BOOK REVIEW

Enough: staying human in an
engineered age

B McKibben, Henry Holt Company, New York,
2003, hardback, pp 288. ISBN 0805070966

Bill McKibben’s book, Enough, is about
cloning, genetic enhancement, and nanotech-
nology. His thesis is that these things are
bad—nay, they are downright evil. In vivid
and readable prose, McKibben explains what
will soon be possible with these technologies
and provides a dystopian portrait of the
future. His alarmist tone is effective. Despite
having read several similar works and
remaining unmoved, McKibben’s images
struck home with me. I began to feel, in my
gut, anxiety about the genetically engineered
future. McKibben is no stranger to raising the
dangers of new technology. His The End of
Nature is widely acclaimed to have alerted an
unsuspecting public about the danger of
global warming. Alarmism was appropriate
for The End of Nature, since little was written
on global warming prior to 1989. But despite
McKibben’s effective writing, his alarmism
seems out of place for his current topic, since
the potential harms of cloning and genetic
engineering have been discussed in the
academic and popular press for some time.
Remember, it has been 34 years since the
appearance of Paul Ramsey’s Fabricated Man,
and 72 years since Huxley’s Brave New World.
McKibben’s most prominent argument

against human genetic engineering is that it
will cause psychological harm to the people
produced from the use of the technology.
McKibben claims that people with the
knowledge that they resulted from engi-
neered embryos will undergo a crisis in
personal responsibility. So, he argues, engi-
neered people will not know whether to take
credit for their achievements, (they were
designed for great things, after all).
Likewise, engineered people will tend to feel
guilty for their failures (since their genes
provided the aptitude needed to succeed,
their failures must result from a culpable
lack of will). McKibben makes these points
with a series of hypothetical examples. Here
he is imagining the psychological state of a
genetically engineered daughter: ‘‘And what
can she take pride in? Her good grades? She
may have worked hard, but she’ll always
know she was specced for good grades. Her
kindness to others? Well, yes, it’s good to be
kind—but perhaps it’s not much of an
accomplishment once the various genes with
some link to sociability have been catalogued
and manipulated’’ (pp 59–60). The problem
with this argument is that the potential
psychological harm seems to arise because
of genetic determinism, rather than because
such individuals were intentionally designed.
But, if knowledge about genetic determinism
causes psychological harm, one would expect
it to have been a problem even in the

pre-engineered age. Thus, Sally could worry
that it is her genes that make her a virtuoso
pianist (she herself deserves no praise), even if
her parents did not purchase a particular set
of genes for her. The fact that we do not now
suffer any great psychological harm from the
knowledge that we are genetically deter-
mined suggests that ‘‘engineered’’ people
who are genetically determined will not
suffer any harm either. At least, McKibben
does not provide any reasons for thinking so.
McKibben misses the opportunity to

explain why the intentional engineering of
offspring has additional harms, harms not
associated with genetic determinism per se.
At least, he does not do this in any systematic
way, though he has certainly opened the door
to an analysis. It is obvious that the inten-
tional design of offspring has ethical implica-
tions for those doing the designing. The
ethically relevant distinction here is between
being causally responsible for a state of the
world, and merely lamenting (or celebrating)
a state of the world that one has had no hand
in bringing about. So, parents who have a
child engineered are morally responsible for
the health of the offspring in a way in which
parents who use the more usual way of
determining the genotype of offspring are not
responsible. But perhaps genetic engineering
also has implications for the moral psychol-
ogy of the engineered offspring. Perhaps any
guilt felt by parents will seep over to affect
the children. Perhaps (as McKibben does
suggest) the expectations of the parents will
put too much pressure on the children.
Perhaps engineered children will not feel
responsible for their actions because they
were programmed (although I have already
suggested that this is not materially different
from worries about genetic determinism
resulting from natural reproduction).
Perhaps there are more direct sources of
harm in simply knowing that one was
designed. McKibben’s writing leaves us with
the feeling that this is the case, but it is
difficult to translate the feeling into an
articulate and appropriately weighty set of
worries.
McKibben’s book also covers a number of

familiar issues. He predicts that class divi-
sions will widen as the rich purchase genetic
enhancements for their children—class divi-
sions will be written into our biology. He is
concerned about an arms race: since the
technology will improve every several years,
one can expect that younger people will be
smarter, faster, and better than those just
three or four years older. How will our
employment system handle this: if the newer
model is always better, why keep older
models around? These concerns are familiar,
but they are also particularly vivid in
McKibben’s telling. McKibben unifies these
worries under the theme of meaning. Past
technological advances have stripped away
the ‘‘contexts’’ (for example, church, village,
family, nature) that have given meaning to
the lives of previous generations of humans.
Currently, our self-image allows us to find
meaning only in autonomy and individuality.

However, according to McKibben, because of
biotechnology ‘‘we stand on the edge of dis-
appearing even as individuals’’ (p 46, italics in
original). McKibben’s point is that we will no
longer be able to view ourselves as making
free choices which warrant praise or blame—
we will instead see ourselves as automatons.
This is a potent concern, but it is also one
which we have been struggling with since the
recognition that physical determinism seems
to be incompatible with free will. I am not
sure that reflection on genetic engineering
does anything more that put a new face on an
old monster.
Understandably, McKibben’s discussion is

at its weakest when discussing nanotechnol-
ogy and its current state of development.
Likewise, his description of the harms of
nanotechnology is somewhat inchoate.
(Michael Crichton’s novel Prey might be a
better primer on these topics.) However,
nanotechnology may be too new an idea to
discuss with much specificity. At the very
least, McKibben lets us know who is making
news in the area and provides citations for
further research. Mckibben provides a
knowledgeable and nuanced treatment of
preimplantation diagnosis (pp 132–7). He
advocates screening for genetic diseases,
and though he acknowledges that there is
only a murky line between screening for
disease and screening for merely suboptimal
mental and physical traits, he suggests that
we can implement this technology without
falling prey to a brave new world of genetic
enhancement.
A less familiar theme in McKibben’s work

is his discussion of our resources for resisting
technological change. He offers three case
studies: the present-day Amish, China’s self-
imposed moratorium on sea trade in 1424,
and Japan’s outlawing of weapons that used
gunpowder in the early 1600s. In each case, a
newer technology was successfully resisted
because of the ruling group’s concern about
how the technology would affect the fabric of
society. These examples provide much fuel
for reflection (as do other examples drawn
from environmental studies). In particular,
one wonders how long new technologies can
successfully be suppressed. One also wonders
about the forces that propel societies to
implement new technologies even when they
tend to erode the cultural status quo. For
example, why do societies seem to more
strongly resist ideological reforms (such as
those prompted by feminism or gay rights)
than changes from technological advances,
since both have the potential to erode the
cultural status quo? Is it merely the profit
motive that makes technological change so
difficult to resist?
McKibben’s book does not break new

philosophical ground. Nonetheless, it is chock
full of news items, rich hypothetical scenar-
ios, interesting analogies, and provocative
quotes from experts and quacks alike. It
may be the best place that I know of to begin
to philosophise about biotechnology.

F Chessa

J Med Ethics 2004;30:e008 (http://www.jmedethics.com/cgi/content/full/30/6/e008) 1 of 1

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