Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future

by Gregory Stock

Publisher: Mariner Books
ISBN: 0618340831

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Book Review

Editorial Review

A groundbreaking work, Redesigning Humans tackles the controversial subject of engineering the human germline -- the process of permanently altering the genetic code of an individual so that the changes are passed on to the offspring. Gregory Stock, an expert on the implications of recent advances in reproductive biology, has glimpsed the inevitable future of biomedical engineering. Within decades, Stock asserts, technological advances will bring meaningful changes to our offspring; this scientific revolution promises to fundamentally alter the human species. With recent findings presented in a new afterword, Stock's provocative assessment cuts through the debate to envision an age of radical biotechnological advancement and unprecedented human choice.

Will the genetic research that gave us the Flavr Savr tomato also give us the power to customize our children? Medical thinker Gregory Stock believes that this is precisely what's happening and that we'd better get used to it fast. Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future explores gender selection, gene therapy, germinal choice, and many more options available now or in the near future, but lays aside the hysteria common to such discussions.

Stock sees the cloning controversy as a distraction from issues of real importance, such as balancing offspring trait selection against eugenics. Writing with the clarity and precision of a philosopher, Stock engages his readers with thought exercises and real-life examples. While not a brainless cheerleader for big science, he believes that we can, and certainly will, use any means necessary to give our children an edge, even if it means profound changes for our species. Redesigning Humans offers the hope that these changes need not be catastrophic if we pay attention now.

From Publishers Weekly

Rather than worry about the ethics of human cloning, Stock (Metaman; The Book of Questions), director of the UCLA School of Medicine's Program of Medicine, Technology and Society, believes we should focus our attention on the idea that we'll soon be able to genetically manipulate embryos to develop desired traits a more immediate and enticing possibility for most parents than cloning. He gives a lucid overview of the new biotechnology that will allow scientists to delay aging and to insert genes that enhance physical and cognitive performance, combat disease or improve looks into embryos. Stock thoughtfully weighs the ethical dilemmas such advances present, arguing that the real threat is not frivolous abuse of technology but the fact that we don't know the long-term effects of these genetic changes. In any case, Stock insists, there's no turning back, and government bans "will determine not whether the technologies will be available, but where, who profits from them, who shapes their development, and which parents have early access to them." Stock demonstrates that much of the current criticism of human genetic engineering sounds remarkably similar to what was being said about in vitro fertilization when it first appeared. He believes that we will come to accept laboratory conception of all offspring and the addition of artificial chromosomes stocked with designer genes as readily as we have come to accept in vitro fertilization. Along the way we are sure to have many ethical issues to confront, issues that Stock does an impressive job of outlining.

About the Author

Gregory Stock, director of the Program of Medicine, Technology, and Society at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine, has also written, among other books, Metaman: The Merging of Humans and Machines into a Global Superorganism and the best-selling volume on ethical dilemmas, The Book of Questions.

Customer Reviews

This book is worth reading but I just have a few questions about its contents...

What's going to stop the human artificial chromosomes (HACs) from forming deleterious mutations themselves? Also, subjecting DNA to a codon by codon examination has basically the same inefficiency as asexual reproduction due to the fact that the recombinatorial process of sexual reproduction is stymied. In asexual reproduction the deleterious mutations are spread throughout the population, in sexual reproduction many bad genes are eliminated at once on zygotes of zero-fitness. Perhaps we can improve upon what natural selection has done over the course of millions of years, but will all conception will ultimately take place in a laboratory as the author suggests? I have a hard time imagining that, for one thing there are just too many DNA bases and genes and combinations to keep up with. How powerful does he think computers will become? And how can we be sure the computers of a 1000 years from now will be able to read the data we have now? What entity is going to make sure this happens? Are scientists going do this? Governments? Scientists come and go, so do governments. All I can really espouse is for us to do in our quest for better humans is to test zygotes for defects after fertilization through normal sex and if they carry excessive mutation, then abort them and save them and the parents needless suffering. That way sexual recombination is still at work and mutations (which are usually bad) are still being eliminated, I'm not so sure that we can do much better than that in the foreseeable future, but who knows? Science is a remarkable endeavor.

Book is unique, interesting, and I can see so much through out the book what the author thinks about the topic. Very humane perspective and very caring. And I agree with some ideas, especially the idea is that at the end we are "flash and blood". Great book, great read....

This book is a good companion to Fukuyama's Our Posthuman Future. It is worth considering both. Having read the latter book first, I picked this book up almost prejudicially with two stars against it, bah. But the author won them back in reasonable order in a discussion of the probable inevitability of some form of entry into genetic transformation of man. The term 'inevitability' is loaded with ambiguity, and we should be wary of renouncing control even if attempts to resist technology too frequently attempt to control the wrong thing. Our posthuman future can only one true meaning, our true freedom. The rest is the permutations between two types of poodles and dober pinchers in a species specific cosmetics that will be human still at the end. And in one sense it is not the posthuman future, but the truly human future for the first time. But the author's point is clear, that we have reached the top of the roller coaster, and the ride is about to begin. And that requires more than metaphysical generalizations as the map is more specific about necessary technical choices. But I must still demur in a field where blind men fail to grasp they are blind and make assumptions about the nature of man and his evolution that don't add up and essentially leave us in limbo. There is an old question of the yogis, Who Am I? with the silent answer, I Am Not The Body. This is taken as a spiritual question, but that is not the issue. If anything genetic engineerig of human outers might drive us to ask who we really are as technical mechanization 'makes our flesh crawl' and rousts us out of our mechanical selves, the tired hippopotamus human wallowing in a curious inertia or sleep. That's one good thing from a spiritual domain in favor of the author's green light, in a context where spiritual types will be, perhaps justifiably, wringing their hands and urging caution. A great confusion will arise as the inner nature of man is proclaimed spiritual in pseudo-religious language, while the basic fact of that confused language does remain as a challenge to our probable permanent ignorance, a factor that biotechnology must reckon with sooner or later. No matter how many upgrades you make to a wordprocessor, its basic functionality is the same. The issue is to use it for something, and this the software can't do. So with genetic man in relation to the potential of man self-realized.

With insight and intelligence Gregory Stock discusses the future possibilities of human genetic engineering. He is willing to state that when these technologies are safely available and we have the ability to alter our genes and control our genetic destiny, it will be very difficult for us to walk away and decide to ignore or criminalize the ability to cure hereditary disease or extend life. Stock has written a brave and uncompromising book, and whether you are thrilled or angered by his words, it is likely to be a book that helps frame our human future.

This book is meant to be a survey of the technical and ethical issues surrounding emerging technologies in biology. The book takes a generally positive view of genetic engineering, although the arguments tend to boil down to:

1. We can't stop it.
2. We already do it to some extent.
3. If you try to stop it, what are you going to tell the parents of children with horrible diseases?
4. We can mostly rely on individual choice to sort out the moral issues.

On most issues, that's about as deep as the analysis gets in this book.

Here is an example of an issue where Stock's level of analysis is not satisfying. Suppose that it becomes possible to replace a child who dies in an auto accident by using cloning. In thinking about this, I believe we have to do more than look at the first-order impact it has on the parents of a dead child.

We need to look at second-order and third-order effects.

Teenagers are pretty reckless as it is. Imagine that a teenager says, "what the heck. If this gets me killed, my parents can always just clone me." What is the end result?

Stock is most valuable in describing the ways in which it might be possible to design people with chromosomes today that might be programmed or re-programmed in later years, depending on how research turns out. That is an interesting concept, and one that I certainly had not thought of before.

He also is well considered to have a chapter on "the enhanced and the unenhanced." I came away from that chapter thinking that trying to regulate these technologies is going to be like trying to regulate athletes at the Olympics. The lines are going to be hard to draw and harder to enforce.

On the whole, this is a worthwhile book for those interested in the topic. But in my opinion it falls a bit short of being a definitive work.

Genetic engineering of humans: we can do it; we should do it; and we will do it.

The author of this book is one of tbe best apologists for genetic engineering alive today, and this book is a fine example of his sound argumentation and comoon sense. He is unashamed of his position, delightfully unabashed, and one gets the impression while reading the book that he is very excited to be alive and be witness to the incredible advances in genetic engineering now taking place. Those who support the genetic engineering of humans should read the book, along with those that don't.

As of this date, human cloning is being debated not only in the United States but all over the world, and a cloned embryo is now gestating inside of a woman somewhere in the world. This is indeed an exciting development, but the author says that the fuss over human cloning is unwarranted, but for different reasons than those opposed to it. Copying a human being is insignificant, he argues, compared to what can be done with engineering the human germline. The focus should be, the author argues, on how we are to proceed with this technology, a technology that he clearly supports. He is one of the few that does, oddly, out of the collection who themselves are responsible for the major advances in genetic engineering.

But what of other ways of engineering improvements to human beings? Artificial intelligence and robotics have shown every indication of finally taking off, after decades of promises to that effect. Will humans, already inserting pacemakers, computer chips, and othe devices into their bodies, use this technology to enhance their vision, auditory capabilities, intelligence, etc? Who needs germline modification when this type of technology is available for enhancing human performance? The author argues that this will not be the case, that the human biological organism is too complex for this to happen. Also, the current level of knowledge on biological/electronic interaction is too primitive for such things as direct brain linkage. In addition, human beings will be reluctant to allow surgical implants such as these to be inserted into their brains.

Although his arguments against the occurence of electronic enhancement are good, the author, with his advocacy of germline enhancement, may be expressing a worry that artificial intelligence and cyberelectronics may "win out" over biological approaches to human enhancement. Will there be competition between biotechnology and cybertronic technology for the enhancement of human capabilities in the decades ahead? A silicon-vs-carbon-race for this purpose could prove to be a very interesting one.

The author is very honest and very frank is his discussions in the book, and such honesty is greatly appreciated in this time where genetic engineering is a frightening possibility to some. This omission of "tact and prudence" in discussions of genetic engineering serves better the purposes of rational debate and eases suspicions on the use of germline enhancement.