BIO/POL: Fukuyama Sides with the "Gene Grabbers"

From: Greg Burch (gregburch@gregburch.net)
Date: Sat Jan 05 2002 - 08:34:40 MST


Francis Fukuyama has been signaling for some time that he is taking up the
bioethics and politics of human genetic engineering as his next cause.
Unfortunately, it appears that this very influential intellectual has
succumbed to the temptation to use an unreflective emotional concept of
"nature" as his guide. Here's his opening salvo:

  http://www.thepublicinterest.com/current/article1.html

Notice three things: 1) he has adopted the terminology of "posthumanity" to
describe what he warns against; 2) although he makes a gesture of
condemnation against Rifkin and other "luddites", his position is not really
distinct from theirs and 3) his unfortunate prescription is government
regulation of an admittedly unprecedented type and scale. Too bad.

Greg Burch
Vice-President, Extropy Institute



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