What do you think?
Rate this book
BEYOND HUMANITY?:ETHICS OF BIOMEDICAL ENHANCEMENT: The Ethics Of Biomedical Enhancement
Biotechnologies already on the horizon will enable us to be smarter, have better memories, be stronger and quicker, have more stamina, live longer, be more resistant to diseases, and enjoy richer emotional lives. To some of us, these prospects are heartening; to others, they are dreadful. In Beyond Humanity a leading philosopher offers a powerful and controversial exploration of urgent ethical issues concerning human enhancement. These raise enduring questions about what it is to be human, about individuality, about our relationship to nature, and about what sort of society we should strive to have. Allen E. Buchanan urges that the debate about enhancement needs to be informed by a proper understanding of evolutionary biology, which has discredited the simplistic conceptions of human nature used by many opponents of enhancement. He argues that there are powerful reasons for us to embark on the enhancement enterprise, and no objections to enhancement that are sufficient to outweigh them.
300 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 2011
2 people are currently reading
118 people want to read
About the author
Allen Buchanan
26 books15 followersAllen Edward Buchanan is the James B. Duke Professor of philosophy at Duke University and also professor of the Philosophy of International Law at the Dickson Poon School of Law at King's College, London. He received his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1975. He taught at the University of Arizona, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the University of Minnesota before joining Duke's faculty in 2002 as professor of public policy and philosophy. He has written six books covering such topics as Marx, applied ethics (especially bio-medical ethics), social justice, and international justice, including the foundations of international law. Buchanan served as staff philosopher for the President's Commission on Medical Ethics in 1983. From 1996 to 2000 he served on the Advisory Council for the National Human Genome Research Institute. He is a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 20, 2012
This was really good! I loved how the author included all of the notes and references at the end of each chapter for easy access, since he did reference so many others (Especially "conservatives" as he calls them). I think he had a very simple approach that was extremely streamlined towards answering a lot of the generally bantered "issues" with biomedical enhancement and engineering. He came at it from both a morality standpoint and an evolutions standpoint in terms of what enhancements we already undergo (Insert topic literacy here) and really tied all of the points well with each other and how he best saw each argument as it was presented. Interestingly enough he could have come across very condescending in this aspect but he didn't at all. It felt like a fair exchange of ideas and a good general discussion that was fairly fleshed out.
February 14, 2020
Just take a happy pill and all your worries will melt away? Well, maybe. Maybe not. Hold your horses. Buchanan is not advocating that we all transcend our mortal coil tomorrow. At least not right away. He is making a far more modest case for "the enhancement enterprise" as a legitimate activity of individuals, corporations, and governments. He thinks that it should be treated with the same sort of open mindedness and case by case prudence as any other important policy issue. To prove this, he debunks several supposed "slam dunk" arguments against it with the help of cutting edge science and moral philosophy (both of which he knows exceptionally well). And although some of his positive arguments are inconclusive or unsatisfying, they all add up to a decent prima facie case against the excessive use of the precautionary principle in settling policy decisions. The future is around the corner and humans have good reasons to want the enhanced edition.
On the evolutionary biology front, Buchanan clearly articulates how the Darwinian understanding of man is compatible with a reasonable desire to advance our capabilities. He showcases how human nature is subject to constant evolution and variation even without our interference. And he argues against the "Master Engineer" analogy that underlies many of the conservative and liberal worries about tinkering with the supposed "perfection" of "delicate" and "fragile" nature. Instead, he paints a picture of natural selection as a blind, ruthless, and amoral tinkerer.
On the moral philosophy front, he shows how our intuitions about justice and fairness, as well as about abstract ethical principles of human rights and utilitarianism, might accommodate, with some caveats, the process of human enhancement. He shows how the arguments of people like Sandel about the corrupting and vicious nature of the human enhancement enterprise on our character are on shaky ground - when not altogether groundless. And although he concurs with many critics of the enhancement enterprise that we need to act cautiously and with due regard to unintended consequences of our actions, he argues that the benefits of enhancement need to be given equal weight to the potential costs, and that the benefits often outweigh the costs.
Combining these two perspectives - cutting edge science and cutting edge morality - the author makes a convincing case that the enhancement enterprise, especially if regulated with appropriate heuristics and guidelines, is a warranted and normal part of the evolving society. It may even be required to solve some of our existential problems, from persistent wars and global poverty to the climate change. On a more mundane level, it can be used to advance our basic human capabilities. It therefore carries many benefits that any government should take seriously.
The conclusions of the book are rather modest. On the policy front, the author lists several heuristics that are quite cautious (and indeed even more cautious than I personally would deem necessary!). But even this modest pro-enhancement stance is controversial. This makes sense given the enormity of the risks involved. At the same time, I think his conclusions are entirely warranted. If there's anything wrong with the book is that it's unapologetically ahead of the curve. It might not appeal to somebody who is deeply skeptical of human enhancement, especially since many of the opposing arguments, their sacred cows, are dismissed in a rather harsh and boisterous tone.
Furthermore, Buchanan positions himself, in his case for active human interference, against many reasonable evolutionary thinkers like Dawkins who emphasize the special "Master Engineer" qualities of unintended evolution. He therefore might be alienating some of his allies. In emphasizing the plasticity and resilience of the human phenotype, Buchanan makes a good case for our powers to improve on the "given" human nature. However, I believe that Buchanan does not make explicit enough the fact we need to be extremely mindful of the limits of human reason and central planning in designing our political economy. If we take these issues seriously, we are led to favour more piecemeal experimentation and bottom-up innovation over wholesale social engineering and top-down government programs, although the latter cannot be ruled out altogether either. I am therefore led to the paradoxical position of being LESS cautious about the dangers of H.E. technologies (and therefore of the need for moral guidelines) than the author but MORE cautious about the dangers of the governmental (ab)uses of H.E. technologies.
The last point to emphasize is the importance of the book's contribution to the "justice in innovation" debate. This is one of the most crucial policy questions going forward: how are we going to make sure that ALL people - not just the rich and the powerful - are able to take advantage of human enhancement tools and technologies? Such worries should NOT be used as an excuse to reject human enhancement but as a reason to address distributive issues. The proper response is to develop innovation friendly government policies that make access to such technologies available to ordinary people at a low market cost and with minimal socioeconomic barriers. In my opinion, this entails making sure that people have sufficient economic resources and access to free markets where they can take advantage of cutting edge technologies. It means having access to government support in the form of basic income guarantee, educational opportunities, and a safe but permissive regulatory environment that is conducive to supporting fair play and competitive innovation. And it means reforming IP rights, as Buchanan rightfully emphasizes, to cut down consumer costs. Taking these distributional issues seriously could be used to politically legitimize the H.E. project.
Overall, the book is controversial but shouldn't be. It can serve as a model of how to argue a controversial case with playful lucidity and fairness. It makes a balanced argument that recognises the risks of human enhancement but also its many potential benefits. The book appears to make a controversial point only because the current political and ethical landscape is so perversely skewed against human enhancement - and often for no good reason at all. It is my hope that the book will no longer be controversial in a few decades because it will be seen as common sense.
On the evolutionary biology front, Buchanan clearly articulates how the Darwinian understanding of man is compatible with a reasonable desire to advance our capabilities. He showcases how human nature is subject to constant evolution and variation even without our interference. And he argues against the "Master Engineer" analogy that underlies many of the conservative and liberal worries about tinkering with the supposed "perfection" of "delicate" and "fragile" nature. Instead, he paints a picture of natural selection as a blind, ruthless, and amoral tinkerer.
On the moral philosophy front, he shows how our intuitions about justice and fairness, as well as about abstract ethical principles of human rights and utilitarianism, might accommodate, with some caveats, the process of human enhancement. He shows how the arguments of people like Sandel about the corrupting and vicious nature of the human enhancement enterprise on our character are on shaky ground - when not altogether groundless. And although he concurs with many critics of the enhancement enterprise that we need to act cautiously and with due regard to unintended consequences of our actions, he argues that the benefits of enhancement need to be given equal weight to the potential costs, and that the benefits often outweigh the costs.
Combining these two perspectives - cutting edge science and cutting edge morality - the author makes a convincing case that the enhancement enterprise, especially if regulated with appropriate heuristics and guidelines, is a warranted and normal part of the evolving society. It may even be required to solve some of our existential problems, from persistent wars and global poverty to the climate change. On a more mundane level, it can be used to advance our basic human capabilities. It therefore carries many benefits that any government should take seriously.
The conclusions of the book are rather modest. On the policy front, the author lists several heuristics that are quite cautious (and indeed even more cautious than I personally would deem necessary!). But even this modest pro-enhancement stance is controversial. This makes sense given the enormity of the risks involved. At the same time, I think his conclusions are entirely warranted. If there's anything wrong with the book is that it's unapologetically ahead of the curve. It might not appeal to somebody who is deeply skeptical of human enhancement, especially since many of the opposing arguments, their sacred cows, are dismissed in a rather harsh and boisterous tone.
Furthermore, Buchanan positions himself, in his case for active human interference, against many reasonable evolutionary thinkers like Dawkins who emphasize the special "Master Engineer" qualities of unintended evolution. He therefore might be alienating some of his allies. In emphasizing the plasticity and resilience of the human phenotype, Buchanan makes a good case for our powers to improve on the "given" human nature. However, I believe that Buchanan does not make explicit enough the fact we need to be extremely mindful of the limits of human reason and central planning in designing our political economy. If we take these issues seriously, we are led to favour more piecemeal experimentation and bottom-up innovation over wholesale social engineering and top-down government programs, although the latter cannot be ruled out altogether either. I am therefore led to the paradoxical position of being LESS cautious about the dangers of H.E. technologies (and therefore of the need for moral guidelines) than the author but MORE cautious about the dangers of the governmental (ab)uses of H.E. technologies.
The last point to emphasize is the importance of the book's contribution to the "justice in innovation" debate. This is one of the most crucial policy questions going forward: how are we going to make sure that ALL people - not just the rich and the powerful - are able to take advantage of human enhancement tools and technologies? Such worries should NOT be used as an excuse to reject human enhancement but as a reason to address distributive issues. The proper response is to develop innovation friendly government policies that make access to such technologies available to ordinary people at a low market cost and with minimal socioeconomic barriers. In my opinion, this entails making sure that people have sufficient economic resources and access to free markets where they can take advantage of cutting edge technologies. It means having access to government support in the form of basic income guarantee, educational opportunities, and a safe but permissive regulatory environment that is conducive to supporting fair play and competitive innovation. And it means reforming IP rights, as Buchanan rightfully emphasizes, to cut down consumer costs. Taking these distributional issues seriously could be used to politically legitimize the H.E. project.
Overall, the book is controversial but shouldn't be. It can serve as a model of how to argue a controversial case with playful lucidity and fairness. It makes a balanced argument that recognises the risks of human enhancement but also its many potential benefits. The book appears to make a controversial point only because the current political and ethical landscape is so perversely skewed against human enhancement - and often for no good reason at all. It is my hope that the book will no longer be controversial in a few decades because it will be seen as common sense.
May 28, 2013
Buchanan intends this book as a philosophical counter to the typical anti-enhancement tomes, Fukuyama's "Our Posthuman Future" and the Leon Kass-chaired President's Council on Bioethics report. He rigorously dismantles the bioconservative arguments, blowing their models of human nature, evolutionary biology, and the motives of potential transhumans apart. This book would make an admirable companion to one of these texts in an upper-level bioethics class on enhancement.
Where this book is less effective is in advancing a positive rational for human enhancement, beyond a vague notion of "correcting nature's error", or noting that human beings, the environment, and technology have been continually interacting and evolving. Indeed, Buchanan sidesteps entirely one of the most critical issues in human enhancement: how enhancement research might be done without violating human subject research codes, including the Helsinki declaration, which explicitly bans non-curative research.
The last chapter, on ameliorating the distributive justice effects innovation through a Global Institute for Justice and Innovation modeled on the World Trade Organization is so detached from the realities of poverty and technological power as to be laughable. The 'bottom billion' isn't poor because of a lack of technology; it's a lack of governance and maintenance of well-understood technologies, and an inability to compete with the first world on a global commodity market, for example in oil. The GIJI is a nice utopian ideal, but has no bearing on how technologies actually embody power: Robert Moses' bridges, or software end-use license agreements, for example.
Laying out and demolishing the anti-enhancement claim from a philosophically rigorous position is a useful good, but this book provides relatively little guidance on what it might be like to be an ethical transhuman, or how we as a civilization might get to that point.
Where this book is less effective is in advancing a positive rational for human enhancement, beyond a vague notion of "correcting nature's error", or noting that human beings, the environment, and technology have been continually interacting and evolving. Indeed, Buchanan sidesteps entirely one of the most critical issues in human enhancement: how enhancement research might be done without violating human subject research codes, including the Helsinki declaration, which explicitly bans non-curative research.
The last chapter, on ameliorating the distributive justice effects innovation through a Global Institute for Justice and Innovation modeled on the World Trade Organization is so detached from the realities of poverty and technological power as to be laughable. The 'bottom billion' isn't poor because of a lack of technology; it's a lack of governance and maintenance of well-understood technologies, and an inability to compete with the first world on a global commodity market, for example in oil. The GIJI is a nice utopian ideal, but has no bearing on how technologies actually embody power: Robert Moses' bridges, or software end-use license agreements, for example.
Laying out and demolishing the anti-enhancement claim from a philosophically rigorous position is a useful good, but this book provides relatively little guidance on what it might be like to be an ethical transhuman, or how we as a civilization might get to that point.
November 13, 2023
interesting and insightful mega-centrist arguments for a pragmatic/realistic approach to the ethics of biomedical enhancement. quite a dull position and equally dull and tedious (but strong) argumentation. reading this is like chewing on cardboard covered in dried-up glue stains (like most of Buchanan's work I have read so far).
quite clearly, the rating applies to the content only.
quite clearly, the rating applies to the content only.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews