Posthumans' Inhumanity to Man

摘要

In 1963, when the still-new science of molecular biology was reaping its first big harvest, the great bacterial geneticist Joshua Lederberg looked ahead to what the field might bring in the coming years. Technology was advancing so rapidly, he wrote in Nature, that to keep pace with it, humans would need to adapt faster than natural evolution could take us. Threats such as pollution and nuclear war, he believed, demanded that we take absolute control over our genetics, development, and environment. "In short," he concluded, "Man, unless he grows less 'human,' may destroy himself."