Alvin Toffler - Future Shock

Even if narcissism, however, is culturally rather than biologically transmitted, there are other eerie difficulties. Thus Lederberg raises a question as to whether human cloning, if permitted, might not "go critical." "I use that phrase," he told me, "in almost exactly the same sense that is involved in nuclear energy. It will go critical if there is a sufficient positive advantage to doing so ... This has to do with whether the efficiency of communication, particularly along educational lines, is increased as between identical genotypes or not. The similarity of neurological hardware might make it easier for identical copies to transmit technical and other insights from one generation to the next."

How close is cloning? "It has already been done in amphibia," says Lederberg, "and somebody may be doing it right now with mammals. It wouldn't surprise me if it comes out any day now. When someone will have the courage to try it in a man, I haven't the foggiest idea. But I put the time scale on that anywhere from zero to fifteen years from now. Within fifteen years."

During those same fifteen years scientists will also learn how the various organs of the body develop, and they will, no doubt, begin to experiment with various means of modifying them. Says Lederberg: "Things like the size of the brain and certain sensory qualities of the brain are going to be brought under direct developmental control ... I think this is very near."

It is important for laymen to understand that Lederberg is by no means a lone worrier in the scientific community. His fears about the biological revolution are shared by many of his colleagues. The ethical, moral and political questions raised by the new biology simply boggle the mind. Who shall live and who shall die? What is man? Who shall control research into these fields? How shall new findings be applied? Might we not unleash horrors for which man is totally unprepared? In the opinion of many of the world's leading scientists the clock is ticking for a "biological Hiroshima."

Imagine, for example, the implications of biological breakthroughs in what might be termed "birth technology." Dr. E. S. E. Hafez, an internationally respected biologist at Washington State University, has publicly suggested, on the basis of his own astonishing work on reproduction, that within a mere ten to fifteen years a woman will be able to buy a tiny frozen embryo, take it to her doctor, have it implanted in her uterus, carry it for nine months, and then give birth to it as though it had been conceived in her own body. The embryo would, in effect, be sold with a guarantee that the resultant baby would be free of genetic defect. The purchaser would also be told in advance the color of the baby's eyes and hair, its sex, its probable size at maturity and its probable IQ.

Indeed, it will be possible at some point to do away with the female uterus altogether. Babies will be conceived, nurtured and raised to maturity outside the human body. It is clearly only a matter of years before the work begun by Dr. Daniele Petrucci in Bologna and other scientists in the United States and the Soviet Union, makes it possible for women to have babies without the discomfort of pregnancy.

The potential applications of such discoveries raise memories of Brave New World and Astounding Science Fiction. Thus Dr. Hafez, in a sweep of his imagination, suggests that fertilized human eggs might be useful in the colonization of the planets. Instead of shipping adults to Mars, we could ship a shoebox full of such cells and grow them into an entire citysize population of humans. "When you consider how much it costs in fuel to lift every pound off the launch pad," Dr. Hafez observes, "why send full-grown men and women aboard space ships? Instead, why not ship tiny embryos, in the care of a competent biologist ... We miniaturize other spacecraft components. Why not the passengers?"

Long before such developments occur in outer space, however, the impact of the new birth technology will strike home on earth, splintering our traditional notions of sexuality, motherhood, love, child-rearing, and education. Discussions about the future of the family that deal only with The Pill overlook the biological witches' brew now seething in the laboratories. The moral and emotional choices that will confront us in the coming decades are mind-staggering.

A fierce controversy is already raging today among biologists over the problems and ethical issues arising out of eugenics. Should we try to breed a better race? If so, exactly what is "better?" And who is to decide? Such questions are not entirely new. Yet the techniques soon to be available smash the traditional limits of the argument. We can now imagine remaking the human race not as a farmer slowly and laboriously "breeds up" his herd, but as an artist might, employing a brilliant range of unfamiliar colors, shapes and forms.

Not far from Route 80, outside the little town of Hazard, Kentucky, is a place picturesquely known as Valley of Troublesome Creek. In this tiny backwoods community lives a family whose members, for generations, have been marked by a strange anomaly: blue skin. According to Dr. Madison Cawein of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, who tracked the family down and traced its story, the blue-skinned people seem perfectly normal in other respects. Their unusual color is caused by a rare enzyme deficiency that has been passed from one generation to the next.

Given our new, fast-accumulating knowledge of genetics, we shall be able to breed whole new races of blue people – or, for that matter, green, purple or orange. In a world still suffering from the moral lesion of racism, this is a thought to be conjured with. Should we strive for a world in which all people share the same skin color? If we want that, we shall no doubt have the technical means for bringing it about. Or should we, instead, work toward even greater diversity than now exists? What happens to the entire concept of race? To standards of physical beauty? To notions of superiority or inferiority?

We are hurtling toward the time when we will be able to breed both super– and subraces. As Theodore J. Gordon put it in The Future, "Given the ability to tailor the race, I wonder if we would "create all men equal,' or would we choose to manufacture apartheid? Might the races of the future be: a superior group, the DNA controllers; the humble servants; special athletes for the 'games'; research scientists with 200 IQ and diminutive bodies ..." We shall have the power to produce races of morons or of mathematical savants.

We shall also be able to breed babies with supernormal vision or hearing, supernormal ability to detect changes in odor, or supernormal muscular or musical skills. We will be able to create sexual superathletes, girls with super-mammaries (and perhaps more or less than the standard two), and countless other varieties of the previously monomorphic human being.

Ultimately, the problems are not scientific or technical, but ethical and political. Choice – and the criteria for choice – will be critical. The eminent science fiction author William Tenn once mused about the possibilities of genetic manipulation and the difficulties of choice. "Assuming hopefully for the moment that no dictator, self-righteous planning board or omnipotent black box is going to make genetic selections for the coming generation, then who or what is? Not parents, certainly ..." he said, "they'll take the problem to their friendly neighborhood Certified Gene Architect.

"It seems inevitable to me that there will also be competitive schools of genetic architecture ... the Functionalists will persuade parents to produce babies fitted for the present needs of society; the Futurists will suggest children who will have a niche in the culture as it will have evolved in twenty years; the Romantics will insist that each child be bred with at least one outstanding talent; and the Naturalists will advise the production of individuals so balanced genetically as to be in almost perfect equilibrium ... Human body styles, like human clothing styles, will become outré , or à la mode as the genetic couturiers who designed them come into and out of vogue."