Last word: imagining the future

H. G. Wells warned, in 1895, not to allow economic injustices to become to so acute that they ultimately transform human biology. Wells's warn- ing is all the more pertinent today as society contemplates the use of biotechnolo- gies to manipulate or "enhance" the human genome. I n his 1895 novel The Time Machine, H. G. Wells has the reader fol- low a Time Traveller to a remote future world where the human race has become divided into two separate species. The Eloi are a gentle, herbivorous people who inhabit the park-like surface of the planet. Dwell- ing beneath them, in a dark subterranean world, are the Morlocks, a grotesque, mole-like species, who appear to maintain the planet's me- chanical life support systems and who, as their price for this service, occa- sionally capture and devour an Eloi. Wells's two species are not the result of genetic engineering. They seem to have evolved naturally over time—it is not clear whether by Lamarck- ian or Darwinian mechanisms—from the extreme class divisions of nine- teenth century British society. But Wells's warning to his contemporaries is clear: Do not allow economic injustices to become to so acute that they ultimately transform human biology. It is a warning that remains appli- cable in the present era of genetic engineering. Ronald Lindsay (2005) tells us not to worry. Among other things, he argues that if the human species were to divide into Eloi and Morlocks, the circumstances of justice, as described by Hume and Rawls, might no longer apply. This could be true if the unenhanced are possessed of a "marked inferiority" of body and mind. In that case, the two species would be as human beings are to animals. Although duties of compassion or kindness might apply—we think it desirable to prevent animal suffering—