The problem with being a prophet is that, all too often, no one understands that you're a prophet until it's too late. No one believes you when the predicted doom is far off on the horizon. They treat you like an alarmist fool right up until the end. The predicted doom then occurs. Everyone sees that you were right after all—just in time to make no difference.

So it was with C. S. Lewis' sounding of the prophetic alarm in The Abolition of Man, published in 1943 in the midst of World War II. The alarm was not about the war itself, but about the ominous tendencies of technology, or more properly, a particular kind of Faustian technological spirit. Let us allow the prophet to speak for himself, and then we'll examine the results of our not heeding his warning.

"In what sense is Man the possessor of increasing power over Nature?" asks Lewis. Lewis calls our attention to one particularly important sense, our increasing power over human nature. The result of increasing our power over human nature is ominous: "what we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument." Inherent in the modern attempt to fully master nature by ever-increasing technological power is the irresistible temptation to use our mastery of nature upon human nature itself. If we can change nature to suit our needs and desires, why not change human nature to suit our needs and desires? But here's the rub. While such power is often sold as benefiting everyone, it soon falls to the hands of a very few to use it upon everyone else.

Lewis knew the ambitions of the eugenicists of his day, who had a great desire to remold the future through remolding human beings. Of course, at the time of Lewis' writing, the technology of manipulation was, relative to ours today, quite primitive. The science of human reconstruction was therefore largely, as yet, science fiction. Lewis wanted to sound the warning before it became science fact. He knew the dark aspects of human nature well enough to prophesy that treating human beings as objects of applied technology would end in a new kind of tyranny:

"Man's conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men….Each new power won by man is a power over man as well….

The final stage is come when Man by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology, has obtained full control over himself. Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man."

Hence the title of his book, The Abolition of Man. It might well be called a meditation on the kind of paving stones laid down by good intentions, and where they all too invariably lead. That is, Lewis understood more than anyone else that this drive to master human nature would be undertaken in the name of humanity, by those who wanted so desperately to fix our problems that they were willing to violate our nature, especially our moral nature, to do it. For Lewis, this was the fateful step that takes us to the abolition of man. For once we treat human nature as mere clay, and take upon ourselves the role of master potter, there is no limit to what we can or will do.

Now what about those monkeys? The four sibling macaque monkey babies were created from three parents: sperm from the father, DNA from one female, an egg cell from another female. Of course, the procedure will soon be used on human beings. The reason given is not "We just wanted to see if we could do it."  Rather, the procedure is touted as a way to circumvent genetic diseases latent in the mother's genes. It is all made possible by the reproductive technology, in vitro fertilization (IVF), which was originally developed as a way to help married couples to have babies who could not do so naturally.

So what's the problem? It is all contained, very nicely, in three consecutive sentences in one of the newspaper reports. "Scientists have produced four baby monkeys who each have three biological parents. They used an IVF procedure designed to stop the spread of incurable inherited diseases. Scientists believe the breakthrough could lead to the first genetically engineered children within a few years."

Note how easily we move from a procedure "designed" to fix a particular problem (which we all agree is bad), to an open-ended promise to use the procedure for any goal whatsoever (independent of any moral constraint) through genetic engineering. We move from a very restricted eugenic goal, to an open-ended eugenic invitation to engineer the future of humanity.

Lewis saw precisely this pattern already nascent in contraception, and used it to illustrate how mastery of some aspect of human nature leads to a kind of tyranny of the present generation over all future generations. "By contraception," asserted Lewis, "all possible future generations are the patients or subjects of a power wielded by those already alive. By contraception simply, they are denied existence; by contraception used as a means of selective breeding, they are, without their concurring voice, made to be what one generation, for its own reasons, may choose to prefer. From this point of view, what we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument."

Lewis' reasoning applies all too clearly to this new touted IVF procedure. A perceived good (avoiding a genetic disease) is brought about through a particular manipulation of our nature (an artificial reproductive procedure) in violation of a moral standard (the sexual exclusiveness of the natural union of one man and one woman in marriage), and opens up the possibility of unlimited genetic engineering. And so, by this new procedure "used as a means of selective breeding," future generations are "without their concurring voice, made to be what one generation, for its own reasons, may choose to prefer." 

To say that this is merely being an alarmist implies that genetic engineering will occur with moral limits and be used solely for moral purposes. But that is to forget three related things. First of all, the procedure, when it applied to human beings, occurs precisely through the violation of a moral limit. What meaning can adultery have, once we accept the procedure as ethical? If this moral limit may be set aside, what moral limit is safe?

Second, the historical pattern of such things always moves from the serious to the trivial. Abortion gained acceptance as applied to cases of rape, incest, severe deformity, and direct threats to the life of the mother if the baby were carried to term. It is now legal for the most trivial reasons, including merely changing one's mind or not liking the sex of the conceived child. What assurance could we possibly have that genetic engineering wouldn't be used in the service of the most trivial fashions and fads, the most reprehensibly selfish whims, or the most extraordinary utopian political dreams? Who can foresee what may become of man through his abolition and reconstruction?

Third, technological power is expensive. The more expensive medical technology is, the more its use will be defined by those industries that fund its advance and the more likely it is that government will become directly involved in the attempt to pay for its application to citizens (who cannot possibly pay for it themselves). The genetically engineered future then falls to a very few to define. We can well imagine the day that government supplied health insurance, as steered by the visions of a few scientists and social planners, will determine what that future may be.

Successful Experiment Raises the Moral Question of Germline Modification

The prospect of a human baby with three biological parents has moved closer after scientists created monkeys using a technique that one day could stop children from inheriting severe genetic diseases.

The birth of four healthy macaque monkeys in the US offers the strongest evidence yet that DNA can be transplanted safely from one egg to another to correct genetic defects that damage health.

The successful experiment in a close human relative suggests that it should be possible within a few years to use the method to help women who carry genetic disorders to avoid passing them to their children.

It should allow scientists to replace faulty “cellular batteries” called mitochondria, which affect about 1 in 6,500 births. While most mitochondria defects have mild effects, some can trigger severe brain, heart, muscle and liver conditions, as well as cancer, diabetes, blindness and deafness.

The technique is controversial, however, because the children it creates would inherit genetic material from three parents. The mother and father would contribute most of their child’s DNA but a small amount would come from a second woman donating healthy mitochondria.

Such children would be the first produced by germline genetic engineering, in which genes introduced by artificial means would be passed to successive generations.

Times Online

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6811080.ece

G. K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis Foresaw the Threat of Germline Modification as a Direct Result of the Reductionism Inherent in Radical Scientific Materialism

Chesterton, by taking the secular approach more seriously than the secularists, made it collapse into absurdity. But not everyone was serious enough to laugh with him. Another generation passed, the effects of reductionism proceeded apace, and by mid-century the farsighted had begun to wonder whether our insistence on seeing man as merely an animal might become so addictive that we would loose the ability to function as more. If the human differentia came, as Chesterton argued, from God, they could hardly be abolished. But still, we could try, and in trying do a great deal of damage. So we move, in an ironic procession of titles, from Chesterton's The Everlasting Man to Lewis' The Abolition of Man, a book in which he charts the form those reductionistic efforts were taking by mid century.

christians.org

http://www.christians.org/manmyth/man03.html

The Abolition of Man: Reflections on Reductionism with Special Reference to Eugenics

"G.K. Chesterton, a formative influence upon Lewis, observed that:

when once one begins to think of man as a shifting and alterable thing, it is always easy for the strong and crafty to twist him into new shapes for all kinds of unnatural purposes... It is a very well-grounded guess that whatever is done swiftly and systematically will mostly be done by a successful class and almost solely in their interests. It has therefore a vision of inhuman hybrids and half-human experiments much in the style of Mr. Wells’s “Island of Dr. Moreau.” ... Whatever wild image one employs it cannot keep pace with the panic of the human fancy, when once it supposes that the fixed type called man could be changed... That is the nightmare with which the mere notion of adaption threatens us. This is the nightmare that is not so very far from the reality. It will be said that not the wildest evolutionist really asks that we should become in any way unhuman... but this is exactly what not merely the wildest evolutionists urge, but some of the tamest evolutionists...[xliv]

Gregory Stock is a tame evolutionist.[xlv] His book, Redesigning Humans—choosing our children’s genes, is a significant contribution to the contemporary bioethical debate that advocates ‘choosing our children’s genes’ in order to design future generations. Stock argues that this practice is inevitable and that we should embrace it with optimism, and quotes a “letter to Mother Nature” from The Extropians

truly we are grateful for what you have made us. No doubt you did the best you could. However, with all due respect, we must say that you have in many ways done a poor job with the human constitution... We have decided it is time to amend the human constitution... Over the coming decades we will pursue a series of changes to our own constitution... We will no longer tolerate the tyranny of aging and death... We will expand our perceptual range... improve out neural organization and capacity... reshape our motivational patterns and emotional responses... take charge over our genetic programming and achieve mastery over our biological and neurological processes.[xlvi]"

Peter Williams

http://www.arn.org/docs/williams/pw_abolitionofman.htm

C.S. Lewis' Imaginary Technology Based Social Planning Agency: N.I.C.E. National Institutes of Coordinated Experiments Predates Real World U.K. Policy Group: N.I.C.E. National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence

The U.K.'s notorious rationing board, N.I.C.E. (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence), is urging hospitals to adopt a protocol for end-of-life-care that
instructs doctors to put patients thought to be terminal into a drug-induced coma after which food and fluids are withdrawn until the patient dies. The notion of a committee of people drafting policy that will be imposed on the masses has an eerie ring of familiarity to those who know of C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy and his novel, That Hideous Strength. Long before the U.K. established N.I.C.E., Lewis imagined an agency with the same acronym: N.I.C.E. (National Institute of Coordinated Experiments) as emblematic of the threat of scientific reductionism. Phillip Johnson notes Lewis' prescience evidenced in That Hideous Strength in his First Things review.

"Most futuristic novels seem out–of–date after a decade or two, but That Hideous Strength is more timely today than when the book was published in 1945. On the day I began to reread the book for this essay, the press reported that a British government agency called the Human Fertilization and Embryological Authority (HFEA) is sounding out public opinion about the use of Pre–implanatation Genetic Diagnosis, which will allow parents to screen their embryos for genetic defects. Critics believe that the HFEA has already decided to go full steam ahead with the procedure, and they don’t believe the Authority’s assurances that this technique (and others to follow) will be used only to screen for genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis and not to produce 'designer babies.'"

"In C. S. Lewis’ novel, the technological super–agency is the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments (NICE), which is empowered to solve all sorts of social and genetic problems without being bothered by 'red tape.' Mark and Jane Studdock are a young childless academic couple at Bracton College, whose faculty’s Progressive Element is willing to sell its woods and its soul to entice the NICE. Mark and Jane’s marriage is unhappy because, like most modern people, they see marriage as a contract for mutual advantage rather than as a sacred union. Mark’s consuming desire doesn’t even involve Jane. He wants to be a big shot, a member of the 'inner ring' first at his college and then at the NICE. He gets his chance because he is good at writing propaganda.

The NICE turns out to be demonic in inspiration, and intends to impose upon England a regime of ruthless social engineering that Joseph Stalin would have admired. The apparent 'Head' at the NICE’s mansion at Belbury is the head of a guillotined murderer, kept alive with advanced life support systems, but this gruesome object is merely the conduit for orders from the dark powers. Belbury’s human leaders recruit and flatter Mark, but the human resource they really want is Jane. She is a seer, whose visions involve the return to life of the magician Merlin, long entombed under Bracton Wood. If Belbury can unite its materialist magic with Merlin’s old–fashioned kind, it can achieve its dream of freeing the mind from messy organic life. 'In us organic life has produced Mind. It has done its work. After that we want no more of it.'"

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/c-s-lewisthat-hideous-strength-1945-38

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