ratfish

Democracy and gene therapy

2017-01-03

I’ve been reading Ramez Naam’s non-fiction book More Than Human (2005)¹. It’s a really interesting book, clearly, optimistically, and sometimes eloquently arguing for improving the human race via gene therapy, and the successes and failures so far towards this end.

In the introduction, Naam describes the debate over human enhancement and his arguments for encouraging and regulating human enhancement via e.g. gene therapy:

1. It would improve human lives,
2. Prohibition wouldn’t work,
3. individuals should be free to make this choice for themselves.

For his third point, Naam writes that

Western democracies are founded on the principle that governments exist to protect the freedoms of individuals.

As a historical statement, I have some doubts about the full truth of that (Naam cites the US Declaration of Independence), but as an ideal, I found it very striking. In retrospect, it seems kind of obvious as a talking point, but nevertheless, I think it’s a valuable ideal to try to hold our government to².

By the way, there’s a bit of a funny way that I came to be reading Naam’s More Than Human. I started watching Quinn Norton’s talk Life in the Invisible City, and early on she recommends (hard recommends!) Theodore Sturgeon’s More than Human (1953). I decided to be a good listener and read the book before continuing the talk, and since then I didn’t want to spoil the book, I didn’t really listen to her description of it. As should be obvious at this point, I got the wrong book! But I’m glad I did. It’ll just take me a bit longer to get to Life in the Invisible City.