Book Notes

Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. By Francis Fukuyama. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. Pp. 256. $25.00, cloth.

Rapid advances in biotechnology raise questions that have a science fiction-like aura about them: Will there be class stratification based on an individual’s genetic pedigree? Do psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin have a greater impact than simply calming a few children in grade school? What is the impact of dramatically increasing life expectancy on society? In Our Posthuman Future, Francis Fukuyama places these bioethical problems into context by first explaining the science behind the issues and then exploring the many ways these issues might affect society and politics. This book is divided into three sections, the first and third of which set out the basic bioethical dilemmas and how a regulatory system could address them. The second section justifies Fukuyama’s regulatory approach through a theoretical construction of human rights derived from a conception of human nature. Here, Fukuyama develops his contention that biotechnology requires regulation because of its threat to alter human nature fundamentally, thereby undermining the natural equality necessary for human rights. Developing on the theme of his widely read earlier work, The End of History and the Last Man—in which the convergence of societies on a liberal democratic form of government was explained in relation to the needs and desires of human nature—Fukuyama suggests in this book that biotechnology’s impact on human nature could have far-reaching consequences for human social and political systems.

In the first section of Our Posthuman Future, Fukuyama explains the moral dilemmas posed by psychotropic drugs, the implications of human cloning and genetic engineering, and the consequences of increasing longevity in developed nations. Fukuyama emphasizes the inevitable trade-offs posed by biotechnical advances and suggests that these trade-offs create significant obstacles in forming public policies to regulate scientific research. Fukuyama also speculates more generally on the possible consequences advances in

these different areas might cause. In the area of prolonging life, for example, Fukuyama examines the trade-off between the length and quality of life. The shift in demographics caused by increased longevity might affect the rate of political change by slowing down the time at which older politicians leave office. Alluding to Fidel Castro and Kim Il Sung, Fukuyama politely suggests that more countries are likely to face the challenge of removing aging leaders.

As a way of framing these issues and suggesting a regulatory solution for them, Fukuyama develops a distinction between biotechnology used for therapy and for enhancement. This difference is raised by examining the use of drugs affecting neurological processes currently available on the market, such as Ritalin and Prozac. Echoing concerns that these drugs are often over-prescribed, Fukuyama suggests that the difficulty society currently has in drawing the line between when the drug is being used therapeutically to correct a legitimate problem and when it is being used for convenience or cosmetic purposes will expand when society decides how to regulate future technologies. In the third section of this book, Fukuyama proposes the creation of a new regulatory system based on this distinction between therapy and enhancement. This administrative body could use this concept to permit genetic engineering that corrects genetic disorders, for example, while prohibiting the same technology from being used to preprogram intelligence or eye color.

Making this distinction between therapy and enhancement is crucial to Fukuyama’s idea of what uses of biotechnology are permissible. Fukuyama offers a justification of this assertion in the second section of his book, where he suggests that unregulated use of biotechnology for purposes of enhancement threatens to alter the essential element making humans human. In doing so, Fukuyama envisions human rights as we know them being undermined in response to this breakdown in the currently existing natural equality among individuals. In reaching this conclusion, Fukuyama develops a theory of human rights based on human nature, following a neo-Aristotelian approach to identifying certain fundamentally human elements and deriving political implications from these elements. Fukuyama’s approach requires him to address a number of historically and philosophically contentious questions. In particular, Fukuyama argues against the many theoretical attacks on basing human rights on human nature.

In responding to these attacks, Fukuyama develops an idea of how “essentially human” characteristics can be identified by confronting the difficult problem of discovering how much of our characteristics are biologically determined in contrast to being learned from our environment. Fukuyama answers this classic “nature versus nurture” problem by asserting that current statistical data can be used to identify these human elements. Adjusting for historical and environmental differences, Fukuyama asserts that we can imagine traits such as cognition that both show a “bell-shaped” normal distribution among humans and have a relatively small variance. Practically

speaking, however, this method encounters too many difficulties to generate an actual list of human characteristics. Consequently, Fukuyama rejects the method of trying to create a definitive list of human traits that is advanced by many other scholars employing this sort of neo-Artistotelean approach; he is in favor of simply referring to the combination of these elements as “Factor X.” The black box referred to as Factor X can be envisioned as an amalgamation of such elements as moral choice, reason, language, sociability, sentience, emotions, and consciousness. The crux of Fukuyama’s argument for regulation of biotechnology rests on the sanctity of Factor X. “We want to protect the full range of our complex, evolved natures against attempts at self-modification,” he writes. “We do not want to disrupt either the unity or the continuity of human nature, and thereby the human rights that are based on it.”

Although Fukuyama is careful to consider the arguments against basing human rights on human nature, he is less attentive to explaining why his own view of human nature, which seems to be broadly defined to the point of being unidentifiable, is so easily susceptible to alteration. Does this condemnation extend even to gene therapies targeted at diseases such as cystic fibrosis caused by single mutations in single genes? It may be easier to make the case to enforce a ban against the production of a being that is half-human and half-ape, but Fukuyama’s theory seems unable to make the fine distinctions between therapy and enhancement that Fukuyama makes himself at so many other points in this book.

Nonetheless, Fukuyama’s understanding of the material and ability to clearly explain these possible future scenarios makes this book an excellent summary of a field clearly riddled with ethical dilemmas. The theory of human rights presented here is also noteworthy for its approach to integrating scientific and philosophical ideas. In addition to providing a strong case for regulation, Our Posthuman Future provides a clear framework for beginning to think critically about the many consequences of the biotechnology revolution.

—Jamie Simpson

Copyright © 2003 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Harvard Human Rights Journal / Vol. 16, Spring 2003