How effective can pharmacological or genetic human enhancement be?
The critics and advocates of human enhancement disagree as to the benefits but both camps seemingly agree that human enhancement will be dramatically effective. Farah and colleagues, for example, recently wrote: ‘Humanity’s ability to alter its own brain function might well shape history as powerfully as the development of metallurgy in the Iron Age [or] mechanization in the Industrial Revolution’ (Farah et al 2004). Much excitement was generated when researchers reported improved memory and learning ability in two strains of genetically modified mice by altering a piece of the brain called the hippocampus (Farah et al 2004; Tang et al 1999; Manabe et al 1998). Given that the hippocampus is critical to human memory as well as to mouse memory, the implication is that manipulations of human hippocampal function will improve human memory. But there are important differences between memory and abstract knowledge. Knowledge for humans does not come from simple interactions with the environm
