Our Posthuman Future (Fukuyama) Francis Fukuyama is a provo

Francis Fukuyama is a provocative and informative writer who makes the argument in Our Posthuman Future (2002) that we had better wake up and take some real, effective regulatory action to control the rapidly changing field of biotechnology before we find ourselves losing our humanity.

Human beings have always differed from the rest of living things in the extent of our ability to modify our environment through cultural means. There are some evolutionary biologists who think that the invention of stone tools and learning to control fire created selective pressures eventually resulting in the dramatic reduction of the human jaw. There can be no question that cultural innovations such as dressing in animal skins and textiles made of natural fibres allowed early man to conquer regions of greater cold and altitude than he had formerly been able to survive in.

So there is nothing new about man making himself, and modifying the effect the natural environment has on him. The novelty of current developments in a whole variety of life sciences is that they give us new powers to model our minds and bodies in ways that can only be dimly guessed at today. This revolution promises to make us live healthier and longer, but just as we found with nuclear energy, it has both potentially beneficial and harmful effects. While the benefits of splitting the atom gave us nuclear power, it has also threatened to exterminate all life on earth. Fukuyama makes an impassioned and cogent plea to t

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d like worker bees in a hive, although happy and healthy, would be "inhuman" (6). Then he quotes Leon Kass, whose comment relates directly to the kind of dumbed-down media culture coming at us from all sides today: "The people dehumanised by Brave New World are not miserable, don't know they are dehumanized, and what is worse, would not care if they knew�[they would be] happy slaves in a slavish happiness" (6). "The most significant threat posed by contemporary biotechnology is the possibility that it will alter human nature" writes Fukuyama, which he refers to as "posthuman" (7). But what is the concept of human nature he keeps referring to? That's a tough one, and he doesn't do that great a job in pinning it down. "Human nature is the sum of the behaviour and characteristics that are typical of the human species, arising from genetics rather than the environment" he declares (129). But he admits it's so far virtually impossible to distinguish what is derived from genetics versus the cultural environment. Twin studies and the cross-cultural analysis of behavioural traits are two approaches used to try to link genetics and behavior. But apart from a variety of studies, such as one about mice that indicated a memory gene exist

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