Our friend Brian Tokar writes:

This is all eerily reminiscent of the ravings of Princeton biologist and libertarian ideologue Lee Silver: his 1997 book Remaking Eden advocates species bifurcation among humans based on 'free market' genetic manipulations, and does it all in a creepily seductive sci-fi writing style. Here's what Marcy Darnovsky of the Center for Genetics & Society (Oakland, CA) wrote about Silver in her chapter in my book Redesigning Life? (Zed, 2001):

Listen to the words of Lee Silver, one of the key players in the pro-germline engineering camp. Silver is a molecular geneticist and developmental biologist at Princeton University, and an unabashed promoter of consumer-driven "reprogenetic" technologies. After a few centuries of these practices, he believes, humanity will bifurcate into genetic ubermenschen and untermenschen--and not long thereafter into different species. Here is Silver's prediction for the year 2350:

"The GenRich--who account for 10 percent of the American population--all carry synthetic genes. Genes that were created in the laboratory.... The GenRich are a modern-day hereditary class of genetic aristocrats.... All aspects of the economy, the media, the entertainment industry, and the knowledge industry are controlled by members of the GenRich class."

How do the other 90 percent live? Silver is quite blunt on this point as well: "Naturals work as low-paid service providers or as laborers."

That rich and poor already live in biologically disparate worlds can be argued on the basis of any number of statistical measures: life expectancy, infant mortality, access to health care. Of course, medical resources and social priorities could be assigned to narrowing those gaps. But if the promoters of designer babies and human clones have their way, precious medical talent and funds will be devoted instead to a technically dubious project whose success will be measured by the extent to which it can inscribe inequality onto the human genome. The human genetic technologies will then serve to legitimize and expand injustice, to create a kind of inequity new in human history, and to make obsolete even rhetorical gestures toward equality. Silver writes:

"There is still some intermarriage as well as sexual intermingling between a few GenRich individuals and Naturals. But... as time passes, the mixing of the classes will become less and less frequent for reasons of both environment and genetics... If the accumulation of genetic knowledge and advances in genetic enhancement technology continue...the GenRich class and the Natural class will become the GenRich humans and the Natural humans--entirely separate species with no ability to cross-breed, and with as much romantic interest in each other as a current human would have for a chimpanzee."

Silver understands that such scenarios are disconcerting. He counsels realism: that is, he celebrates the free reign of the market and perpetuates the myth that private choices have no public consequences:

"Anyone who accepts the right of affluent parents to provide their children with an expensive private school education cannot use 'unfairness' as a reason for rejecting the use of reprogenetic technologies... There is no doubt about it...whether we like it or not, the global marketplace will reign supreme."

When I first read Silver's book, I imagined that these sorts of bizarre prognostications must be the musings of an academic researcher indulging in mad-scientist mode. I soon learned differently. They are not ravings from the margins of modern science, but emanations from its prestigious and respected core. Silver vividly and accurately represents the techno-eugenic vision, a horrifyingly grandiose ideology shared by a disturbing number of Nobel laureate scientists and other influential professionals. . .