When the epigraph (the quote shown after the dedication and before the contents page) referenced an endnote of 12 sentences, the reader should be immediately forewarned of some difficult text ahead. Speaking of the superscript text-noted endnotes, this book has twenty-one pages of them.

Thankfully many endnotes list only source notes, however they have the added feature that the endnote pages, rather than simply showing the number of the chapter they refer to, instead display the actual name of the chapter, making things so much easier on the reader, because every page he is reading has the chapter name along the top of it. A small thing but it made using the endnotes much more pleasurable and much more likely.

The book also sports a twelve page bibliography however, in this college textbook-like work there is no index, where surely one is needed.

Author Francis Fukuyama, who has more degrees than a thermometer, delves into the mechanics, the challenges and the deep moral questions facing a Mankind who is becoming able to manipulate his own progeny.

Who will decide what is 'too short' and when does a child deserve genetic manipulation to grow taller that he normally would? Who will decide what 'harmful' genes will be removed from what individuals, along with what determines something as harmful vs. inconvenient? Will gene-coding for attributes such as intelligence, height and aggressiveness become commonplace?

Do single genes or pairs of genes determine certain characteristics or are there unknowably complicated connections of genes that turn off and on like strings of choreographed Christmas tree lights? Will we splice animal DNA into human genes as we have spliced animal DNA into the genes of some food crops?

Can human gene experimentation be as strictly and thoroughly regulated as is The World's nuclear bomb technology?

When I began reading this book I thought to myself that everyone should also be reading it. But soon I arrived at the heavily philosophical chapters of "Human Rights", "Human Nature", and "Human Dignity" and was drug back into my too warm and too sleepy Glendale Community College Philosophy 101 classroom.

One thing I very much appreciated was that Mr. Fukuyama, although being pro-abortion, specifically listed both the Conservative's views and the Left's views on many of the challenges facing our nascent ability to design human beings.

If you want to ascend to the cutting edge of the coming human genetic modification surge in the areas of what we know, what is coming, and what questions must be answered, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution is an excellent but intricately worded, primer.

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Out of date now, but okay ( )

Out of date now, but okay ( )

Очень ясное исследование ученого, сочетающего энциклопедические познания и отличные энциклопедические познания. Совершенно необходимое чтение для всех, кто изучает политическую философию и биологию. ( )