Annihilation from Within

of a natural endpoint of human life. An indefinite postponement of death would create a profound challenge for some of the major religions. The “natural” beginning and end of our earthly existence have been viewed as boundaries drawn by God—boundaries linked to the sacredness of human life. For the Christian creed, in particular, a fading of these demarcations could be more damaging than the epochal discoveries of Galileo Galilei and Charles Darwin. Although their discoveries contradicted hallowed doctrine and centuries of teaching, they could be accommodated by adjusting peripheral aspects of doctrine. A science-driven deconstruction of the “natural” boundaries of human life would diminish a more central aspect of Christianity (as well as Islam). Also, throughout past centuries, the proximity of death for people in the prime of life has nourished the deepest sentiments of religious faiths.2 Theologians have been rather silent on these profound problems that lie ahead.
A continuing postponement of death can also have serious fiscal implications. If democratic governments cannot raise the retirement age to compensate for our increasing longevity, they will be unable to manage the continuing growth in health care costs and retirement payments, save by cutting other expenses. Given current trends in the United States, federal spending on the elderly (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) will rise from 8 percent of GDP to about 13 percent by 2030. Unless democracies can raise the retirement age, they will have to cut defense expenditures, a process that began in Europe some time ago. But given the political will to raise the retirement age gradually from 65 to 75, the workforce/retirement ratio could be stabilized or even improved—at least for the next few decades. Any serious politician knows that the retirement age will have to be raised substantially, but also knows that any such adjustment will trigger fierce opposition. In Germany, France, Italy, Israel, and other democracies, the labor unions have organized massive demonstrations against proposals for delayed retirement, often leading to street battles.3
Policy adjustments, when at last they are carried out, can reduce or delay a deleterious impact of technological change. But, as Yehezkel Dror pointed out, without the stimulus of a major crisis, it is difficult for democracies to make badly needed policy adjustments that are unpopular with their voters or powerful constituencies.4 The U.S. Government passed its first major child labor law only in 1938, and the struggle to curtail injurious child labor practices in the poorer countries has barely begun. Technological change leaves societies in a state of maladjustment, a manifestation of mankind’s cultural split. But this predicament does not preclude governments from taking steps, even if belatedly, to mitigate these maladjustments. To elucidate these delayed adjustments, American sociologists—notably Thorstein Veblen and William F. Ogburn—introduced the concept of “cultural lag.”5 Karl Marx’s idea that the bourgeoisie would produce its own gravediggers assumed it would be incapable of closing the cultural lag with regard to organized labor. By accepting labor unions, however, the “bourgeoisie” did survive the “revolutionary unification” of labor that Marx and Engels had correctly predicted. Thus the “bourgeoisie” in the industrializing nations—except Czarist Russia—averted the defeat that Marx had in mind for them.
Increased longevity will not only lead to fiscal problems for many democracies but also could prolong the rule of tyrants. Most dictators cling to power as long as possible and can command for themselves the best medical treatments. Stalin comes to mind as a despot who would not have volunteered to retire had his doctors been able to keep him active and fit to age 120, and with tomorrow’s medical technology he might well have ruled his Evil Empire until 1999. Had modern biotechnology offered Mao Ze-dong the same extended life-span, Deng Xiaoping would still be waiting for an opportunity to implement his reforms in China. Cuban exiles in Florida who are pining and planning for a post-Castro Cuba might have to wait as Fidel Castro anticipates to stay in power as an octogenarian.
A mistier question relates to changes in the human spirit. During the natural life cycle that we have grown used to, our emotional experience—of the world around us as well as of ourselves—moves through changing seasons. In the springtime of youth, the emotional landscape is mottled with subtle and flickering colors, playfully blending tones of gaiety with quickly passing shadows of sadness. Sexual drives and feelings shimmer throughout this delicate composition and frequently burst forth like a thunderstorm. In maturity, our emotional experience dwells longer in a single mood, and lights and shadows have harsher edges, as on a dry hot summer day. In the autumn of our lives, our feelings and sentiments become more subdued, yet are also enriched by joys and sorrows recalled from the past. And for those who can reach the last season in fair health, the sentiment of yearning—the mind’s strongest grip on life—is becalmed, and eventually fades.6 But what if biotechnology enables people to live in fairly good health much longer? What then would be the emotive melody of our journey through life? Surely, such a change in the emotions of our passage through life would alter the disposition of society as a whole. These are large questions, with elusive answers.
Who Will Control the Human Brain?
The prospect is that in the decades ahead, biotechnology—together with other sciences—may fundamentally change the human species and thus pose an elemental threat to democracy, the world order, and indeed to all civilizations. As in the past, the rights of biotech researchers to push forward on all fronts will be challenged in the name of religious and ethical principles. Today’s rows over cloning and therapeutic uses of stem cells are merely preliminary skirmishes.7 We will come to see those disputes as petty in comparison with the issue we must inevitably confront one day in the future: To what extent will biotechnology and computer science be allowed, or encouraged, to alter the innermost sanctuary of our existence, the mind that makes us human? We should not hope for meaningful international agreement on this question. Even