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Abstract
Transhumanism promotes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and evaluating the opportunities for enhancing the human condition and the human organism opened up by the advancement of technology. Transhumanists hope that by reasonable use of science, technology, and other rational means, humans shall eventually become post-human, beings with vastly greater capacities than present human beings have. Risks must be taken very seriously, as thoughtful transhumanists fully acknowledge. If the mode of being of a post-human being is radically different from that of a human being, then it may be doubted whether a post-human being could be the same person as a human being. Objections that are based on the idea that there is something inherently wrong of morally suspect in using science to manipulate human nature are regarded by transhumanists as wrongheaded. One important kind of externality in germ-line enhancements is their effects on social equality. The potential for everlasting consequences, including ones which cannot be reliably forecasted, in itself constitutes no reason to oppose genetic intervention.