Ramez Naam Interview, plus links to author biography, book summaries, excerpts and reviews

An interview with Ramez Naam

Find out why Ramez Naam believes that we should embrace, not fear, the biological enhancements that are increasingly available to us through the use of modern technologies such as gene therapy.

What gave you the idea to write More Than Human?
I've always been both a fascinated observer of science – the kind actually practiced in labs around the world, and an avid reader of science fiction. In 1999, a good friend of mine who I'd loaned a science fiction novel to commented that he expected that in 10 years we'd be walking around with electrodes in our heads, fully immersed in a William Gibson-style cyberspace. I scoffed at the idea, knowing that the brain is an incredibly complex organ and doubting that researchers would get us anywhere near the level of understanding of the brain necessary for that sort of thing until 50 or 100 years from now.

Later that year, a team at Duke University published a paper in the journal Science – one of the top two scientific journals in the world – where they'd wired electrodes into the brain of a living rat and given it control over a robot arm. And in the same year, a researcher in Atlanta implanted electrodes in the brain of a man named Johnny Ray, a patient who'd been paralyzed from the neck down by a stroke, and gave him the power to control a computer just by thinking about it.

Suddenly everywhere I looked in the scientific literature – in genetics, in longevity, in the study of memory – I saw discoveries and progress that I'd thought were the stuff of science fiction. That's when I decided to write this book – to help people see and understand the incredible rate at which science is giving us the ability to alter – and maybe improve on – our own minds and bodies.

What do you hope to achieve with your book?
There's an aphorism that "we fear what we do not understand". I think that's often quite accurate, especially when it comes to new biological technologies. When Jenner first introduced the small pox vaccine, he was denounced as playing god and as dabbling in things too dangerous for mortal men. I see the same thing happening now with biotechnology. People have a great deal of fear around technologies like cloning or genetic engineering, let alone implanting wires in someone's head.

About two years ago, that fear came to a head with a whole slew of books warning us about the peril's of using biotechnology to alter our minds or bodies. Historian Francis Fukuyama put out Our Postmodern Future, Leon Kass wrote Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Human Dignity, and environmentalist Bill McKibben wrote Enough. All of those books took the stance that we ought to leave well enough alone. That we ought to be happy with our current lifespans, our bodies, our intellects. And that it was dangerous, or maybe downright immoral, to try to change those things too much.

That, to me, is an argument based on fear of technologies that people don't really understand. So my greatest goal with More Than Human is to educate people on how these technologies work and what they can and can't do. I think if people understand that, they'll be a lot more comfortable with, and in some cases eager for what, biotech can do for us.

Are you saying that these fears are misplaced? That there are no dangers of biotechnology?
Oh, there are certainly risks to using biotech to alter men and women. Every profound technology has its share of risks and side effects. Cars are great for getting around but they produce smog and traffic accidents. The internet is a fantastic communication medium but can be used to transmit child pornography. Antibiotics cure disease but also breed antibiotic resistance and contributed quite a bit to the population explosion of the last century.

Biotech enhancement will be no different. It'll bring many goods and some ills. Society will have to wrestle with the problems these technologies cause and find solutions. But the alternative – to prohibit these technologies – just isn't viable. Just as we saw in Prohibition or in the War on Drugs, if you make something people want illegal, you don't stop them from getting it. You merely drive up costs, decrease safety, and push the activity into the criminal realm. And people do want to be smarter, healthier, longer lived, better looking, and so on.. You can see if in the tens of billions spent on sports supplements, on herbal products, and on plastic surgery. You can see it even more dramatically in how parents invest in their children – Montessori schools, music lessons, college tuition – people have this innate urge to do the best they can for themselves and their offspring.

One of the central points of More Than Human is that if you let those individuals and families make their own decisions – informed decisions – then there's good reason to believe it'll improve the lot of society. But if you try to prohibit these technologies, you end up creating more problems than you solve.

You've worked at Microsoft on some widely used pieces of software – Microsoft Outlook, Internet Explorer, MSN Search. How do those relate to your book?
The common thread is this notion of enhancing and empowering people. Computers are tools that we've invented that increase our ability to store information, to learn, to communicate, and so on. In many ways I view the software I've worked on as very similar to the kinds of technologies covered in More Than Human. It's just that my software runs outside of my body – for now.
Who are your favorite authors and why?
I love books that synthesize what seem to be very discrete ideas into a single theory or point of view. One of my all time favorite books is Kevin Kelly's Out of Control , where he finds the parallels between weather, flocks of birds, ecologies, and all these other complex network systems. Another favorite is Robert Wright's Non-Zero. There are quite a few other popular science authors I admire – Steven Johnson, philosopher Danniel Dennet, Matt Ridley, Stephen Pinker.

In the science fiction realm I like rich, complex stories with both a grand scope and plausible science. Dan Simmon's Hyperion books are classics to me. I love anything by Greg Egan, Ian Banks, David Brin, or Greg Bear.

Quick Facts from More Than Human

Genetic Enhancements and Reproduction

1. Researchers have used genetic engineering techniques to create mice that are super strong, super smart, and live nearly twice as long as normal mice.
2. All of the genes changed in these mice are carried by humans, too – suggesting that the same techniques could enhance human abilities.
3. Almost 10,000 human adults have already had their genes altered through gene therapy techniques used to treat genetic diseases.
4. A Johns Hopkins poll in 2002 found that 20% of Americans approved of the use of genetic techniques to create desirable traits in children – up from only 10% in 1994.
5. Over 2 million babies have been born after being conceived in a test tube through in-vitro fertilization.
6. In the US, 1 in every 100 babies born is conceived through this method.
7. Parents have already used pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to have babies less likely to have cancer or Alzheimer's disease, or more likely to provide a genetic match for a sibling needing an organ transplant.

1. 70,000 deaf people have had their hearing restored through electrodes implanted in their auditory nerves.
2. Another 40,000 people have had electrodes implanted in their brains to control Parkinson's disease.
3. A handful of paralyzed men and women have electrodes in their brains which allow them to control computers or robot arms just by thinking about it.
4. Over a dozen research groups are testing electronic implants that can restore sight to the blind, by sending visual signals into the optic nerve or the visual cortex.
5. The US military is spending millions of dollars researching techniques that could allow pilots to control their planes by thinking about it, or allow soldiers to communicate directly to each other through thought.

Unless otherwise stated, this interview was conducted at the time the book was first published, and is reproduced with permission of the publisher. This interview may not be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the copyright holder.