Bioconservative

So what's all that got to do with transhumanism, and why do I think that transhumanists are actually more bioconservative than their opponents?

I will argue that Pet Sematary and The Tommyknockers can fruitfully be read as bioconservative fables, thematic enactments of the kind of worst-case scenarios postulated by theorists such as Bill McKibben, Leon Kass, and Francis Fukuyama.

We can emphasize the idea that enhancement need not undermine bioconservative values by imagining a type of enhancement that promotes these values.

Among the technologies bioconservatives frequently deride are genetic modification of both plants and animals, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, all forms of cloning and radical life extension.

The best way to protect the disadvantaged from the inequalities that bioconservatives like McKibben believe will follow from enhancement is not te prevent enhancement, but to ensure that the social institutions we use to distribute enhancement technologies work to protect the least well off and to provide everyone with a fair go.

In contrast, a bioconservative might stipulate the definition of an existential risk as “one that either (a) threatens the extinction of Homo sapiens—that is, through total annihilation or the creation of a replacement posthuman population—or (b) causes a permanent and drastic reduction in our quality of life."