarter, wiser, or more creative’ [PDF], to produce a ‘smarter and more virtuous’ person, to mentally and emotionally augment myself.”

But...talk of enhancement presupposes some conception of the self. Specifically, it assumes that the self is capable of enduring such modifications, e.g., as a pattern, or as an immaterial soul, or whatever. The resulting enhanced being would thus still be me, it would just be a different and “better” (according to some set of criteria) version of me.
...
Now, an interesting paradox arises when one combines the above claims with a specific (and controversial) stance on what the self is...
...
More importantly, though, it must be pointed out that cognitive enhancement is only one route to the destination of greater-than-human-intelligence: the other is artificial intelligence (AI). Another option would thus be to create a superintelligent AI system that could help us deliberate about whether or not we should use cognitive enhancements. This would offer a way out of the paradox, since it doesn’t involve modifying ourselves.

The trouble is, however, that AI may turn out to be more difficult than enhancing the neurobiological core of Homo sapiens, which means that the paradox would remain intact: in this case, the most feasible way to engender a new species of ultra-smart posthumans would be through human enhancement and not AI.

Finally, one could generalize the basic idea to AI as well. That is, we might pose a general moral question about whether or not it would be good to create a species of posthumans through either method of enhancement or AI. Our ability to answer this question, though, is no doubt far more limited than the ability of a superintelligent biotechnological hybrid or completely synthetic posthuman to answer it.

More.

Economist: Humanity is about to confront its true nature

Noting the tenth anniversary of the reading of the human genome, The Economist issues a call to action, but not without warning:

Humanity’s foibles will be laid bare. The species’s history, from its tentative beginning in north-east Africa to its current imperial dominion, has already been revealed, just through being able to read the genome. It is now possible, too, to compare Homo sapiens with his closest relative—not the living chimpanzee, with whom he parted company perhaps 5m years ago, but the extinct Neanderthal, a true human. That will do what philosophers have dreamed of, but none has yet accomplished: show just what it is that makes Homo sapiens unique. The genome will answer, too, the age-old question of original sin. By showing what is nature, it will reveal what is nurture—and thus just how flexible and perfectible the human animal really is.
...
Genomics may reveal that humans really are brothers and sisters under the skin. The species is young, so there has been little time for differences to evolve. Politically, that would be good news. It may turn out, however, that some differences both between and within groups are quite marked. If those differences are in sensitive traits like personality or intelligence, real trouble could ensue.

People must be prepared for this possibility, and ready to resist the excesses of racialism, nationalism and eugenics that some are bound to propose in response. That will not be easy. The liberal answer is to respect people as individuals, regardless of the genetic hand that they have been dealt. Genetic knowledge, however awkward, does not change that.

IEET's Susan Schneider on transhumanism: Will enhancement destroy the "real you"?

Dr. Susan Schneider, IEET fellow, assistant professor of philosophy and an affiliated faculty member with Penns Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, speaks at a UPenn Media Seminar on Neuroscience and Society on philosophical controversies surrounding cognitive enhancement.

In this video, Schneider wonders if radical enhancement, particularly cognitive enhancement that gives rise to superintelligence, will result in the destruction of the original person in favor of something categorically different. Schneider also discusses uploading and the continuity of experience -- including the apparent problem of destructive cloning/copying.

Via Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

Gregory Stock's 2003 TED talk: To ugprade is human

Gregory Stock, the author of Redesigning Humans: Choosing our genes, changing our future, speaks at TED about the current revolution in biology and the impetus behind human enhancement. "Humanity is going to go down this path… because we are human," says Stock, "the lines are going to blur, between therapy and enhancement. Between treatment and prevention and between need and desire."

The HULC exoskeleton

Via Next Big Future.

Thinking faster by altering your perception of time - A SentDev Classic

This article from April 3, 2006 was inspired by the work of David Eagleman who will be guest blogging here next week.

People who undergo extreme short-term psychological stress often claim that time slowed down for them during the experience. Traumatic events like car accidents or lengthy falls often appear in slow motion to the person experiencing it.

Is this just a recall error? Or are people literally experiencing these events at an altered subjective time rate? If so, how could such a psychological phenomenon be accounted for? Obviously, time is not really slowing down -- but something is happening to the psychological interpretation of time.

One possible answer is to compare the human brain's "clockspeed" to that of a computer's. Some scientists now suspect that slowed time elapsement is an evolved defence mechanism similar to our fight-or-flight response. When time appears to have slowed down, we have more subjective time in which to deal with a crisis situation. Put another way, extreme stress helps us to think faster.

One scientist looking into this phenomenon is David Eagleman from the University of Texas at Houston. At his 'Laboratory for Perception and Action' Eagleman is attempting to understand the neural mechanisms of time perception. His team combines psychophysical, behavioural, and computational approaches to address the relationship between the timing of perception and the timing of neural signals.

At the experimental level, Eagleman is engaged in exploring temporal encoding, time warping, manipulations of the perception of causality, and time perception in high-adrenaline situations. Ultimately, he hopes to use this data to explore how neural signals processed by different brain regions come together for a temporally unified picture of the world.

In one of his experiments, Eagleman had volunteers perform a backwards bungee jump freefall while he transmitted a rapid succession of numbers to an LED on their wrists. He found that during the fall they were successfully able to read the numbers, which under normal conditions would have appeared too fast. [I have to say, that is one of the most interesting and original experiments I've heard of in quite time some]

Thinking about Eagleman's research at a practical level, it is thought that a better understanding of these mechanisms will result in interventions that will help people process information at higher rates. This kind of 'think faster' augmentation would slow time down in a subjective sense, which would enable an individual to operate at a higher level of cognitive efficiency.

This theme has been explored in a number of science fiction stories. In Frank Herbert's Chapterhouse: Dune, the ghola Miles Teg was able to engage in extremely fast physical combat due to his ability to rapidly process information. Teg was able to subjectively experience time in extreme slow motion. Similarly, Neo in The Matrix was able to dodge bullets by altering his perception of time elapsement. And in Greg Egan's Diaspora, uploaded posthumans had to drastically slow down their internal clockspeeds when conversing with biological humans; clockspeeds in the real world varied dramatically from the clockspeed utilized in supercomputer 'polises.' Also in Diaspora, a group of posthumans altered their perception of time to such a slow rate that they could perceive the rising and fallings of geological structures such as mountains.

Here in the real world, such neural enhancements are rare, but not entirely impossible. It is thought, for example, that hockey ultrastar Wayne Gretzky was able to perceive the flow of the game at a slower pace than his competitors, giving him more subjective time to plan his attack. This may in fact be the case. At the height of his career, Gretzky was not just a 'little better' than other players, he was dominating to a degree never before seen in sport, breaking records by extreme margins. And this from a player who was physically unremarkable--in fact, below average.

Just what kinds of interventions could enable humans to 'warp time' is a topic of some speculation. A recent Discover article titled "The Mind in Overdrive" offers some possible solutions. Psychotropic substances are one possible answer, as drugs like cocaine and amphetamines have been known to alter subjective time for users. Also, meditating Buddhist monks claim to be able to perceive time differently; through their mental discipline, they may be recreating the same effect that Eagleman is documenting.

I'm certainly hoping that something like this will eventually become accessible. It will be interesting to see how much more productive and "aware" one might be with the benefit of these sorts of interventions. It may even create an alternative sense of subjective reality.

And it would surely come in handy the next time you need to dodge bullets.

From Homo sapiens to Homo evolutis

At TED 2009, Juan Enriquez talked about the new human species emerging before our eyes. Thanks to an array of biological advances and our growing aptitude in robotics, we now find ourselves in the early days of the deliberate creation of what he called a new species.

Awesome that Enriquez would talk about this topic at TED, but I think the 'Homo evolutis' meme is rather regrettable and vague. Sounds like a neologism for the sake of a propagating a neologism. I'm a little more comfortable talking about transhumanism, self-guided evolution, post-Darwinianism, post-biology and posthumans.

Comments from my Twittersphere:

• "Discrimination between old school passive & tech-enabled active speciation. Rich. But is it truly speciation?"
• "Enriquez doesn't get it. Our bodies are irrelevant (in evo terms), and already have been for centuries. About knowledge now."

More.

Most parents not quite ready to have 'designer babies' -- but demand exists

A new study by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center indicates that consumers are more interested in using genetic technologies to screen for life threatening diseases than in using the technologies to screen offspring for enhanced traits.

Specifically, consumers appear ready to use biotechnologies to test for life altering and threatening medical conditions like mental retardation, blindness, deafness, cancer, heart disease, dwarfism and shortened lifespan from death by 5 years of age -- but what they're not interested in is prenatal genetic testing to screen for traits like tall stature, superior athletic ability and superior intelligence.

"Our research has discovered that although the media portrays a desire for 'designer babies', this does not appear to be true among consumers of genetic testing services," said Feighanne Hathaway, a certified genetic counselor at the NYU Cancer Institute.

Some demand is still demand

Indeed, one way of reading these results is to conclude that most people today are not in favor or ready to screen their offspring for enhanced traits. But that's not the entire story, nor is it a justification for failing to develop these technologies or denying prospective parents access to them. What these survey results indicate is that there is some demand for these sorts of interventions, just in small doses.

Let's look at the results of this report a bit more closely. The majority of respondents (52.2%) indicated that there were no conditions for which genetic testing should never be offered. What this tells me is that more than half of respondents are receptive to using genetic technologies for assisted reproduction in some form. That's significant and telling.

In addition, a minority of respondents indicated that they would like to use genetic testing for enhancements such as athletic ability (10%) or superior intelligence (12.6%). While these figures may seem small, they seem less so when considering the entire population. In a country like the United States, where there are about 4 million babies born each year, and assuming that these respondents would use these technologies to screen for higher intelligence, that would represent about 400,000 births per year. That's more babies born each year than through IVF.

We have to be careful when assessing the results of these kinds of surveys. When it comes to ensuring equal and fair access to medical technologies, it's not like voting for the president. Having control over one's reproductive processes is a very important thing -- even if 90% of the population has no intention of using it for themselves. It's important to remain respectful and responsive to any kind of demand for reproductive technologies.

Not the norm. Yet.

The authors of the report noted that, "it seems unlikely that the 'Age of Designer Babies' is near at-hand." While majority consumer buy-in doesn't appear imminent, that doesn't mean it's not going to happen.

As the authors of the report noted, respondents may have been following their own personal values or belief systems when assessing choices for genetic tests. Consequently, genetic counselors may want to develop a policy statement about new genetic tests that are becoming available and the ethical concerns regarding prenatal testing for life altering conditions.

Yes, but these policy statements will have to carefully and fairly worded. An anti-enhancement bias is most certainly embedded in our society. It's very likely that many of the respondents were answering the survey in accordance to their social conditioning and what they thought was expected of them from an 'ethical' perspective.

It's very safe, for example, to state that you're willing to use genetic technologies to screen for cancer and heart disease. But it's not socially correct to say that you'd like to screen for intelligence. I'm sure many pencils wavered above that survey question for a while as the cognitive dissonance kicked in.

Wait a minute, isn't intelligence a good thing?....

Indeed, the genetic counselors' policy statement better be clear on a number of things -- like explaining how people with higher intelligence are more likely to experience educational and occupational success and lower rates of morbidity and mortality. Smarter people live longer. It would seem, therefore, that ensuring higher rates of intelligence should be a priority and considered en par with the prevention of diseases.

And a similar thing can be said for athletic and physical endowments. Enhanced kinesthetic wiring and and a body type suited to athletics are strong indicators of both health and attractiveness. Like high intelligence, these are good things, and we shouldn't lose sight of that.

What we're talking about here is endowing our children with all the tools we can give them so that they may live an enriched, open-ended and fulfilling life. By denying them these benefits we are closing doors and potentially reducing the quality of their lives.

As for the Langone Medical Center report, I'm actually quite encouraged by their findings. Not only is there a great willingness to use genetic technologies to assist in reproduction, but there is growing awareness about it. The debate is happening and people are thinking and talking about the issues.

This is a very necessary step for the normalization of these important and life-improving technologies.

New Scientist: We Have the Technology to Rebuild Ourselves

Julian Smith has penned an excellent overview of prosthetic technologies for New Scientist. Smith describes the current state-of-the-union as far as assistive devices goes and looks at the potential for these devices to not just mimic normal human functioning, but to surpass it as well.


Smith writes,

After decades of amputees having to make do with designs that had changed little since the second world war, artificial limbs that predict their user's every movement and look like the real thing are finally breaking out of the lab. Yet convincing and comfortable synthetic limbs like McNaughton's are only the beginning of the bionic age.

Emerging prosthetic technologies promise not only greater power and flexibility but also pressure-sensitive artificial skin, and even limbs that are bonded to the body and controlled by the mind - and much of this within five years. Rebuilding amputees to be faster and stronger than before is rapidly becoming a realistic possibility. With experimental prosthetics increasingly able to integrate with flesh, bone and the nervous system, the very idea of "losing a limb" may one day become obsolete.

Examples of these cutting edge devices include the C-Leg from German orthopaedic company Otto Block and the Rheo Knee from the Icelandic company Össur, both of which use a combination of hydraulics and motors to make carrying the leg less tiring, plus carbon fibre to mimic the elastic properties of bones and tendons. As for arms, the smallest and most powerful yet is the i-Limb from British company Touch Bionics in Livingston, West Lothian. The i-Limb is a lightweight plastic hand in which each digit contains its own motor and can move independently in response to signals from two sensors attached to skin elsewhere on the user's body.

There are even devices that are able to mimic the sense of touch, what's known as 'artificial skin.' This is a rather complicated technical feat, but solutions have been proposed that involve a nanotube layer that measures changing resistance.

Of course, the ultimate next step is in directly connecting artificial limbs to the nervous system. This would require the tapping of brain signals, decoding them in real time and routing them to the prosthetic. Sensory input would then have to be relayed back from the prosthetic to the central nervous system. The New Scientist article goes over a number of ways this can be accomplished, including targeted muscle reinnervation.

The article also addresses the issue as it pertains to human augmentation:

With brain control seemingly not far off, prosthetic limbs could eventually be as easy to control as they are strong and light. They would then be stronger and faster than the real thing. So what happens when they surpass the limbs we were born with, and a prosthetic becomes an augmentation?

This issue hit the headlines in the case of South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee who runs on curved carbon-fibre "blades" and narrowly missed qualifying for the Beijing Olympics. Sports officials had earlier argued that his prosthetic feet gave him an unfair biomechanical advantage...

David Gow, inventor of the i-Limb hand, believes that artificial limbs may well give natural ones a run for their money, not just by being stronger and faster, but more aesthetically pleasing too. "Then we will have to evolve as a society a new morality, new ethics and codes of conduct, won't we?" says Gow.

Read the entire article.

For more on this topic, read my article, "Is the world ready for cyborg athletes?"

Should drugs be used to enhance memory and concentration?

Technology Review wonders if we should use brain boosters. Their article is in reaction to a recent Nature commentary, "Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy." The position statement was written by a group of ethicists, psychologists, and cognitive neuroscientists who are making the case that "cognitive enhancement, unlike enhancement for sports competitions, could lead to substantive improvements in the world."

Michael Gazzaniga, director of the Sage Center for the Study of Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and one of the authors of the commentary, provides this great quote:

"All new technologies are at first resisted, even the typewriter. When changing mental states, people get antsy, especially when it appears to enhance capacity. There is somehow a sense one is cheating the system. Well, so is chemotherapy. When all of these new technologies are used in moderation and the right social context, they are a good."

Entire article.

Michael Phelps: The 'natural' transhuman athlete

Watching Michael Phelps swim you quickly realize that he's not like the others. He's clearly in a league of his own.

Or more accurately, he's swimming in a genetic pool of his own.

Phelps has a number of fortuitous physical endowments that have enabled him to dominate like no other. Simply put, he is the perfect swimmer.

Here's what Phelps has going for him:

• Most people have a wingspan that matches their height. Not Phelps. He may be 6'4" tall, but his arms extend outward to a total of 6'7".
• The average shoe size for a person the size of Phelps is 12; he wears a size 14 which gives him a 10% advantage over the competition.
  
• He also has a larger than average hand size which allows him to move more water.
  
• Phelps is double-jointed in the chest area; this enables him to extend his arms higher above his head and pull down at an angle that increases his efficiency through the water by as much as 20%; this also allows him to have quicker starts and turns.
• He has proportionately short legs relative to his long, powerful trunk; this large upper body is the engine that powers his long arms. Moreover, his unique physique reduces drag through the water and allows for maximum propulsion.
• Phelps has a greater-than-average lung capacity allowing him to execute his underwater dolphin kicks longer than the competition.
• He has a genetic advantage that cause his muscles to produce 50% less lactic acid than other athletes. This means he can work at higher work loads for longer periods.
  
• With a low body fat of 4%, he is better able to convert his effort into speed.
  

Looking at this list it's as if Phelps was designed to swim.

Which leads to an interesting question: Given the potential for genetic modification and gene doping, should it be acceptable for other athletes to acquire the same physiological endowments through artificial means?

If not, what makes it so acceptable to come by these traits 'naturally?' And how could the genetic lottery ever be construed as something that's not arbitrary and unfair?

Read more about Phelps's extraordinary physiology here and here.

Speedo's Vitruvian Man

Great ad.

Read more about Speedo's LZR Racer swim suit.

Q: What is the qualitative difference between this sort of technological enhancement and pharmacologically endowed enhancement?

Why I think Pistorius should not be allowed to compete at the Olympics

Shocking, you say.

How could I, an unabashed proponent of human enhancement, be opposed to seeing disabled athlete Oscar Pistorius compete at the Olympic Games?

The short answer is that it's not fair to the able-bodied athletes who don't want to get into the enhancement game.

Moving forward, it sets up a situation where:

(1) able-bodied athletes will increasingly be set at a disadvantage relative to the cyber-athletes, particularly as prostheses improve
and
(2) able-bodied athletes will have no choice but to seek enhancement measures of their own, legal or otherwise, to remain competitive

Despite what the Court of Arbitration for Sport says, Pistorius has an advantage. A 25% advantage to be exact.

And even if we assume the Court is wrong, that the IAAF has not conclusively proven that the Cheetahs go beyond the call of normal human functioning duty, the day is all but upon us when advanced prostheses and other measures will.

Consequently, Pistorius and other disabled athletes should continue to compete against each other. This is not intended as a way to segregate athletes according to their abilities per se, but a way to create leagues in which athletes don't feel coerced into entering arms races with each other. Mirrored leagues should be set up, those in which enhancement is sanctioned, and those in which it is not. Athletes can then choose where they want to compete.

Ultimately, the end result will be to the advantage of Pistorius and those like him. They'll inherit the top echelons of sport and maintain the public's interest, while the unenhanced leagues will whither away as quaint curiosity, a throwback to how things used to be.

But until then, let's not set up a situation where chaos and ambiguity ruins it for everyone.

Kevin Warwick's presentation at the LIFT Conference

Check out this Google Video featuring Kevin Warwick at the 2008 LIFT Conference.

Warwick takes a look at four different mergers involving the use of implant technology and micro electrode arrays, robots with biological brains, deep brain stimulation for therapeutic purposes and neural implants to enhance human abilities.

Latest podcast posted: 2008.03.18

The latest episode of the Sentient Developments Podcast is now available. Alternative audio formats are also available.

This episode: The Fermi Paradox is back with a vengeance, nanotechnology will reshape humanity, and why evolutionary psychology says we should cut Spitzer some slack.

Latest podcast posted

Yes, I'm podcasting again. The latest episode can be found here. You can subscribe to this feed.

In this episode I discuss deep brain stimulation, Marquis de Condorcet and our poor attitudes about mental health.

23andme.com

"...a web-based service that helps you read and understand your DNA. After providing a saliva sample using an at-home kit, you can use our interactive tools to shed new light on your distant ancestors, your close family and most of all, yourself."

Commentary:

• My Genome, Myself: Seeking Clues in DNA, New York Times, November 2007
• 23andMe Will Decode Your DNA for $1000. Welcome to the Age of Genomics, Wired Magazine, November 2007
• Welcome to the Future, Portfolio, November 2007
• The Buffett Mystery, Fortune, May 2007
• Are Home Genome Tests a Step Away from Eugenics?, Alternet (Annalee Newitz), December 2007
  

Buddhism vs Transhumanism? (more)

From the "Buddhism vs Transhumanism?" comments section Casey writes:

Can you amplify your statement about Buddhism being concerned with "the optimization of subjective experience?"

It seems to me that subjectivity, or the idea that there is a discrete "you" to futz with, is the first thing to be transcended through unconditioned acceptance.

Take away the film, the projector and what do yo have? The bulb, which is analogous to the necessarily mysterious, unconditioned mind.

Buddhism is fundamentally against "add-ons" to the individual sphere, as mind is already junked up with the projections of ego as is. The practice, as I understand it, is more about stripping away.

That said, I'm curious about scientific improvements to the biological species, as well as the possible transference of consciousness to a non-bio realm. But for now, I'll continue plodding down the Path.

Indeed, while Buddhists would deny the existence of the self, there is no denying the fact that we observe (what appears to be) reality and are deeply entrenched in the condition that is life. Escape into monastic existence is not in the cards for most of us, and Buddhism is sympathetic to this.

Having a transhumanistically optimized mind is one thing (ie augmented intelligence and memory), having an optimized consciousness is quite another. How we interpret the world and how we internalize moment-to-moment processes (particularly as they are driven by our emotions) is where I think Buddhist discourse is particularly helpful and can work to inform the transhumanist mission.

Working to develop the ideal conditioned mind is the central goal of intrapersonal Buddhist practice, and to this point in history meditation has been the key method in achieving this. Might there be other ways? Imagine a future mod that could immediately rewire a mind to be as disciplined and aware as those of practicing monks.

Sign me up.

Today, a number of Buddhists use the latest in neuroscience to study the make-up of conditioned minds in order to gain an understanding of the neurochemical and cognitive processes behind such functions as happiness and mental acuity. This will not just help to improve meditative and mindfulness practices, but also in the development of the so-called contemplative sciences and advanced neurotechnological interventions.

As for improvements, I do not believe there is anything within Buddhist discourse that forbids human enhancement. Intention is what matters. If we enhance to keep up with social pressures, then that is a problem. If, on the other hand, we work to alleviate human suffering and foster meaningful lives, then I believe modification is in tune with Buddhist values.

The space of all conscious life is likely to be hugely vast, and Buddhists naturally understand the importance of respecting different kinds of sentient life.

On this topic, check out: Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge by B. Alan Wallace and The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality by Dalai Lama.

What does transhumanism mean to you?

I like the going definition of transhumanism which proclaims that human beings can and should seek biological enhancement, whether it be physical or cognitive traits, and/or the advent of new capacities all together.

I find this definition inadequate, however, in that it does not hint at the developmental inevitability of human enhancement. This is where I and many other thinkers diverge -- and that's fine; it's a locus point for debate. For me, being a transhumanist is not so much about promoting an enhanced or post-biological existence -- it's about raising awareness and working to manage the process such that the outcomes will be both predictable and desirable.

So, what does transhumanism mean to you?

Please use the comments section to share your thoughts.

John Harris: Enhancing Evolution

Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People
by John Harris
Book Description:

Decisive biotechnological interventions in the lottery of human life--to enhance our bodies and brains and perhaps irreversibly change our genetic makeup--have been widely rejected as unethical and undesirable, and have often met with extreme hostility. But in Enhancing Evolution, leading bioethicist John Harris dismantles objections to genetic engineering, stem-cell research, designer babies, and cloning to make a forthright, sweeping, and rigorous ethical case for using biotechnology to improve human life.

Human enhancement, Harris argues, is a good thing--good morally, good for individuals, good as social policy, and good for a genetic heritage that needs serious improvement. Enhancing Evolution defends biotechnological interventions that could allow us to live longer, healthier, and even happier lives by, for example, providing us with immunity from cancer and HIV/AIDS. But the book advocates far more than therapies designed to free us from sickness and disability. Harris champions the possibility of influencing the very course of evolution to give us increased mental and physical powers--from reasoning, concentration, and memory to strength, stamina, and reaction speed. Indeed, he supports enhancing ourselves in almost any way we desire. And it's not only morally defensible to enhance ourselves, Harris says. In some cases, it's morally obligatory.

Whether one looks upon biotechnology with hope, fear, or a little of both, Enhancing Evolution makes a case for it that no one can ignore.

John Harris is the Sir David Alliance Professor of Bioethics at the University of Manchester School of Law, joint editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics, and a member of Britain's Human Genetics Commission. His many books include On Cloning and A Companion to Genethics. Enhancing Evolution is based on keynote lectures Harris delivered at the James Martin Institute at the University of Oxford in 2006.

Read this review from the Times Online, "Enhancing the species." Excerpt:

Likewise, if pills could make children smarter in a safe way, he thinks we would be dumb not to use them. He says: “You have good moral reasons to advantage your children if you can, and good moral reasons to avoid failing to do so. I see enhancing a child as on a continuum with, say, taking folic acid and avoiding alcohol during pregnancy. These are things that decent, sensible parents do to protect their children.” He points out that we are already enhanced humans – by such advances as vaccination, which prevents us from succumbing to diseases that decimated our forebears. This is now lumped under the label of “medicine”; ditto for Ritalin, which modifies behaviour, and modafinil, a drug used to help people to stay awake. Even opera glasses are an enhancement, helping us to see farther than we can naturally. Genetic-based enhancements are simply another stop on the road to improving the lot of humankind.

Of course, the consequence of banishing the diseases of old age is a dramatic extension of lifespan. So be it, Harris says: “To quote a friend, I’d willingly sample a few million years and see how it goes.”

The idea, he believes, is not that enhancements – such as gene therapy to remove the threat of cancer, or so-called “smart pills” – give some a competitive advantage over others. The technologies should be available to all and should raise the baseline of human welfare just as compulsory schooling and public health policy aim to do.

“Certainly, sometimes we want competitive advantage – but for the enhancements I talk about the competitive advantage is not the prime motive. I didn’t give my son (he has a grown-up son, Jacob, to whom the book is dedicated) a good diet in the hope that others eat a bad diet and die prematurely. I’m happy if everyone has a good diet. The moral imperative should be that enhancements are generally available because they are good for everyone.” The only other route to equality, he says, is to level down so that everyone is as uneducated, unhealthy and unenhanced as the lowest in society – which is unethical. Even though we can’t offer a liver transplant to all who need them, he says, we still carry them out for the lucky few. Much better to try to raise the baseline, even if some are left behind.

Russell Blackford also chimes in.