George Dvorsky wrote a great blog post last February entitled "Neugenic Nation." In his post Dvorsky described the various memes that surround the subject of human genetic mutability. Broadly, these are:

• Humanity is such a danger to itself and/or to this planet that it should either devolve to become more like animals, or it should embrace extinction by not having children.

• Humanity has reached a pinnacle that can't or shouldn't be improved upon.

• The human race can and should improve itself. But should this be:
  • An Individual decision, or a
  • Government decision?

Human Extinctionalists

I don't want to spend too much time on this meme because it's not worthy of it. Deevolutionists and Human extinctionalists have serious mental issues. When asked what good a pristine, humanless world would be if no one is around to appreciate it, the VHEMT.ORG website answered:

The same good it was before we furless beach apes came along.

For purported naturalists these people seem to have a lot of animousity toward "furless beach apes."

How exactly would these people implement their final solution? They stress that it should be voluntary, but...

Q: Does VHEMT support China's one-child policy?

Present Chinese government's population policy isn't compatible with the VHEMT perspective for two main reasons: the policy is less than voluntary, and even one child is too many. In addition, couples are encouraged to produce one offspring, rather than none.

A Draconian policy like China's might be necessary in the future if we don't voluntarily lower our birth rate soon...

Call me cynical, but I suspect that someone who thinks China's policy doesn't go far enough might fudge on "voluntary." The very next sentence is an admission that a Draconian policy "might be necessary in the future."

This meme is a dangerous first step toward a particularly nasty dystopia - totalitarian suicide. It also puts these people in the perverse position of cheering disease, famine, terrorist attacks - anything that reduces population, particularly in advanced societies. It is the final stop on the pessimism rail line.

Thankfully, this meme is somewhat self-correcting. No kids means few converts.

The Stasists

This meme comes in two flavors - that humanity can't be improved upon, and that humanity shouldn't be improved upon.

I find the first idea unpersuasive. Just this week the New York Times reported that chimpanzees can regularly outperform humans in a certain cognitive task:

Tetsuro Matsuzawa, a Kyoto primatologist, described a young chimp watching as numbers 1 through 9 flashed on the computer screen at random positions. Then the numbers disappeared in no more than a second. White squares remained where the numbers had been. The chimp casually but swiftly pressed the squares, calling back the numbers in ascending order — 1, 2, 3, etc.

The test was repeated several times, with the numbers and squares in different places. The chimp, which had months of training accompanied by promised food rewards, almost never failed to remember where the numbers had been. The video included scenes of a human failing the test, seldom recalling more than one or two numbers, if any.

“Humans can’t do it,” Dr. Matsuzawa said. “Chimpanzees are superior to humans in this task.”

Dr. Matsuzawa suggested that early human species “lost the immediate memory and, in return, learned symbolization, the language skills.”

“I call this the trade-off theory,” he continued.

Or it might be a question of motivation. The human knows he can go get a banana anytime.

But if its true that we had to leave some cognition behind to gain language, doesn't this suggest there is room for improvement - that perhaps we can engineer that cognition back?

And you really don't have to go outside the human species to find gifts that we'd all like to have. I've known guys that could start working out and quickly put on muscle mass. There are people who are ambidextrous. A few gifted musicians have perfect pitch. Some people can eat what they like and stay thin.

Back when I was in law school there was one guy who, as far as I knew, never studied. He did read the assignment and come to class, but that was it. While the rest of us toiled away beating the law into resistent brains, he was at the bar ordering another round. And he graduated first in the class.

Yeah, there's room for improvement.

The other question - whether we should attempt to improve ourselves - is, I think, the better question. Shouldn't we just leave well-enough alone?

Neugenics, which is the majority bioethical opinion today (and most notably the opinion of bioconservatives, human exceptionalists, and anti-transhumanists), is the conviction that the human genome must not be deliberately altered to any significant degree. The general idea is that Homo sapiens are fine just they way they are and that enhancement will only lead to greater societal discord and/or diminished lives... The underlying assumption is that God or nature has already optimized human beings; human enhancement would only knock over this fragile house of cards.

Though I disagree with Neugenics, I am sympathetic to their motivation. Phil has written several times about the problem of unintended consequences (here and here). And its impossible to predict all the consequences that would arise from human genetic engineering. Why not leave "well-enough" alone?

Dvorsky:

If the state sides with the neugenicists and bans the use of enhancement technologies, then it is enforcing a particular vision of humanity, albeit a fixed one. In this sense the neugenicists are similar to the authoritarian eugenicists of the past. In each case individual procreative freedoms have been trumped by the demands of the state (which, in a democracy, is supposedly the consensus opinion).

But any discussion of human reproductive rights must critically examine how the state justifies the abrogation of specific procreative choices. Fewer things are more coercive than state intervention in the reproductive practices of its citizens, especially in consideration of the presumption that parents tend to have the best interests of their children in mind.

Agreed.

As a general rule parents are be the best judges of what's best for their children. There may be a few exceptions that would need to be guarded against. Some deaf activists have opposed cochlear implants. Would some people choose to have children with disabilities similar to their own?

Possibly, and that should be illegal. Genetic engineering to cause disabilities should be disallowed. We will have to debate the definition of disability. For example, there was a 12-fingered piano player in the movie Gattaca. Is that a disability or an enhancement?

Transhumanism v. Eugenics

You don't actually have to want enhancement for yourself or your family to default into the transhumanist camp. If you believe that extinction is not the way to go, that genetic enhancement may one day be possible and shouldn't be outlawed, then the question that's left is:

Who should decide when and what enhancements are made - individuals or the government?

The key difference between transhumanism and Eugenics is that Eugenics would give the government the power to make those decisions.

Imagine an elite governing class with the power to engineer compliant workers. What could be more basic to our humanity than the code for who and what we are? These decisions must be left to individuals.