More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY Medical School rises above the rolling cornfields that surround the state capital of Springfield, three hours south of Chicago..." (more)
Key Phrases: calorically restricted animals, utero gene therapy, corrective eye surgery, United States, Johnny Ray, Social Security (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Imagine a person severely disabled by a stroke who, with electrodes implanted in his brain, can type on a computer just by thinking of the letters. Or a man, blind for 20 years, driving a car around a parking lot via a camera hard-wired into his brain. Plots for science fiction? No, it's already happened, according to future technologies expert Naam. In an excellent and comprehensive survey, Naam investigates a wide swath of cutting-edge techniques that in a few years may be as common as plastic surgery. Genetic therapy for weight control isn't that far off--it's already being done with animals. Countless people who are blind, deaf or paralyzed will acquire the abilities that most people take for granted through advances in computer technology and understanding how the nervous system functions. Naam says the armed services are already investing millions of dollars in this research; they envision super-pilots and super-soldiers who will be able to control their planes and tanks more quickly via thought. Some of the author's prognostications, with their Nietzschean overtones of people being "more than human," may frighten readers, but Naam is persuasive that many of these advances are going to happen no matter what, and that despite the potential for abuses, they offer hope for our well-being and the survival of the species.
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From Booklist

Naam is optimistic about technological advancement. He surveys applications of genetic and computer engineering to the human body and pronounces them good. Naam notes but does not totally allay the disquiet of critics who think otherwise, so readers more interested in what's happening now in the biotechnology industry will get more from this work than those concerned with the bioethical implications for human identity. Naam is a software engineer, and this is his first book, so his writing about human physiology is predominantly descriptive, albeit enthusiastically so. Naam relates how the technologies--gene therapies, genetic splicing, cloning, and neural/computer interfaces--function at the cellular level and details how they may improve on the injuries, afflictions, and conditions of life (intelligence and aging). Both the researchers and the companies developing biotechnologies receive Naam's positive attention, and he avers that over time their inventions will become widely affordable. This confident, libertarian sentiment suffuses Naam's approach; for a more doubtful posture toward the brave new world, see The Future of the Brain, by Steven P. R. Rose (p.1038).^B Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Broadway; 1 edition (March 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767918436
• ISBN-13: 978-0767918435
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #440,927 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

86 of 88 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why I Wrote This Book, March 8, 2005

By	Ramez Naam "Author" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In 1999, a friend suggested to me that within a few decades we'd have Matrix-esque implants in our brains that would, among other things, allow us to interact in a completely believable virtual reality and beam our thoughts instantly to one another. I pooh-pooh'ed the idea. The brain and body are much too complex to manipulate in that way, or so I thought.

That same year a scientist named Phil Kennedy in Atlanta implanted an electrode into the brain of a paralyzed patient named Johnny Ray - a stroke victim who was completely unable to move, speak, or feed himself. The electrode monitored the activity of just a few neurons inside the patients brain. But through it Johnny was able to learn to control a computer - moving a cursor around on a screen and typing out messages.

Later that year, Joe Tsien at Princeton made the cover of Time Magazine with his Doogie mice - genetically engineered mice that could learn at astounding speeds, up to five times as fast as genetically normal mice.

And that year is also when I learned of the pioneering longevity research of scientists like Tom Johnston at Colorado, who had genetically altered nematode worms to more than double their lifespan and preserve youthful health into old age.

Suddenly, it seemed, science was resembling science fiction.

At the same time, there are a number of voices raised in concern over these technologies. What does it mean to extend our lives, boost our mental abilities, or integrate our minds with computers? Would we still be human? What would happen to society? To equality? To the meaning of life?

I wrote this book to cover these two, interrelated topics:

1)The science of human enhancement - what's actually happening in the labs and what that could lead to in the near future.

2)The ethics, social consequences, and policy challenges of human enhancement. Basically, what we should or shouldn't do with this technology.

More Than Human is an optimistic book, but it's a cautious optimism. Along the way it looks at issues like the effect of longer lives on overpopulation, on socio-economic stratification and whether these technologies would help the rich pull further away from the poor, and at issues like human identity, and whether we could even call ourselves human after changing ourselves in such ways.

It's not a utopian book. There can be no doubt that using biotechnology to alter the human mind, body, and lifespan will lead to problems. But the conclusion I come to in the book is that these technologies will solve more problems than they create. And that the alternative - to prohibit their use - will create many more problems than it will solve.

You can read more at http://www.morethanhuman.org/

I hope you enjoy the book.

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A rare voice: rigorous and accessible, March 8, 2005

By	Leo Dirac (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Naam describes recent scientific advances with the rigor of an academic researcher, but in terms that you don't need a PhD to understand. He also does an insightful job of relating recent breakthroughs to historic scientific firsts. For example, he makes a credible case that someday choosing the genes of your children will be just as common and non-creepy as in-vitro fertilization is today. He covers a wide range of topics, describing science that could lead to 150 year lifespans or being able to google things just by thinking about them. I was hoping for a bit more about nanotechnology, but maybe it's still a bit early for that. ;)

He explains how these technologies can be helpful to society if embraced. The more compelling argument is how frightening they could be if restricted. He draws astute connections to the rise of already common technologies like reading or antibiotics. Even if you don't agree with everything he believes, his position is well argued, and insightful.

Most importantly, from a crowd screaming in panic about a changing world, Naam's perspective stands out as calm, optimistic, logical and caring.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brave new world or genetically-enhanced pipe dream?, August 24, 2005

By	Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

The basic thesis of Ramez Naam's book is that with our ability to shape (especially to enhance) our biological nature through the tools of our culture--in particular, genetic engineering--we will transform humanity into "a plethora of forms," which will eventually result in thousands if not millions of new species. Naam contends that we will spawn "a new explosion of life as sudden and momentous as that of the Cambrian explosion" some 570 million years ago. (p. 233)

That's the upside. What is also possible (although Naam does not dwell on this) is that with biological enhancement tools that are presently coming into discovery and use, we may transform ourselves into beings who will have satisfied their every desire, and with that satiation, have put an end to desire. The result may very well be the end of human evolution, biological or cultural. And following that, the end of the species that began as a big-brained walking ape six million years ago.

Or none of the above.

This is the exciting part. We have no idea where cultural evolution is going to take us. We have no idea whether we will develop the ability to stave off natural disasters (rogue comets; nearby supernovae; unstoppable pathogens) or overcome our propensity to self-destruction in the form of perpetual war or the poisoning of our environment. Yet, modern Luddites and social conservatives notwithstanding, we will indeed use the tools we develop to initially prevent and cure ailments and deficiencies, and ultimately to enhance our abilities to enjoy and to get the most out of life.

This is what this book is all about. Naam begins with the fuzzy distinction between using genetic engineering to heal or to enhance, and makes two telling points: (1) it is often impossible to distinguish between a procedure done as part of the healing arts, or one done to enhance our abilities; and (2) whether we like it or not, given human nature (as it now exists!) if the enhancement tools are there, promising greater intelligence or greater beauty or longer life, then we humans will inevitably use such tools. If the Bush administration or some other Luddite-mentality government tries to suppress these tools, people will just go elsewhere. And those societies that fall behind will fall very far behind. The genetically enhanced will inherit the earth, and indeed it isn't much of a stretch to imagine a future in which those who have enhanced themselves are so far in advance of those who have not as to constitute superior beings. Will the Luddites become pets?

More immediately--keeping these ideas in mind--will it only be the rich who will benefit? Naam argues--and I think convincingly--that yes, at first only the rich will use the tools to better themselves and their children, but then lagging only ten or twenty years behind will come the total mass of humanity. Naam compares this process to that in the present day pharmaceutical environment in which initially the new drugs are very expensive, but after they go generic they become affordable to the masses.

There is so much in the book that I will not be able to get to even a fraction of it. So let me say that Naam has anticipated a lot of the criticism that will be leveled at his position and he has done a good job of answering it. The idea that we can somehow stop genetic engineering to save our human nature is shown as bogus since human nature is an ever evolving, ever changing abstraction. Even the concrete species itself (which is us) has changed mightily over the eons from Australopithecus to homo sapiens. And whether we lift a finger or not, we will eventually change again or go extinct. That is the main point. We cannot stop change. We cannot hope to preserve the present human "endowment." We can only hope to engage change, and with our intelligence make life better for ourselves and those to come, people who will be different from us, and going far enough into the future, very different from us.

For the here and now, Naam sees biotech and neurotech enhancements as "investments in valuable human capital." (p. 76) I believe this is the primary reason the United States must overcome the backward mentality of the Bush administration and support not only more stem cell research, but encourage a greater investment in all forms of biological engineering. If we don't we will fall behind those who do.

For others who see the ghost of eugenics in his position, Naam has an effective answer. He writes, "the only people advocating state control over the genetic makeup of the population are those who would like to see genetic enhancement techniques prohibited. The advocates of human enhancement, on the other hand, are arguing for individual and family choice, the opposite of state control." In other words, "...the prohibitionists are the ones upholding the eugenic side of this debate." (p. 166)

Naam gets very specific about the enhancements possible or at least conceivable, including brain-computer interfaces, brain implants, human cloning, electrical stimulation of the brain, preimplantation genetic diagnosis (which takes in vitro fertilization one step further), etc. Near the end of the book, he sees us communicating not only ideas and words, but thoughts, feelings and emotions to others directly from our brains as one would communicate through a wireless network. Eventually we will have "the flexibility to do what we like with the contents of our thoughts, feelings, and imaginations..."

Since all of this may sound scary (yet exhilarating), Naam adds, "and society will respond with new social norms to guide our choices." (p. 219)

Oh, brave new world that has such things in it!

The book is fascinating. Naam has not only done his homework, he has thought out the consequences of what he has found and provided the reader with some guidance.