Will genetic engineering someday allow mankind to transform itself into a race of super strong, super smart, near immortals? And if you think it will, can such a belief form the basis of an incipient 21st-century technoreligion? Science writer Brian Alexander tackles these questions and others in his new book, Rapture: How Biotech Became the New Religion. Here is the second half of my recent E-mail chat with Alexander.
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Next News: Are the dreams of the life-extension/genetic engineering crowd just that, fantasies? What really appears doable? And what sort of timeline are we talking about?
Alexander: Life extension already exists. Scientists have made lab animals live far longer than their natural life span, up to six times longer. Translating that to people will take a long time, but it will eventually be done.
Second, we already see the first tentative steps in life extension. I think drugs like cholesterol-lowering statins, for example, could be considered life extension drugs, and I think that we will see some members of the generation now in their 70s or 80s who take these drugs regularly live beyond the current record of 122 years.
What I don't think will happen is the scary sci-fi scenario of fully designed people, at least in the commonly interpreted meaning of that. For example, it would be possible, right now, to enhance human beings by inserting genes into their genomes to make them more muscular, taller, maybe even smarter. Why isn't anybody offering that (at least publicly)? Because 20 years into gene therapy, there has never been an unequivocal success story. The recent case of children in France who suffered from a severe immune deficiency–the bubble-boy defect–illustrates how hard it is. Gene therapy appeared to cure them. In fact, it did cure them of their defect. But in some of the cases, the vehicle used to insert the curative gene lodged in a bad spot in the genome and apparently activated a cancer-causing gene that created leukemia.
Whole genome engineering of people would probably require lab-created embryos that would be engineered on a massive scale–more than one or two genes. Who's going to want that for their children or themselves? The scare mongers out there seem to discount the human nature they extol. Sex is free. Making babies the old-fashioned way will always be the first choice of almost everybody, even the rich. Brave New World makes an easy sound bite, but it's not terribly realistic.
People get caught up in the sci-fi and forget that science lurches in small, step-like movements. Always has, always will. That may be the biggest fantasy of the bio-utopians, that their dreams will come true soon. They won't. Everybody can relax and take a deep breath. Eventually, we will wake up and realize that we're living to be 250 years old, just like we realize now that average life expectancy in the 20th century went from something like 40 to nearly 80.
Next News: You call biotech a religion. Does the religious aspect have to do with faith that biotechnology will surely bring radical life extension or, rather, faith that biotech advances will result in some sort of Paradise on Earth?
Alexander: Well, both. It's all part of the big vision these folks have. Think about what we imagine paradise to be. Religion promises everlasting life, perfect well being, happiness, a bliss that's unencumbered by the usual woes of life on earth. Biotech as the new religion has begun to promise all these things in one way or another, and those who adhere to the new religion–they hate that I call it that, by the way–think that more will come and that eventually, the promised paradise will be created by science. One word for it is the Singularity, which I explain in the book. But even those who don't buy into the Singularity, even those who are not bio-utopians at all, just regular folks who read the newspaper, have come to think that miracles are around the corner. We have come to this conclusion because biotech's promoters, the genome sequencers, the corporate news releases, have all said so as a way to justify investment. In convincing us that the genome project was a good thing, we were told great stuff was coming. Cures. Answers. We believed it, even though such things are still, mostly, in the future.
Next News: You seem to say that even if people are living to be 500 with improved capacities, they will still complain, still be unhappy, etc.? Yet at the same time you think biotech will make religion less and less tenable. As long as the world is full of flawed creatures, won’t people be looking for the sort of answers that religion tries to provide?
Alexander: Yes. I don't think biotech as religion will replace traditional religion. I explore biotech as an emerging religion which is joining the list of other belief systems, a kind of secular religion. When I write about the threat that some feel from biotech and from science in general, I quote E. O. Wilson, the naturalist, who sees that as more and more questions are answered by science, people will look less and less to religion to explain the universe. I believe that is why the people I call "bio-Luddites" are so threatened by biotech. I think they see the ability to alter natural-given existence, or God-given existence, as heresy. All heresies become heresies because the old order is threatened by them. They don't want life-extension science to proceed, because it defies God or nature. Same with in vitro fertilization for Leon Kass, the chairman of George Bush's bioethics council. He has opposed it for 30 years, not because he hates babies, but because making a baby that way gets around the constraints that God or nature has seen fit to impose on human beings. It unclips us from an eternal source of truth and wisdom and allows us to float free guided by our own wisdom. That's scary. So he thinks we should just take our imperfections and gain strength from our limitations–object lessons from God.
My argument is that he needn't worry. Human beings are on a never-ending treadmill. As amazing as biotech is and as amazing as its future will be, we will have the same motivations, the same desires as we have always had. Living to 500 only delays the ultimate questions. Why are we here? What's the point of life? Is death really the end? If you die at 500 or you die at 47, you still die. The question does not go away. How can we make a better planet, a better community, a better family? How can we find happiness in love?
Next News: Would you like a much longer life span, say, 150 years or more? If so, do you think you will get it? And would you want to be frozen and then thawed at some point in the future when medical technology has greatly advanced?
Alexander: If I could have health with my 150 years, sure. Why not? I like life. I find great joy in it. There's thinking abroad in the land that it is the duty of people living now to die on time to make way for people who do not exist yet. I find that perverse. By that logic, we should deny medical care to people over 80. We ought to send them out to the forest. But we don't do that because we treasure life. I'll die soon enough. Don't rush me.
No, I don't think I'll live to be 150. I think I have an outside chance of making it to 100, now that I know that alcohol is actually good for you.
And no, I'd never be frozen. I don't think cryonics will ever work. I have nothing against those who want to give it a shot. I don't think they are loony. But I'd rather create some other legacy with whatever money I have left at the end rather than sinking into a tank of liquid nitrogen.
