Rapture: A Raucous Tour Of Cloning, Transhumanism, And And The New Era Of Immortality

by Brian Alexander

In Rapture , Brian Alexander takes readers into the surprising stories behind cloning, stem cells, miracle drugs, and genetic engineering to show how the battle for the human soul is playing out in the broader culture-and how the outcome will affect us all. Rapture 's Dickensian cast of characters includes the father of regenerative medicine, an anti-aging guru, and a former fundamentalist Christian and founder of the company that reportedly cloned the first human cell. This motley crew is in part being united by the force of the a burgeoning bio-Luddite movement whose foot soldiers-a strange coalition of conservative Republicans, the Christian right, and the Greens-predict impending doom should we become adherents of the new bio-utopian faith. Sometimes irreverent, sometimes shocking, always entertaining, Rapture shows how the biotech agenda has come to be seen as both salvation and heresy, how we have gotten this far already, and why we'll go where nobody thought we could.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 7, 2003

About the author

Brian Alexander is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including Rapture: How Biotech Became the New Religion andAmerica Un­zipped: The Search for Sex and Satisfaction. He lives in San Diego.

Reviews

[Robin Burton · Rating 3 out of 5]

3-3.5 stars.

This book has a little bit of everything from recreating human parts in labs (also succeeding in creating penises for rabbits), how the transhuman future is implemented, and even an honorable mention of occult sciences.

Helena Blavatsky was discussed in regards to transhumanism and where the fascination of it possibly started. While that’s certainly debatable, I do recall reading a quote from Helena Blavatsky in which she acknowledges hidden powers in man capable of making a God of him on Earth.

This book is also very much a memoir on different biologists.

You’ll learn all about biologist Bill Haseltine and his childhood story about his mother’s illness which attributed to his life ambition to become a physician and “change medicine.”

Parts of this book were really engaging; other parts weren’t.

I thought it was fascinating how religion resurfaced as a subject a lot.

According to this book, Extropians think those trapped by religious fear of the new will be left behind. I think I agree.

To end this review, I’ll leave one scientist’s philosophy around cloning:

“This is the next best thing to eternal life,” he insisted because cloning was a form of resurrection. Life was all about genes, he said, and cloning would let your genes live on. “We must remember that the desire to be immortal even only a second best immortality (that is cloning) is the strongest in a human being. Human beings will do ANYTHING to be immortal. I KNOW this.”

[Adele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this nonfiction book if you want to know even a little bit of what's been happening in the last 80 years or so (up until date of publishing in 2003) in the field of bioscience, including who are the movers and shakers in the field, what are their motivations, and who is funding their way. And read it even if you don't want to know, because you need to know.

[Nathan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Alexander has great fun twitting conservative doom-and-gloomers, but his critique of knee-jerk bio-Luddites is only entertaining as a polemic. There isn't much to say about this book, because Alexander himself doesn't have a lot to say; his discussion of bioethics is hard to take seriously because he doesn't take the discussion seriously. Beyond that, this was badly written in wooden prose plagued by bad humor.