Genome editing might be the most important scientific invention of the beginning of the 21st century (Knoepffler/Schipanski/Sorgner 2007). Selecting a fertilized egg after IVF and PGD is a biotechnological option already. We can have children with three biological parents. Biobags enable the development of unborn lambs, which show the likelihood of artificial human wombs being created. Japan allows human– animal hybrids to be born. The possibilities of modifying humans and other animals by means of gene technologies are enormous. Yet, many of the procedures which are technically feasible are still legally forbidden. The decisive breakthroughs concerning CRISPR occurred only in 2012. The human genome was fully deciphered in 2003.

Decisive developments in gene technologies have happened at the beginning of the 21st century. They have the potential to enable us to enhance evolution. We can modify ourselves and actively realize specific traits. We might even be able to pass on some of these traits to our offspring. Yet there is an enormous hesitation to embrace these technologies in continental Europe. Even though there are fewer hesitations in the Anglo-American and the Eastern-Asian world, there is still widely shared uncertainty concerning the moral legitimacy of the great variety of technologies and associated possibilities.

It can be expected that developments in the field of gene technologies will accelerate further if the use of big data digital analysis concerning correlations between genes and traits is developed further. In the US, private companies are trying to promote this goal; for example, 23andme with its over 5 million clients. In Estonia, the government pays for gene analysis if the result is shared with the government. In Kuwait for a certain time period it was mandatory for all residents and visitors to submit samples of their DNA.

Gene analysis is the prerequisite for gene technologies, and I addressed various issues concerning digitalization and gene analysis in Chapter 2. Here, I will focus on the question how to deal morally with gene technologies. I will present a non-utopian Nietzschean transhumanism, which embraces a radically pluralistic concept of the good, and I will progress as follows.

Over a period of 20 years, family genetic genealogy, through the purchase of consumer ancestry testing kits, has been one of the fastest growing family activities of this generation. Citing data from the International Society of Genetic Genealogy, the Washington Post reported in 2017 that eight million people worldwide were involved with recreational genomics. It is estimated that by 2019 about 25 million people had signed up for a DNA ancestry test offered by one of the dozens of companies that have entered this marketplace. The kits are sent to a person’s home with return packaging that includes a reservoir for depositing saliva or swabs for sampling cheek cells. The MIT Technology Review predicted that by 2021 there would be 100 million consumers of ancestry DNA services.

Most human genetic diversity is found within populations rather than between populations. Scientists have reported that any two individuals within a particular population are as different genetically as any two people selected from any two populations in the world. Given this finding, how can science use a small percentage of genetic diversity between populations as markers of ancestral origins?

Much of recreational DNA ancestry offers consumers a long reach into the history of their descent by discovering which biogeographical population most closely matches their DNA profiles. The science and DNA analytics provide probability estimates that their DNA markers (ancestry informative markers, or AIMs) are most likely from a particular continent or even a specific country. But DNA ancestry tests have applications that go well beyond recreational genealogy. Even prior to the growth of this sector of direct-to-consumer testing, DNA was used to determine paternity and to establish identity in criminal investigations. An important and largely unintended application of ancestry DNA testing has been the uncovering of family secrets: “Why does my father look so different from his parents?” or “Why are my mother’s skin tones so much darker than those of her parents?”

In this chapter I analyse the most important ethical issues concerning transhumanism. Michael Sandel argues that gene modification and gene selections need to be rejected. However, his main reason is not that they are morally wrong, but that they imply vicious character traits. Parents who employ these technologies do not possess the central parental virtue, namely that of unconditional love. I will argue in the first section of this chapter why neither do I share Sandel's communitarianism nor is it the case that his conclusion is a necessary one, given his own premises. Instead, it is more plausible to hold that using gene technologies can demonstrate a parental virtue.

In all of the aforementioned arguments, the question of the good life is a central one. Is any general judgement concerning the good life possible in a naturalist world, a world without a personal God? Is anything permissible, is nothing forbidden, or can anything be said concerning the good life, given these circumstances? There are various transhumanist takes on this issue. In the second section I will show that all the widely used ways of demonstrating transhumanism in the public media are implausible. Superman on Viagra, or Wonderwoman with Botox, is not what all transhumanists subscribe to as a central goal, and not what they should subscribe to either, given their own initial premises. I show why a radically pluralist concept of the good is more plausible. No non-formal judgement concerning the good is plausible.

Section three will be dedicated to the question of what counts as morally right from a transhumanist perspective. Even though any concept of the right is regarded as fictive, this does not imply that it is arbitrary. We do have criteria for evaluating moralities. These criteria are historically and culturally embedded, but this does not mean that they are meaningless. They are meaningful for our lives. Here, I will present central aspects of what a non-anthropocentric, a non-essentialist, and a non-dualistic concept of personhood would have to consider. Thereby, I also distance myself from Singer's suggestion and present a more inclusive alternative.

This book on ‘We Have Always Been Cyborgs’ is structured as follows. Chapter 1 will be a general introduction to transhumanism. I will critically analyse the wide range of digital developments relevant for transhumanism in Chapter 2, ‘Silicon-based Transhumanism’; for example, mind uploading and cyborgization. In Chapter 3, ‘On a Carbon-based Transhumanism’, my focus will be on the wide range of gene technologies which are central for transhumanism, that is, (1) Nietzsche and recent debates on transhumanism and eugenics; (2) critical reflections on moral bioenhancement; (3) gene modification; (4) gene selection after in vitro fertilization (IVF) and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). In Chapter 4 the main ethical discussions concerning transhumanism will be summarized and I will present my own fictive ethical stance, that is, (1) virtue ethics; (2) the question of the good life; (3) personhood and what is morally right; (4) transhumanism and utopia; (5) transhumanism, immortality and the meaning of life. By this means my key thought that we have always been cyborgs in the continual process of self-overcoming, will unfold itself in various dimensions. To begin with, however, an informed understanding of transhumanism needs to be presented.

Transhumanism is the ‘world's most dangerous idea’. This is at least Francis Fukuyama's judgement concerning this cultural and philosophical movement, which he stated in the magazine Foreign Policy (Fukuyama 2004, 42– 43). Transhumanism is a cultural movement which affirms the use of techniques to increase the likelihood that human beings manage to transcend the boundaries of their current existence. It is in our interest to take evolution into our own hands. Thereby, we will increase the likelihood of our living a good life as well as that of not becoming extinct.

Transhumanism has slowly increased in significance since 1951, when the term was first coined by Julian Huxley in his article ‘Knowledge, Morality, and Destiny’. Then, he described transhumanism as follows: ‘Such a broad philosophy might perhaps best be called, not Humanism, because that has certain unsatisfactory connotations, but Transhumanism. It is the idea of humanity attempting to overcome its limitations and to arrive at fuller fruition; it is the realization that both individual and social developments are processes of self-transformation’ (Huxley 1951, 139). I regard this formulation still as the best possible definition of transhumanism.

As we noted previously, the science behind DNA ancestry requires that one compares the unique genetic markers on the consumer’s DNA sample with the frequency of those markers in reference panels representing different regions of the world. When the field of DNA ancestry began, it was a scientific project that involved the search for biogeographical DNA. Scientists could use changes in the human genome to determine how ancient populations moved around the globe. The further populations moved across the globe and the more time elapsed (many thousands of years), the greater the number of mutations or genetic variants. Genetic ancestry began with a half-dozen distinct continental regions and with markers called hypervariable microsatellites, or short tandem repeats (STRs) of DNA, 2–6 base pairs in length. These microsatellites were considered ideal at the time because they had a high heterozygosity, which means two different alleles at a site. A site that has an AA is homozygous, whereas one that has AG is heterozygous. The more diverse the alleles, the greater the chance of distinguishing allele frequencies among populations. Initially, scientists used changes in the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and the paternally inherited Y chromosome. That changed when autosomal markers were chosen for ancestry analysis.

In order to locate people’s ancestry to a region of the world through their DNA, the markers on their DNA sample have to be compared to population reference panels for the regions that form part of the comparison group. These ancestry inference methods have served medical research, forensic science, and commercial popular genealogical interests. According to Santo et al., the reliability of any ancestry inference depends on the existence of reliable population reference databases. Many researchers and ancestry DNA companies utilize different sources for population data on different countries. For example, ALFRED is an allele frequency database supported by the Yale Center for Medical Informatics, which has genomic data from population samples across the globe. You can enter the name of a country or population group, such as Siberian Yupik (the sample was collected from unrelated Siberian Yupiks from northeastern Siberia, Russia) and it will provide information on the number of people (29) and/or chromosomes sampled (58).

The criminal justice system began using DNA to solve crimes in the 1980s, after a geneticist from the University of Leicester in the UK developed a method for sequencing certain segments of chromosomal DNA. Those segments, called short tandem repeats (STRs), were expressed differently in different people, in contrast to the 99.9 percent of our DNA that is the same, and thus could be used to establish an indicator of personal identity (see Chapter 1).

As a recreational activity, with no serious consequences at stake, it barely matters whether the results consumers receive from their DNA ancestry tests accurately represent the percentages of their ancestry from different geographical regions. Given that there are no international standards for such testing, unlike genetic disease tests, it is not surprising that the results from different ancestry testing companies vary. As noted in Chapter 4, there are several stages in the analysis of a person’s saliva or cheek swabs where the criteria, reference frames, or analytics can vary among companies, yielding different outcomes.

When you purchase a DNA ancestry service you are sent a kit containing instructions for submitting a DNA sample. Most companies provide a plastic tube, which they ask the test-taker to fill with saliva or cheek swabs, seal, and return. When the company receives your DNA test sample it is processed for analysis. As noted previously, the vast amount of your genome does not distinguish you from other individuals. Therefore, your genome is broken down into segments of DNA that contain the alleles of interest, rather than it being fully sequenced. Here is how AncestryDNA describes the processing of the DNA samples it receives from customers:

By this point in the book, we have explored multiple perspectives of DNA ancestry testing, beginning with its commercial success as a consumer recreational activity, its serious scientific foundations in population genetics, its applications in criminal investigations, and its social and ethical consequences in searching for one’s identity.