Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Bailey on Fukuyama's 'eugenics'





These regulatory precedents are dangerously constrictive. It is Fukuyama, after all, who has made it painfully clear that he is opposed to not just human enhancement, but life extending technologies as well.

As Bailey points out in his article, these regulatory bodies often function as bureaucratic obstructions to research and development. Moreover, when given too much political clout, and if guided by anachronistic notions of human reproduction and biology, these agencies may also act in a way that's reminiscent of 20th century eugenics.

Ultimately, Fukuyama's agency will work to enforce a preconceived, non-normative and state imposed vision of human reproduction and health in general.


Absolutely.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It could also be argued that the intellectual desire and biogenetic technologies our minds have created are a natural extension of an evolutionary drive to enhance our minds and bodies, and that the technologies of self-evolution are predictable, natural, and may even be required for human survival, as a species, if we are ever to resolve the vast multiplicity of self-created problems that humankind has inadvertently (due to our limited intellectual and perceptual abilities, primate heritage, and lack of ability to think in terms of extremely long timeframes) created, and which threaten our survival and ability to leave this solar system and seek out new worlds and star systems where we may continue to diversify and grow, hopefully both ethically and intellectually to try and guarantee the very long term development and inherent capacities we have in "proto" form to be what, in a sense, our "destiny" may hold for us in joining the greater "society" of other advanced forms of consciousness and intelligence without destroying ourselves or others.

Otherwise, we are doomed as a species.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Mac said...

Mr. Intense--

I agree with you 100%. We have a big choice to make.