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Home » What We Believe » Social Issues » Journal of Lutheran Ethics » Book Reviews » Redesigning Humans by Gregory Stock » Redesigning Humans The Final Frontier
Redesigning Humans by Gregory Stock
Redesigning Humans: The Final Frontier Margaret McLean , Ph.D. [1] Twenty years ago, bioengineers fiddled with plastic and wires and transducers while building gizmos. Today, a bioengineer is more likely to be tinkering with cells and chromosomes and genes while deciphering the stuff of life. [2] Gregory Stock's book "Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future" preaches the promise of bioengineering-longer life and health spans, smarter children, better genes. The question Stock addresses is not "Should we genetically redesign humans?" or even "Are there limits to such molecular tinkering?" but rather "How do we best get to our inevitable future?" [3] Stock is well positioned to lead such a discussion. Holding a doctorate in biophysics from Johns Hopkins University and a MBAfrom Harvard University, Stock directs the Program on Medicine, Technology, and Society at UCLA's School of Public Health. His passion is the exploration of critical technologies that are primed to have large impacts on humanity's future and the character of medical science. "Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future" won the Kistler Book Prize for science books and was nominated for a Wired Rave Award. [4] From page 1, Stock shows himself to be an enthusiastic optimist, pragmatic about the redesigning of humans from the genes up. He writes, "We know that Homo sapiens is not the final word in primate evolution, but few have yet grasped that we are on the cusp of profound biological change, poised to transcend our current form and character on a journey to destinations of new imagination." This is no Darwinian non-progressive evolutionary process, but evolution as directed, conscious human advancement. [5] Peppered throughout the book, bold claims about the potential to manipulate our evolutionary trajectory challenge our deepest values and push us towards a serious public debate on the future of genetic medicine and bioinformatics. Although Stock would happily lead us towards a broad-based acceptance of human evolutionary control, the result may be more modest-an increase in the reader's understanding of the science poised to bring in the genetic future and a sense of incredible awe and healthy concern about that future, inevitable or not. [6] Stock realizes that as we understand how genes work to shape who we are and to influence our health, we will want to make decisions about our own genetic make-up and, more importantly, that of our children. "Redesigning Humans" focuses on the technology for and the implications of choosing certain genetically influenced characteristics for our offspring in order to protect them from disease, increase their intelligence, and give them other desired attributes. Technologically, how might we go about this? Genetic engineering? Inserting auxiliary chromosomes? Reproductive cloning? [7] Importantly, Stock sees the interest in human reproductive cloning as the red herring that it isa needless distraction from the vital issues of embryo selection, genetic manipulation, and genetic enhancement. Although the idea of a delayed genetic twin is hauntingly strange, the birth of a "cloned child"-if and when it occurs-will have little lasting impact on most of us, on our values, or on our children. [8] Human redesign and evolutionary control will come about through germline genetic engineering-that is, specifically changing the genetic complement of the fertilized egg so that the alterations are passed to subsequent generations. Extensive modifications of human hereditary material of the kind Stock envisions will require safe and dependable methods for germline intervention. Performing genetic surgery one person at a time is simply unworkable. Germline technology will allow humanity to rig the genetic lottery-ostensibly guaranteeing genetically enhanced, disease-resistant future generations. [9] In Stock's view, such "germline interventions" will involve the addition of artificial chromosomes-for example, adding numbers 47 and 48 to the zygote's original 46. Since artificial human chromosomes provide a stable platform for adding desired genetic material to cells, they will provide the precision and reliability that germline engineering requires. [10] These artificial human chromosomes will be chemically identical to those naturally occurring in our cells-twisted ladders of DNA. Possessing packets of genes and their control sequences, artificial chromosomes could become a universal genetic delivery system. Since there is no manipulation of the 3 billion base pairs on a person's 46 naturally occurring chromosomes, artificial chromosomes minimize the possibility of derailing existing genetic interactions. In fact, modules of genes could be delivered via such auxiliary chromosomes and turned on and off with the flick of a chemical switch. [11] According to Stock, the vast potential of human auxiliary chromosomes to combat disease and to upgrade genes will become so desired that "laboratory conception" will become obligatory in order to avoid the potential harms of "natural conception." If he is right, we will have arrived at the gates of the genetically engineered world of the movie GATTACA.
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