Enough (review)

Will biotechnology give us wings? Make us posthuman? Damage us irreparably? These are a few of the possibilities that Bill McKibben considers in Enough. According to McKibben, biotechnology will soon be able to deliver better health, greater intelligence, longer lives, genetically determined happiness and maybe even dazzling good looks. However, if we pursue these goals through germline engineering, the costs will be prohibitively high. According to McKibben, germline engineering, which involves making genetic changes that can be inherited, will "break us free from the bonds of our past and present" and make our children into "putty." This will lead to an "arms race" of all against all, in which parents will be forced to engineer their

Reviews Panel: Peter Anders, Fred Allan Andersson, Wilfred Arnold, Roy Ascott, Curtis Bahn, Claire Barliant, René Beekman, Roy R. Behrens, Andreas Broeckmann, Annick Bureaud, Chris Cobb, Robert Coburn, Donna Cox, Sean Cubitt, Nina Czegledy, Shawn Decker, Margaret Dolinsky, Dennis Dollens, Luisa Paraguai Donati, Victoria Duckett, Maia Engeli, Enzo Ferrara, Deborah Frizzell, Bulat M. Galeyev, George Gessert, Elisa Giaccardi, Thom Gillespie, Allan Graubard, Dene Grigar, Diane Gromala, Rob Harle, Craig Harris, Josepha Haveman, Paul Hertz, Amy Ione, Stephen Jones, Richard Kade, Curtis E.A. Karnow, Nisar Keshvani, Julien Knebusch, Daniela Kutschat, Mike Legget, Roger F. Malina, Jacques Mandelbrojt, Rick Mitchell, Robert A. Mitchell, Mike Mosher, Axel Mulder, Kevin Murray, Frieder Nake, Maureen A. Nappi, Angela Ndalianis, Simone Osthoff, Jack Ox, Robert Pepperell, Kjel yngve Petersen, Cliff Pickover, Patricia Pisters, Michael Punt, Harry Rand, Sonya Rapoport, Edward Shanken, Aparna Sharma, Shirley Shor, George K. Shortess, Joel Slayton, Christa Sommerer, Yvonne Spielmann, David Surman, Pia Tikka, David Topper, Rene van Peer, Stefaan van Ryssen, Ian Verstegen, Stephen Wilson, Arthur Woods, Soh Yeong.

offspring or be considered negligent to the point of child abuse. Every engineered baby will be followed by more advanced models. "Once the game is under way," McKibben warns, "there won't be moral decisions, only strategic ones." A host of unprecedented family problems will arise. Children will acquire characteristics of consumer products. There will be children seen as "upgrades" from older siblings and engineered children considered "lemons." Some parents will suffer buyer's remorse. Consumer decisions will create a genetically based class system, and this will eventually lead to new, posthuman species, with interspecies violence to follow.

McKibben's warnings about keep-up-with-the-Joneses genetic engineering bear consideration if only because his picture of the future derives from predictions made by advocates of germline engineering. For example, in his 1997 book Remaking Eden, Lee Silver, a molecular biologist at Princeton University, wrote that germline engineering to eliminate severe inherited disease would "ease society's trepidation" and open the door to other sorts of gene enhancement, such as improving intelligence. Silver "conservatively" speculates that by 2350 society may be divided into 10% "GenRich," or genetically enhanced individuals, and 90% "Naturals," or unenhanced individuals. The GenRich would control everything: the economy, the media, entertainment, "the knowledge industry," art. Silver envisions Homo sapiens divided into four species by 2600, and by 2750 into more than a dozen. Eventually millions of human-derived species may be scattered across the galaxy. Silver's vision of the distant future is epic, and he is a lucid writer, especially when he describes biotechnological techniques. However, he has a weakness for absurdly grandiose statements such as "We, as human beings, have tamed the fire of life." He also gives very limited attention to the suffering that biotechnology is almost certain to produce.

McKibben argues that germline engineering not only will damage families and cause social disruption, but will lead to widespread loss of meaning. Biotechnology, he believes, is the culmination of a long historical process, greatly accelerated by the industrial revolution, that favors individuals over context, and leads to empowered but pitifully isolated and disconnected people. Germline engineering will eliminate the last source of meaning: the individual self. This will take place because an engineered "self" is not a true self, but something more like a robot. "We will float silently away into the vacuum...