Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human

by Joel Garreau

  “I think for a lot of people, technology is a race. It’s a competitive race. ‘If I don’t do it, somebody else will do it. If I don’t do it, the world will never hear how great my ideas were. I’ll never be as famous as I want to be. I’ll never get the recognition I want.’ People who want to be champions or something—at DSO, we’ve got them in spades.”

  Despite these reveries, Goldblatt is far more excited about his future this sultry August afternoon than he is about reviewing his past. The next Monday he is becoming chief executive officer of a company in the legendary Interstate 270 biotechnology corridor of Montgomery County, Maryland, not far from the National Institutes of Health. The company is called Functional Genetics. It has a revolutionary plan to fight disease. He is so energized, in fact, that he jumps up and suggests we go for a walk.

  The founder of Functional Genetics is Stanley N. Cohen, he explains as we stroll through Goldblatt’s leafy McLean neighborhood. Cohen, in collaboration with Herbert Boyer, is credited with launching the genetic engineering industry in 1973. They showed a way to stably reproduce DNA. This fundamental transformation of molecular medicine—putting the DNA of one organism into the cell of another—is the underpinning of every biotech company in existence. Cohen has received the National Medal of Science, the National Medal of Technology and a raft of other honors.

  Functional Genetics has developed a proprietary way of rapidly isolating cells in humans that have traits relevant to many diseases, and of figuring out ways to shut off genes that play a role in the spread of the disease. To complete their infectious life cycle, viruses are wholly dependent on the cell machinery of the individual they attack. For example, there is a protein in human cells that is required for viruses to emerge or “bud” from infected cells. If there is no protein, there is no way for the virus to spread. Nail the protein that the human’s body produces, and it would appear you have a way to stop a virus dead in a way the virus could never overcome. A virus like AIDS. Maybe all viruses.

  Functional Genetics also knows which protein forms the plaques between nerve cells that is a hallmark of the onset and progression of Alzheimer’s. The company also is dissecting the biochemical pathways that mark the life cycle of tumors of the breast, kidney and lung, looking for ways to deny these cancers what they need from the human body.

  They call the products they’re working on “anti-infectives.” What’s revolutionary about them is that all efforts to combat pestilence up until now have focused, one way or another, on attacking the disease organism. But “what if you kill the organism by denying it the metabolic machinery of the host?” Goldblatt asks. “You let the organism invade and you just put up a roadblock so it can’t hijack the host.” What if you could tune up the human, making her invulnerable to AIDS, Alzheimer’s, cancer or any other disease you chose?

  There are several ways to achieve this. One is to develop drugs that, for example, nail the target protein. But the approach that really excites Goldblatt is the one they’re working on for pigs. “Pigs are susceptible to something called African swine fever. The only cure for African swine fever is that you kill the infected pig and a hundred thousand of its nearest neighbors. That’s the only cure. It’s wiped out many pigs in Portugal, in many parts of Africa. So what we’re going to test is whether or not we can create a breed pig that is uninfectible by African swine fever.”

  And you would do that how?

  “Well, knocking down the gene that allows a small protein, which is absolutely essential to the life cycle of the virus.”

  Now wait a minute. You’re talking about genetically engineering an invulnerable pig. Is this somatic or germ-line? Are you talking about fixing pigs one by one? Or are you talking about permanently knocking down a gene in a pig such that none of its offspring would ever have this gene, making them forever invulnerable?

  “Well, it could be either,” Goldblatt replies.

  Isn’t that where you find the path to enhanced humans? I ask.

  “That’s right, it’s very similar,” Goldblatt replies.

  Humans have been attacking disease, using magic or medicine, since the dawn of time. But now, it would appear, there might be a better way. Forget about attacking the pestilence.

  How much more elegant it would be, the denizens of Functional Genetics believe, if we could just create better humans.

  Who could argue with that?

  Acknowledgments

  I’m out on the border, I’m walkin’ the line Don’t you tell me ’bout your law and order I’m try’n’ to change this water to wine.

  —Eagles, “On the Border”

  Don’t ever forget that

  You just may wind up

  In my song.

  —Jimmy Buffett, “Mañana”

  MY PERSONAL VILLAGE, to which I always seem to stay rooted, no matter how far I stray, continues to be the newsroom of The Washington Post. For allowing me to do the newspaper reporting that led up to this volume, I am indebted to Gene Robinson, Deborah Heard, Steve Coll, Len Downie and Don Graham. They did not flinch, much, when I started filing reports of Borgs, nomads, myths, madness, globally conscious flocks, gift economies, Wexelblat Disasters, redheads, social swarms and all the rest. What a remarkable sense of forbearance this tribe displays, allowing me to linger at the edges of their campfires, listening to the tales being told.

  All errors of fact, interpretation or emphasis in this book are entirely my own. Experience, alas, demonstrates the unlikelihood that perfection has been achieved. Suggested elaborations from readers for later editions are welcome through www.garreau.com.

  Nonetheless:

  American journalism’s premier discoverer of cultural meaning is my longtime sparring partner, inspiration and friend, the Pulitzer prize–winning Henry Allen. Henry and I are the R2D2 and C3PO of our trade. When I stubbornly head into forbidding terrain, there he is, waving his hands and telling me what a fool’s errand I’m on this time. Yet he is always right behind me. In this instance, I am even more indebted to Henry than usual, for he was my main editor during the newspapering that led up to this volume and, as is frequently the case with an editor who can read your mind, he was sometimes damn near my un-bylined co-author. Luckily, his cognitive functions are now sufficiently random that he no longer recognizes as his own the entire exquisitely crafted paragraphs that he stuck into my copy.

  Linton Weeks and Paul Richard were devoted comrades asking questions for which I did not have answers and challenging assertions I had not thought through.

  The Greek chorus throughout much of this, in the shadowy realm of unauthorized local virtual reality, included my colleagues Frank Ahrens, Libby Copeland, Paul Farhi, Marc Fisher, Ann Gerhart, Jerry Knight, Lynn Medford, Linda Perlstein, Ken Ringle, Roxanne Roberts, Sandy Rovner, Kathy Sawyer, John Schwartz, Cassandra Stern, Chris Stern, Desson Thompson, Linton Weeks, and the late but never forgotten Richard Pearson and Bob Williams.

  Other colleagues who played a larger role than they may realize, frequently with their skepticism, often with their information, but sometimes just by listening at important times, include Peter Carlson, Mary Hadar, Steve Hunter, Mark Leibovich, Michael Lutzky, Phil McCombs, John Pancake, Steve Reiss, Ian Shapira, Matt Slovick, Hank Stuever, Robert Thomason, Rick Weiss, Mary Lou White and Teresa Wiltz.

  At the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, Roger Stough and Kingsley Haynes lured me into being a senior fellow. Crucial to this book were the years of faculty brown-bag lunches. They evolved from a colloquium on the future of universities, to the future of human networks, to the future of cultural revolutions, to the meaning of security, to transcendence. The drop-ins there were special, ranging from Frank Fukuyama to Seymour Martin Lipset to Hal Morowitz to Joshua Epstein of Sugarscape renown. But the real secret was the diversity of the regulars. George Johnson is university president emeritus and a recovering English professor. Don Kash investigates chaos, complexity and innovation. Jack High is an international economist. Mark Add
leson’s area is organizational learning, but his biggest contributions probably came from his willingness to examine alternative ways of knowing. The best part of that time, however, was working with my teaching partner, mentor and friend, George Cook. Cook has a remarkable ability to clear the air. Unlike the rest of us, he has done practical things like run a large corporation and win local elections.

  Sometimes as I stared out into the middle distance, reflecting on my conversations with software pioneers who think of squid as alternative intelligences, or Navy commanders intent on regenerating lost limbs, a question would occur to me: How do I get myself into these situations? It’s striking how often the indirect answer was Stewart Brand. One of the most important things that happened to me after the publication of my last book was getting a call from that National Book Award winner and Internet pioneer, inviting me to join the scenario-planning organization known as Global Business Network. This introduced me to “the tribe that lives in the future.” It is a collection of remarkable people united by the belief that the best way to anticipate the future is to invent it yourself. I am particularly indebted to GBN’s founders—Brand, Napier Collyns, Jay Ogilvy, Peter Schwartz and Lawrence Wilkinson. Danica Remy gently but firmly guided me onto the Internet not only before most people knew it existed but before the term dot-com was coined in the press. I would be sorely remiss if I did not mention the companionship and blazingly original thinking of Kim Allen, Nancy Bambic, John Perry Barlow, Steve Barnett, Mary Catherine Bateson, Raimondo Boggia, Nicole Boyer, William Calvin, Andrew Campion, Denise Caruso, Lynn Carruthers, Manuel Castells, Doug Coupland, Don Derosby, Eric Drexler, Esther Dyson, Chris Ertel, Tina Estes, Oliver Freeman, Frank Fukuyama, Katherine Fulton, Graham Galer, J. C. Herz, Danny Hillis, Chuck House, Bill Joy, Adam Kahane, Eamonn Kelly, Kevin Kelly, Art Kleiner, Jaron Lanier, Jaap Leemhuis, Amory Lovins, Thomas Malone, Dan McGrath, the late Don Michael, Brian Mulconrey, Michael Murphy, Nancy Murphy, Richard O’Brien, Laura Panica, Walter Parkes, John L. Petersen, Anu Ponnamma, Paul Saffo, Lee Schipper, Clay Shirky, Alex Singer, Erik Smith, John Stanning, Alex Steffen, Karen Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, Susan Stickley, Hardin Tibbs, Kees van der Heijden, Vernor Vinge, Peter Warshall, Steve Weber and John Wilson. I shall never forget the water fight among the rafts on New Mexico’s Rio Chalma starring the regal Pamela McCorduck. Or the time back in 1998 when Viagra was new. I presented a tab to William Gibson, arguably America’s greatest living storyteller about the future. He displayed his incisive connection to the zeitgeist by responding: “It does what?”

  The best strategic plans are always created in hindsight, a DARPA executive once told me. True enough. Yet as a reporter, I find it disconcerting how often a pile of one’s own stories resolves itself into a larger pattern only retrospectively, and then only with the help of others. Among those who early on were kind enough to explain to me the overarching themes in my work were Betty Sue Flowers of the University of Texas at Austin, Sherry Turkle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Peter Leyden, former managing editor of Wired, now with GBN. In interviews that started in July 2001 and continued through April 2114, Leyden drew out of me the unifying threads in my project. He also exhaustively reviewed the manuscript as it was produced, balanced by the insightful and penetrating Deborah Heard, that consummate professional who also read it chapter by chapter, correctly loathing any writing that did not relate to real people.

  The denizens of the Defense Sciences Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, especially Michael Goldblatt, took me into their midst after reading my previous work chronicling culture and values, and on my promise that if allowed to understand their operation in depth, I would do my level best to be accurate and fair. I hope they feel I have acquitted myself honorably. This manuscript was not reviewed by the agency in any way. I did not ask for or receive any security clearances. All interviews were on the record.

  In addition to the DARPA program managers I talked to in Virginia, I would like to thank the many principal investigators around the country not otherwise named in the text who spent time getting me in the picture, especially Alun Davies of Rinat Neuroscience Corp.; Bob Fitzsimmons of The Technical Basis LLC; Robert S. Full, who studies geckos and other inspirational creatures at the Poly-PEDAL Lab of the University of California at Berkeley; Wayne Jonas of the Samueli Institute; Hami Kazerooni, master of the exoskeleton project at the University of California at Berkeley; and Bill Rojas of MindTel LLC.

  At the National Science Foundation, I was aided by William Sims Bainbridge, Robert Eisenstein, Mihail C. Roco, Philip Rubin and most especially Ruzena Bajcsy and Curt Suplee.

  In another one of those turns of events that demonstrate there is a deity and She has a sense of humor, Orville Schell, Cynthia Gorney and Brad Inman providentially stepped in to subsidize my California interviews by making me a senior fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism of the University of California at Berkeley during the writing of this book.

  During my California stays, I was particularly indebted to Denise Caruso, who has thought deeply about how to make our future turn out right; Jamais Cascio, who has been thinking about posthumanism for years and was particularly incisive in challenging the scenario logics that appear in this volume; Erik Smith, for the conversations and the couch; and Janice Robertson, for the pallet on her floor and her dazzling smile.

  John Brockman, my agent, understood this book before most people. Almost as important, he runs Edge, available at www.edge.org Its mission: “To arrive at the edge of the world’s knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.” Like GBN, Edge was an invaluable network of networks.

  My editor at Doubleday was Roger Scholl. The indexer was Charlee Trantino.

  Others who made conspicuous contributions include Gary Anderson, USMC; Philip Anton of RAND; Roger Brent of the Molecular Sciences Institute; Geoff Cohen; Charles DeLisi and Kenneth Lewes, who organized the pioneering conference on the future of human nature at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, Boston University; Kenneth M. Ford of the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition at the University of West Florida; Thomas A. Furness III of the Human Interface Technology Lab; Robin Hanson; Jenny H. Holbert, USMC; David Isenberg; Shaun Jones, USN; Michael Marien of Future Survey; Christine Peterson of the Foresight Institute; Jens G. Pohl; Chris Phoenix and Mike Treder of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology; Howard Rheingold; Anders Sandberg of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm; Bernardo Seissel; Brigadier General Robert E. “Rooster” Schmidle, USMC, who has got to be the most nonlinear thinker ever to achieve that rank; John Sheehan, SJ; Wick Sloane; John Smart of the Institute for Accelerating Change; Steven Spielberg, who was kind enough to include me in the think tank he convened to anticipate the future of human nature portrayed in the film Minority Report; Ilkka Tuomi; Caroline Wagner of RAND; the ever clueful David Weinberger; and Barry Wellman.

  Olwen Price, Jeannie Tracy and Chris Kelleher transcribed my interviews. Arlene Brothers organized the suggested readings. I particularly admired the note Price, in her properly Welsh fashion, appended to one of my DARPA interviews: “I hope there won’t be too much talk about monkeys. I have been a member of antivivisectionist organizations for 31 years.”

  For the human contact that kept me ticking through the long slog, hunched over my keyboard in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, I am especially indebted to Erika and Rob Payne, Dennis “Gomer” Pyles, and Kim Sieber.

  Most important was my family. Adrienne Cook Garreau, the novelist, was my most trusted editor. Simone Chenette Garreau and Evangeline Reed Garreau were a constant inspiration, keeping me informed of the social impact of accelerating change upon the young, and reminding me with their conversations how unmistakably they were my target audience. These women have shaped my life. This book is aimed at them.

  Suggested Readings


  This is a highly selective, sporadically annotated list of intriguing opportunities for further reading. It is definitely not a collection of prime sources, nor is it aimed at specialists. Some of the works important to them are exotic indeed—not to be inflicted casually on any sentient creature. If your taste runs to the detailed, many more citations can be found in The Notes.

  I hope this is a balanced collection. Because of their importance to various debates, I have included many works that I approach with healthy skepticism, and some with which I flat-out disagree. I have, however, spared the reader most of the works that strike me as egregious hokum.

  This is also an opportunity for me to bow deeply and from the waist to the giants in so many fields who have influenced my thinking. Many of them contributed interviews to this work. Much got edited out of this book in the service of focus and pace. I bleed nonetheless.

  Since the subjects addressed in this book are evolving, I plan to post further information over time at www.garreau.com. I also can be reached through that site, or through The Garreau Group—the network of my best sources—at 6045 Pilgrim’s Rest Road, Broad Run, VA 20137 USA, 540-347-1414, team@garreau.com.

  The Curve

  Beniger, James. The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986. ASIN: 0-674-16985-9.

  How the ever-increasing pace of the Industrial Age generated the need for information that eventually became the center of our economy.