Posthuman Future Research Articles

Design constraints for the post-human future

A variety of objections to human germ-line genetic engineering have been raised, such as the claim that we ought not to place individuals at significant risk without their consent. It has also been argued that it is paternalistically objectionable to confer significant benefits on individuals without their consent. As well as imposing risk of harm to non-consenting parties, there is the risk of harm to others. This paper evaluates these and related objections to germ-line genetic engineering. While a complete prohibition on human germ-line genetic engineering is rejected it is argued that acceptable germ-line engineering (a) should at least expand and enrich rather than restrict and constrain the choices for individuals affected, and (b) should not seek to change basic human dispositions and values ('human nature').

Stem Cells, Biotechnology, and Human Rights: Implications for a Posthuman Future

Stem Cells, Biotechnology, and Human Rights: Implications for a Posthuman Future

Stem Cells, Biotechnology, and Human Rights: Implications for a Posthuman Future

.. the final stage is come when man by eugenics, by prenatal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on perfect applied psychology, has obtained full control over himself. Human nature will be the last part of nature to surrender to man. --C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man This sudden shift from a belief in Nurture, in the form of social conditioning, to Nature, in the form of genetics and brain physiology is the great intellectual event, to borrow Nietzsche's term, of the late twentieth century. --Tom Wolfe, Hooking Up I begin with passages from this unlikely pair of authors because, although they represent somewhat At different times, differ in temperament, and differ extravagantly in personal style, they share an imaginative capacity to envision the possible consequences of modern The technology that occasioned Lewis's reflections--the aeroplane, the wireless, and the contraceptive--may now seem quaint, the warning he sounded about turning humans into artifacts was eerily prescient. Similarly, although he does not directly take up stem cell research, Tom Wolfe's reflections on brain imaging technology, neuropharmacology, and genomics are worth noting in relation to the future of stem cell research. In his inimitable way, Wolfe summarizes one view of the implications of this technology in the title of the essay from which the above passage comes. Sorry, he says, but your soul just died. The point of beginning with Lewis and Wolfe is not that I share their dire predictions about the fate to which they believe technology propels us; instead, I begin with these writers because they invite us to take an expansive view of I believe that a broader perspective is needed in the ongoing public debate over stem cell research and that such a perspective is in fact beginning to emerge. (1) This is not to say that the traditional analysis that has framed much of the debate--analysis of autonomy, informed consent, and commodification, for example--is unhelpful; far from it. Nevertheless, much of the debate about stem cell research has focused on the enormously divisive issue of embryo status. Indeed, the debate about stem cell research seems almost choreographed, the steps all too familiar from the dance of abortion politics. The upshot is that much of the stem cell debate has been too narrowly focused and is repetitive and rigid. (2) For that reason, I urge that we consider stem cell research together with other forms of biogenetic research and therapy. Among other things, shifting the flame of reference in this way would require us to attend much more carefully to issues raised by adult stem cell work. Thus, instead of beginning with a question about embryo status, let us start with a question that has not typically been asked: Is adult stem cell work as unproblematic as it is often assumed to be? Francis Collins's testimony before the President's Council on Bioethics in December 2002 suggests why this may be a productive question. Collins was asked to speak about enhancements: current and future prospects, and what he said about pre-implantation genetic screening is instructive. He noted that we are now able to screen both gametes and embryos, because gamete screening is currently limited to sorting sperm for sex selection, he did not discuss it at length. He did, however, offer an interesting observation. Focusing on gametes, he says, is useful because it isolates you away from some of the other compelling arguments about moral status of the embryo and allows a sort of cleaner discussion about what are the social goods or evils associated with broad alterations in the sex ratio and inequities in access to that technology. (3) In other words, the ethical issues raised by pre-implantation genetic screening are not limited to those brought about by the destruction of embryos required by PGD; indeed, screening gametes also raises serious moral issues, ones that might be eclipsed if we focus exclusively on embryos. …

Mapping Posthumanism: An Exchange

The serried ranks of post-prefixed isms marched their way through human geographyduring the 1990s. To open the door to yet another may seem the habitual act of ahopelessly trendy discipline, one derivatively preoccupied with what’s de rigeur in thesocial sciences and humanities. Yet there might be something both apposite andproductive about staging a confrontation between a subject whose very title announcesits determined commitment to ontological purity and a discourse that questions thiskind of delusive hygiene. In one sense, of course, that confrontation has been ongoingfor several years now. Since the early 1990s many ‘human geographers’ have steadfastlyquestioned the adequacy of the appellation used to describe themselves, theirresearch, and their discipline. Drawing upon the thinking of Deleuze, Guattari, andLatour, among many others, they have revealed what Sarah Whatmore, in hercommentary below, calls ‘‘more than human geographies’’. The gravitational forceof their work has not yet exerted a tidal pull on human geography as a whole. But ithas certainly raised some profound questions about the routinised ontological beliefsthat underpin research in the discipline. The full explanatory and normative con-sequences of this questioning will only become apparent in the years ahead, ashuman geography’s ‘structure of feeling’ altersoor does notoin response to itsinsistent demands.What, then, of the discourse of posthumanism? It is hardly new, nor is it unified(Braun, 2004). Like so many of the intellectual currents that have animated humangeography in recent years, it originated outside the discipline, gathering momentumover the last decade. By the time Katherine Hayles published her well-known bookHow We Became Posthumanin 1999 there was already a sizeable literature explainingwhy ‘the human’ must be compulsively draped in scare-quotes.What’s more, the nownot so new neologism ‘posthumanism’ has been fleshed out in a variety of ways that,while generically resonant, are substantively irreducible. Some of these elucidationsare, inevitably, demotic. Francis Fukuyama’s (2002) Our Posthuman Future is partofapredictable genre ofwriting inwhichthe incipient eclipse of the‘human’is lamentedand the ‘post’ taken, in eschatological mode, as a decisive temporal break. Othertheorisations of the posthuman are, fortunately, more sophisticated and thoughtful.

THE ABSTRACT SUBLIME: Life as information waiting to be rewritten

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Page numbers of quotes refer to the Flamingo paperback edition, 2000. I discuss some other features of cosmic and evolutionary narratives in an earlier essay in Science as Culture (Turney, 2001 Turney, J. (2001). ‘Telling the facts of life: cosmology and the epic of evolution’. Science as Culture, 10(2): 225–247. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]). As this suggests, despite its title, much of Life Without Genes is concerned with genes. When he is in Gene Space, Woolfson's view of genes rather neglects his stress elsewhere in the book that organisms embody many other kinds of information than DNA sequences. Most of his discussion sees the genome as an algorithm for directing the construction of a (potentially viable) organism. A debate spanning extremes currently well marked out by the recent volumes by Francis Fukuyama and Gregory Stock (Fukuyama, 2002 Fukuyama F (2002) Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution London: Profile Books [Google Scholar]; Stock, 2002 Stock G (2002) Redesigning Humans: Choosing Our Children's Genes London: Profile Books [Google Scholar]). Fukuyama's position might be summarized as ‘keep humans human’, while Stock's is based on an evolutionary narrative which calls for us to realize our cosmic destiny by taking control of our own future evolution. Woolfson represents a third position, which takes future modification so much for granted it simply seems not worth arguing about. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJon Turney Address correspondence to: Jon Turney, Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College London, UK, E‐mail: j.turney@ucl.ac.uk Address correspondence to: Jon Turney, Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College London, UK, E‐mail: j.turney@ucl.ac.uk

Manipulating your mind

The Decade of the Brain, proclaimed by US President George Bush in 1990, passed without making much of an obvious impact. But it did in fact produce considerable scientific advances in neuro‐biology, giving scientists an exponentially increasing knowledge of how the brain works and the means to manipulate biochemical processes within and between nerve cells. This knowledge is slowly trickling down to society as well, be it in the pharmaceutical industry, to parents concerned about their child's performance in school, to students looking for chemical helpers to pass their exams, or to military researchers who have an obvious interest in keeping soldiers awake and alert. > Unlike the many claimed applications of genetics… diagnostic and therapeutic products from neurobiological research are already available The ability to fiddle with the brain with ever‐increasing effectiveness has also created critical questions about how to use this knowledge. Francis Fukuyama, in Our Posthuman Future , Leon Kass, Chairman of the US President's Council on Bioethics, and Steven Rose, a neurobiologist at the Open University, UK, are the most prominent and outspoken critics of the use of psychopharmaceuticals and other neurological techniques to analyse and interfere with human mental capabilities. Their concerns have also grasped the attention of neurobiologists, ethicists, philosophers and the lay public, who are all slowly realising the enormous potential of modern neuroscience. “People closely identify themselves with their brains, they don't with their genes,” said Arthur L. Caplan, Professor of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA. ![][1] Although these debates started in the late 1990s, it took the general public a bit longer to take notice— The New York Times and The Economist did not pick up on the issue until 2002. “There is a great amount of information about the brain but no one's paying attention to the ethics,” … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif

Biotech & JUSTICE: Catching up with the Real World Order

Since its inception in 1990, the Human Genome Project has spurred almost as many ethical and social questions as it has start-up biotech companies. Yet one of the most perplexing challenges of the new genomics is how to guide and govern the use of genetic knowledge in an era of economic globalization. Diagnostic and predictive testing, gene-based therapies, pharmacogenomics, and genetic enhancement are already available or speeding toward reality, leading to ever greater levels of private investment and international marketing. Many share Francis Fukuyama's concern about what genomics portends for our posthuman future, (1) and not only because human nature as we have known it may be at stake. Commercial genetics threatens to exacerbate greatly the rising levels of inequality that already burden the globalization age. (2) Two issues are important: first, defining ethics or justice in a pluralistic and often conflicted world; and second, putting ethical relations or social justice into practice. U.S. law, policy, and even philosophy tend to frame social justice questions in terms of individual rights, civil liberties, procedural solutions to conflict, and equality of opportunity. And, frequently, both individuals and organizations in the United States approach the social aspects of genetics by prioritizing freedom and self-determination--of scientists, corporations, consumers, and even of the nation as an international actor with particular values and interests. The focus on liberal rights obscures the social and economic bases of health and disease and the effect on social institutions and patterns of individual choices and enterprise. (3) African, Asian, Latin American, and to an extent European cultures put a higher priority on social and economic rights within a community than they do on privacy and choice. While genetics research and development spans borders and cultures, principles like autonomy and informed consent bear a distinctive legal and cultural stamp. The philosophical framework within which U.S. bioethics addresses the new international context of genetics needs to be restructured, both to expand the basic moral criteria and to consider how ethical behavior, relationships, and institutions can be defined, created, and maintained globally. This essay will argue that bioethics can find resources for this task in political science literature on globalization, on the still weakening sovereignty of the nation-state, and on the quest for a normative and constructive approach to governance in what has been hailed as the new world order. International research ethics and the recent struggle over the availability of AIDS drugs will show how developing models of governance might apply to the control of biotechnology. The Priority of Autonomy According to anthropologist Sandra Lane and colleagues, individualism, so intrinsic to American culture, is a core principle which organizes the practices and representations--the habitus--of the bioethics community. (4) In their view, the analysis of individual decisions has predominated over social relations, community needs and values, and public health. Moreover, self-determination itself has been considered largely in relation to relatively privileged consumers and even a fairly narrow range of exotic or highly technological interventions. The medically marginalized have been neglected. The four bioethical principles of autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice, which were first enumerated in the Nuremberg Code and were then adapted in the Belmont Report and in the bioethics literature spanning decades, are more often than not applied at the individual level. Of the four principles, autonomy continues to receive by far the most attention. And while the pressing question of universal access to health care in the United States has raised the profile of distributive justice in recent years, even adding a global perspective, (5) it is still the case that procedural justice, focused on ethical and legal protections of autonomy, privacy, and confidentiality for those receiving health care in the United States, has been the predominant justice concern. …

Science, Sexuality, and the Novels of Huxley and Houellebecq

In her article "Science, Sexuality, and the Novels of Huxley and Houellebecq," Angela C. Holzer begins with an introduction to recent discourse about contemporary culture by Francis Fukuyama, notably in his book Our Posthuman Future (2001). Next, Holzer introduces twentieth-century literary representations of genetic engineering. Focusing on Huxley's Brave New World (1932) and on Houellebecq's Les Particules élémentaires (1998), Holzer discusses differences in "utopian" literature when linked to metaphysical aspects of reproduction and that are owing to changes in the life sciences and medicine. Further, Holzer explores the implications for poetics resulting from scientific developments and relates Houellebecq's perspectives to Zola's idea of the "experimental novel" and to Nietzsche's notions of science. Holzer traces Houllebecq's text and its "reactionary politics" to Romantic literature and the late nineteenth-century discussion of marriage, Christianity, and reproduction in Tolstoy's writing. The insight to be gathered is the interrelation between the development of modern science up to the completion of the Genome Project and its impact on poetics (i.e., on form) and on representation (i.e., content) of science and the scientist in the two novels at hand.

Toward a More Communitarian Future? Fukuyama as the Fundamentalist Secular Humanist

With The End of History and the Last Man,' Francis Fukuyama2 established himself as the prophet of liberal democracy and free markets, heralding their triumph as the only form of governance capable of commanding legitimacy. Asked to reflect on his predictions a decade later, Fukuyama concluded that the greatest threat to liberalism comes from biotechnology because it alone has the potential to remake the human nature that liberal democracy was designed to serve. Fukuyama makes a compelling case that biotechnology may produce developments that should concern us; he is ironically less persuasive in articulating a liberal-democratic framework for governing the developments he fears. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution is provocative. It establishes the breadth of the threat Fukuyama perceives by linking four areas of biotechnology rarely discussed together: neuroscience and the ability to determine the genetic basis of traits like homosexuality or intelligence, pharmacology and the transformation of human psyches made possible by drugs such as Ritalin or Prozac,3 the potential to unlock the secrets of aging that could usher in revolutionary changes in demographics, and genetic

Book Review: Our posthuman future: consequences of the biotechnology revolution

Book Review: Our posthuman future: consequences of the biotechnology revolution

Monsters in Eden: Darwin and Derrida

Focusing on the tropology of the monster within the writings of Charles Darwin and Jacques Derrida, this essay demonstrates certain significant linkages joining Darwinism to deconstruction. The monstrous relations between Darwin and Derrida--both genealogical and intertextual--reveal themselves in shared evolutionary-deconstructive approaches to the concept of species, the metaphor of the book of nature, and the mythology of the Garden of Eden. Challenging humanist metaphysics, Darwin and Derrida together advance a theoretical discourse attentive to the mutations, the perversions, the aberrations and the monstrosities of the world: a teratology that looks beyond man and humanism and towards the unknown posthuman future.

What's at the Bottom of the Slippery Slope: A Post-Human Future?

(2003). What's at the Bottom of the Slippery Slope: A Post-Human Future? Perspectives on Political Science: Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 86-93.

Genetics and the Search for Modern Human Origins; Cosmic Legacy: Space, Time, and the Human Mind; Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution; Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future

Genetics and the Search for Modern Human Origins; Cosmic Legacy: Space, Time, and the Human Mind; Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution; Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future

POLITICS, SOCIETY, AND BIOTECHNOLOGY

IN OUR POSTHUMAN FUTURE: CONSEquences of the Biotechnology Revolution, Francis Fukuyama offers a highly readable and thought-provoking analysis of a particular intersection of science and society His writing style and overall command of the subject keep the reader engaged through discussions of complex science as well as through deep philosophical explorations of, example, the evolution and meaning of terms such as rights and nature. The book is more than a learned man's observations on a topic of vital public interest. Fukuyama, a professor of political economy at Johns Hopkins University and a member of President George W. Bush's Council on Bioethics, is advancing a specific argument, which is for greater political control over the uses of science and technology The book has three parts. The first details four pathways of current research: increasing knowledge about the brain and the biological sources of human behavior, the use of neuropharmacology to manipulate emotions and ...

The Importance of Being Human?

Robin Downie, retired Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University, once told me that key to fame in philosophy is not to get things right. The key is to get things wrong in a way that is simple or outrageous enough to guarantee that you will be repeatedly attacked. Then you can at least be assured of a distinguished career as a professional straw man. Francis Fukuyama is anything but a straw man, but when he became famous ten years ago with The End of History and Last Man, it was for a book that practically begged, cap in hand, to be attacked. History was over, Fukuyama argued. We have had no real political progress since principles of French Revolution, and last ideological alternative to liberal democracy collapsed with Soviet Union. From here on out, History--spelled with a capital H, as in Hegel--will be little more than a series of ideological footnotes to Enlightenment. Fukuyama's grand claim sounded outrageous enough to guarantee him a moment or two in spotlight, where he sparred with predictable intellectual adversaries. Now Fukuyama is back with another grand book, this one about biotechnology, and I can't resist bait. Never mind about end of history, says Fukuyama. History is not finished, because science is not yet finished. Through biotechnology and psychopharmacology, scientists are learning how to manipulate very fundamentals of our nature as human beings. Personality and behavior can be manipulated through psychoactive drugs and our genetic constitution can be manipulated with biotechnology. These manipulations may well undermine basic biological conditions that sustain liberal democracy. History might continue, but only as a Posthuman History. Fukuyama is a lucid, elegant writer with a knack for distilling complex ideas into readable prose. He is also a serious thinker. In a literary market dominated diet manuals, self-help books, and celebrity biographies, anybody who can write a book about Hegel and turn it into an international bestseller deserves a standing ovation. Yet it is hard to read Our Posthuman Future without wondering whether Fukuyama has given his topic its rightful due. The difficulty of writing almost any book with word in title is making a reasonable guess about what future holds. If you get it wrong, you run risk of addressing issues that never arise, speculating about technologies that never pan out, and fighting adversaries who never appear. This is why, for a book like this one, it is so important to think carefully and knowledgeably about actual science in question. Yet Fukuyama seems less interested in science itself, or even ethical issues it raises, than in its implications for political theories he has explored in other books. Psychopharmacology and biotechnology are means which he explores his larger ideas about history, human nature, and natural rights. This makes for a slightly odd book. Sometimes Fukuyama comes across like a guy who listens to jokes only because of what they might contribute to his theory of humor. All human beings, claims Fukuyama, desire recognition other people, because humans are by nature, status-conscious animals (p. 64). Not only does demand for recognition lie at me root of our sense of self-esteem; it has fueled all of human history. The entire historical process can be explained as a struggle for recognition. This is why psychoactive drugs such as Prozac are so important. Prozac is a self-esteem drug. It makes people more self-confident and artificially fulfills their desire for status and respect. As evidence, Fukuyama cites case of Tess in Peter Kramer's book, Listening to Prozac, who became happier and more outgoing when Kramer prescribed Prozac for her. Thus important lesson to be learned from past decade's experience with psychopharmacology is that the desire for recognition has a biological basis and that that basis is related to levels of serotonin in brain (p. …

The Problem with Nature

Francis Fukuyama's controversial new book, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, has elicited varied reactions, but like it or not, it seems likely to be influential. Here are three opinions. —Ed.

Book of the Month: The Creation of Psychopharmacology

Book of the Month: The Creation of Psychopharmacology

The Creation of Psychopharmacology

The Creation of Psychopharmacology

Our posthuman future: consequences of the biotechnology revolution

The dramatic advances in DNA technology over the last few years are the stuff of science fiction. It is now not only possible to clone human beings it is happening. For the first time since the creation of the earth four billion years ago, or the emergence of mankind 10 million years ago, people will be able to choose their children's' sex, height, colour, personality traits and intelligence. It will even be possible to create 'superhumans' by mixing human genes with those of other animals for extra strength or longevity. But is this desirable? What are the moral and political consequences? Will it mean anything to talk about 'human nature' any more? Is this the end of human beings? Post Human Society is a passionate analysis of the greatest political and moral problem ever to face the human race.

Makeover: Writing the Body into the Posthuman Technoscape: Part Two: Corporeal Axiomatics

posthuman is getting under our skin, and they offered ways of resisting interpretations of a posthuman future that depend on the notion that information is disembodied. Our discussions have attended to the distinction between practices of inscription and practices of incorporation. By “inscription practices” we mean the range of discourses and rhetorics of persuasion from computer science, biotechnology, robotics and nanotech, media studies, art, film, video games, science fiction, literary studies, philosophy, and advertising—all the things we say and write, the representations we construct; in short, the codes we circulate about information and its relation to bodies. By “practices of incorporation” we mean the norms, behaviors, skills, and schemas of physical enaction that modulate the embodiment of these culturally constructed inscriptions and the performances of actual bodies—insofar as it is possible—in terms of them. In this dynamic of material/semiotic agents, resistances of material bodies produce fissures in the various strata; feedback between these processes generates new lines of flight. But how literally are we to understand the processes of inscription? Discussions of hybrid human-machine interactions have tended to see the material, machinic components on the other side of the cyborg interface as “enhancements,” extensions, or reconfigurations of the senses; the machine extends anthropomorphically, rather than fundamentally remaking the human. By contrast, the recent developments in cellular robotics that we described may