Who doubts that ever more efficient and obedient machines will be cheaper and more practical solutions to the "servant problem" than any chimp slave would be? Anyone who has tried to supervise the activities of a 12-year-old for any length of time would likely pass on the opportunity to own one of Fukuyama's subhuman slaves.
The real question is, does biotechnology pose any novel moral concerns? And the answer is no. It is wrong to diminish the health or mental abilities of a child today--we call that child abuse and we outlaw it. We don't allow slavery, even for 12-year-olds. Biomedical research will not change these bedrock moral principles.
These conservative intellectuals have confused being human with merely having human DNA. They are treating human DNA as though it were sacred. But DNA is merely the chemical on which the digital code for how to make proteins is inscribed. Inserting a human gene in a pig or a petunia is not an act of sacrilege. Human DNA in a pig or petunia will make a protein, not a human being. Human beings really are more than the recipe it takes to make them.
In any case, Kristol and his cohorts conjure up these dystopic visions of Doctor Moreauesque half-human, half-animal creatures in an effort to frighten scientifically uninformed policy makers and voters into outlawing biotech research that they oppose on other grounds. What grounds? What they are really afraid of is that parents will some day use biotechnology to benefit their children, not harm them. So who is immoral in this debate?
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