Right/Wrong

INTRODUCTION: WHY IS ETHICS SUDDENLY WHITE-HOT, FRONT-BURNER? 1
1 REDESIGNING HUMANS 13
The Ethics of New Sex 13
Radically Redesigning Humans 30
Renovating Our Brains? 42
Pathologically Sick . . . and Imprisoned 48
2 EXPONENTIAL TECHNOLOGIES: TODAY’S ETHICAL QUICKSAND 57
So . . . You Warmed Up the Planet Just a Touch? 57
Renewing Capitalism’s License? 65
You Used Do WHAT to Animals?! 79
Deliberate Extinctions: Gene Drives 84
Technology, Truthiness, and the Demise of Institutions 89
3 CAUGHT ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY 99
Just Who Is Supposed to Teach Us RIGHT and WRONG? 100
More Recent Ethical Quicksand: LGBTQIA 118
Endangered and Extinct Religions 125
4 THE IMMORTALITY OF TODAY’S MISTAKES 139
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google Are Electronic Tattoos 139
And Then There Are Dating Sites . . . 151
5 WHY DON’T WE FIX IT? 159
Baumol’s Cost Disease 160
Mass Incarceration 174
Everything’s Disposable . . . 180
6 DEAD WRONG: WE STILL DO IT; WE WILL BE JUDGED 185
Papers, Borders, and Ethics 185
War Profiteering 194
Can Being Precautionary Kill? 199
7 CONCLUSION? 209
Ethics 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 . . . 209
POSTSCRIPT: GAME CHANGERS 223
Universal Ethics? China . . . 223
Artificial Intelligence 227
Pandemics Have a Way of Focusing Your Ethics, Don’t They? 234
SETI: First Contact 242
Acknowledgments 247
Notes 249
Index 279

Juan Enriquez is the author of As the Future Catches You, Evolving Ourselves, and other books. A frequent speaker at TED and other conferences, he has contributed to such publications as Harvard Business Review and Foreign Policy. He is the Director of Excel Venture Management, a life sciences venture capital firm.