Biotechnology and the Human Good

Notes

Notes Notes to Chapter 1 1. Andy Miah, Genetically Modified Athletes: Biomedical Ethics, Gene Doping and Sport (London: Routledge, 2004). 2. This is the title of the book by Carl Elliott, Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003). 3. American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, 2004 Statistics. http:// www.surgery.org/press/statistics-2004.php. 4. See ‘‘Nootropic Research’’ online at the Immortality Institute, a nonprofit educational organization whose mission is ‘‘to conquer the blight of involuntary death,’’ http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?s&actSF& f199. Also see ‘‘Nootropic Agents,’’ http://nootropics.com/sources.html; ‘‘Smart Drugs’’ FAQ, http://www.fiu.edu/⬃mizrachs/nootropics.html; and James South, ‘‘Nootropics: Reviewing Piracetam and Analogues,’’ http:// smart-drugs.net/ias-nootropics.htm. 5. See, e.g., Richard Lynn, Eugenics: A Reassessment (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2001); and Dorothy C. Wertz and John C. Fletcher, Genetics and Ethics in Global Perspective (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004). 6. For a sense of marketplace pressure for eugenics, see Philip Kitcher, The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996); Lee M. Silver, Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family (New York: Avon Books, 1998); and Gregory Stock, Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002). 7. Works upholding the desirability of genetically reengineering the human species include Stock, Redesigning Humans; Silver, Remaking Eden; Lynn, Eugenics ; Allen Buchanan, Dan W. Brock, Norman Daniels, and Daniel Wikler, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice (New York: Cambridge University 160 Notes Press, 2000); Gregory E. Pence, Who’s Afraid of Human Cloning? (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998); and Glenn McGee, The Perfect Baby: A Pragmatic Approach to Genetics (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997). 8. For additional introductions to these fields, see C. Christopher Hook, ‘‘Techno sapiens: Nanotechnology, Cybernetics, Transhumanism and the Remaking of Humankind,’’ in Human Dignity in the Biotech Century: A Christian Vision for Public Policy, ed. Charles W. Colson and Nigel M. de S. Cameron (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004); and C. Christopher Hook, ‘‘Cybernetics and Nanotechnology,’’ in Cutting Edge Bioethics: A Christian Exploration of Technologies and Trends, ed. John F. Kilner, C. Christopher Hook, and Diann Uustal (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). 9. Key early work by Norbert Weiner (1894–1964) includes The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (1st ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950; 2nd ed., New York: Da Capo Press, 1988), 16; and Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, 1st ed. (Cambridge , Mass.: MIT Press, 1948). 10. W. Ross Ashby, Introduction to Cybernetics (London: Chapman & Hall, 1957), 1. 11. Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline, ‘‘Cyborgs and Space,’’ Astronautics , September 1960, 26–27, 74–75. 12. These applications of cybernetics in neuroscience have been reported by Martin Jenkner, Bernt Müller, and Peter Fromherz, ‘‘Interfacing a Silicon Chip to Pairs of Snail Neurons Connected by Electrical Synapses,’’ Biological Cybernetics 84 (2001): 239–49; J. Wessberg, C. R. Stambaugh, J. D. Kralik, P. D. Beck, M. Laubach, J. K. Chapin, J. Kim, S. J. Biggs, M. A. Srinivasan, and M. A. Nicolelis, ‘‘Real-Time Prediction of Hand Trajectory by Ensembles of Cortical Neurons in Primates,’’ Nature 408 (November 16, 2000): 1–65; and S. K. Talwar, S. Xu, E. S. Hawley, S. A. Weiss, K. A. Moxon, and J. K. Chapin, ‘‘Rat Navigation Guided by Remote Control,’’ Nature 417 (May 2, 2002): 37–38. 13. The neuro-chip device is described by Peter Fromherz and Alfred Stett, ‘‘Silicon-Neuron Junction: Capacitive Stimulation of an Individual Neuron of a Silicon Chip,’’ Physical Review Letters 75 (August 21, 1995): 1670–73; Stefano Vassanelli and Peter Fromherz, ‘‘Neurons from Rat Brain Coupled to Transistors ,’’ Applied Physics 65 (1997): 85–88; and in communications from Infineon Technologies AG, Munich (U.S. office in San Jose), a semiconductor system solutions company that is collaborating with the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Tübingen (http://www.infineon.com/news/press/302_042e .htm). Recent reports from Infineon’s website include ‘‘Neuro-Chip from Infineon Can Read Your Mind: New Findings in Brain Research Expected,’’ press Chapter 1 161 release, Munich, February 11, 2003; and Steve Quayle, ‘‘Neuro-Chip: Soul Catcher Architecture Up and Running,’’ February 21, 2003, http://steve quayle.com/News.alert/03_Genetic/030221.soul.catcher.chip.u.html. 14. Garrett B. Stanley, F. Li Fei, and Dan...