Dr. Kent has produced an intriguing book, which is one long cautionary note on the further development and applications of human genetic technology. Interestingly enough, I agree with his misgivings, his main point, while disagreeing with much of the philosophy and world-view that he brings forward to support his position. At the end of this review, I will suggest an alternate but similar principle, well known to lovers of economic freedom, that comes close to providing the support for Dr. Kent’s position that it needs.

Dr. Kent offers several reasons for nixing, or trying to nix, the advance of human genetic technology.
(1) Our present culture is so dishonest and money-grubbing that the applications will go to the highest bidder, not the most deserving benefit.
(2) Genetically engineered brain chemicals in profusion will replace the current drugs, both legal and illegal, as ways of getting people off track.
(3) Frivolous body changes will be designed and brought about.
(4) In playing God, we will come to despise, then suppress, religion.
(5) The abuse of genetic engineering will lead to a new species, which the author calls homo geneticus, an undesirable and "flattened" replacement for homo sapiens; our species will become extinct. I disagree with Dr. Kent on this one. Most of the changes he indicates will not make people we can’t breed with. As greater changes are made and intersterility comes about, the result will probably be not one, but many variant species, and the inferiority to our own is not obvious to me. However, Aldous Huxley in Brave New World and C. S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man (Dr. Kent mentions only the former) make the same prediction.

Now to the philosophy. Dr. Kent emphasizes a "Big Picture" outlook, which roughly is that we are part of the universe and intimately connected with it. We are not monads. In Chapter 4, he presents a brief review of the history of the Enlightenment, concluding that it has gone sour. He misreads Berkeley’s esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived) in an interesting way. He says that it led to people who don’t consider themselves authentic unless others take note of them. There are no doubt such people, but Berkeley’s dictum is more profound. It is a metaphysical, not a psychological, dictum. Today’s quantum mysticism is only the latest expression of it.

Chapter 5 offers an exotic version of "reality." Not only is reality all that there is (the material universe) but also all the stories, fantasies, and "as it weres" of human history: everything that could possibly happen. His discussion here reminds me of W.V.O. Quine’s brilliant and entertaining essay "On What There Is," where people who favor luxuriant ontologies speak of "unactualized possibles," and Quine, with more austere taste, retorts with "unactualizable impossibles," which are rather like Dr. Kent’s "non-potentialities." Dr. Kent also says that we live forever, not in the usual sense of post-mortem survival of the ego, but in the sense that the past lives forever. Even if the information is lost, the entire past is part of what Dr. Kent considers to be reality. I part company with him here. If the information is gone, the past event is gone. It was, but is not.

In Chapter 6, Dr. Kent commits himself and his complaisant readers to the morality of Immanuel Kant: the idea that unless an act is done with totally disinterested motives, it has no moral value whatever. I consider this not only incorrect, but evil and inhuman. To give no credit to our natural inclinations to do good and our pleasure in kind acts and sympathies (plus the joy of achievement!) is more like homo geneticus than homo sapiens. In an earlier book, Dr. Kent strongly supported the concept of altruism, the spirit of self-sacrifice. He doesn’t do that quite so explicitly here, but Kant’s principle is a form of hard altruism. But the chapter is not all bad. Dr. Kent favorably quotes Bronowski on the need of morality to satisfy two separate needs: independent individuality and community. I like that.

In later chapters, Dr. Kent shows his disapproval of Darwin and Dawkins, and contrasts Jesus with Nietzsche, predictably favoring Jesus. He notes that both would have been done in by the Inquisition, but only two pages later separates them, claiming that Nietzsche but not Jesus would enjoy the spirit of "Onward Christian Soldiers." No. Nietzsche was no lover of armies.

He goes on to explore the free-will controversy and to recommend a "new mind-set," roughly a rejection of Social Darwinism. He ends by suggesting that, if we can get our philosophy big-hearted enough, in tune with the magnificent universe, we may indeed proceed in some areas with human genetic technology with beneficial results.

Since, in my own world-view, I have rejected much of Dr. Kent’s support for his wise caution in the area of genetic engineering, what do I replace it with? I replace it with the wisdom of Henry Hazlitt, the author of Economics in One Lesson (1946). He reduces the lesson to one sentence, which can cover genetic engineering and other major human endeavors as well as economics: "The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups." I think Dr. Kent would agree.

Genetic Engineering: Yes, No or Maybe? by Theodore C. Kent. ©1997. Published by Book World Press, 1933 Whitfield Park Loop, Sarasota, FL 34243, 1-800-444-2524. ISBN 1-884962-05-X. 208 pp. Paperback. $15.95.

---