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When I interviewed Leon Kass for Christianity Today on his appointment to chair the President's Council on Bioethics back in 2002, I asked why he got into bioethics. One reason he gave was a short and stunning essay by C. S. Lewis.

As the world awaits the Narnia movie, and Lewis's extraordinary work receives the acclaim of a fresh generation, nothing demonstrates his genius like that little essay with the strange title, The Abolition of Man. It runs to just over a dozen pages. Not only are they the most profound pages he ever wrote, they may also be the most significant pages written by any writer of the 20th century. They are certainly the most relevant to the technological challenges of the 21st century.

The Abolition of Man is readable, but its argument is tightly packed. It is spotted with references to classic literature, but it is hardly written from an ivory tower. Lewis was writing—and, more importantly, thinking—in wartime. His examples of technology include Nazi propaganda on the radio and advanced weapons of war, as well as early biotechnologies such as contraception and—looking ahead—the manipulation of human genes. And he was not unaware of the terrible story of eugenics that was even then coming to its climax in the bestial "science" of the death camps.

Lewis's key idea is that technology gives us power, power to do good or to do evil and modern technologies give us more and more power. But such power is not simply "power over nature," as we tend to say. It is the power some people exercise over other people, with "nature" as their instrument.

Lewis foresees that the result of the use and abuse of our "power over nature" could be the end of human nature itself. Decades later, others saw that same truth, including Bill Joy, the techie pioneer who emerged as a secular prophet in our time with his April 2000 essay in Wired magazine "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" (another piece of essential reading for anyone interested in 21st century technology).

It would have been interesting to get Bill Joy and C. S. Lewis in a room together and listen to the conversation (no doubt over a beer, as was Lewis' way). Lewis' vision is remarkable, penetrating from the darkest days of the mid-20th century to an agenda that is only now emerging in the 21st. Bill Joy would perhaps be taken aback, but I don't think Lewis would be surprised by Joy.

In vitro under the microscope
We've all grown rather used to "in vitro fertilization," despite the fact that it remains a somewhat risky, often ineffective, and ethically uncertain way to make babies. In a refreshing look at one of its many problems, The New York Times zeroes in on the relationships that get hidden when gametes are used like legos:

Like most anonymous sperm donors, Donor 150 of the California Cryobank will probably never meet any of the offspring he fathered through sperm bank donations. There are at least four, according to the bank's records, and perhaps many more, since the dozens of women who have bought Donor 150's sperm are not required to report when they have a baby. But two of his genetic daughters, born to different mothers and living in different states, have been e-mailing and talking on the phone regularly since learning of each other's existence last summer. They plan to meet over Thanksgiving.

This heart-warming demonstration of the power of human genes has been made possible—as we might have guessed—through the internet! Just as you can buy sperm from websites, the web is bringing siblings together by matching up kids with fathers like Donor 150. "The girls, Danielle Pagano, 16, and JoEllen Marsh, 15, connected through the Donor Sibling Registry, a Web site that is helping to open a new chapter in the oldest form of assisted reproductive technology. The three-year-old site allows parents and offspring to enter their contact information and search for others by sperm bank and donor number. 'The first time we were on the phone, it was awkward,' Danielle said. 'I was like, "We'll get over it," and she said, "Yeah, we're sisters." It was so weird to hear her say that. It was cool.'"

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November (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49