The topic this afternoon is for the first time in our meetings the subject of human nature and human nature in the age of biotechnology. The subject crops up now and then in our conversations and is very often just below the surface as one talks about various kinds of technical innovations which at least some people claim might produce certain kinds of changes in human nature.

And in these kinds of conversations very quickly one gets into questions of whether there is such a thing as human nature, whether there is something fixed and hard wired, or whether it's primarily plastic, or whether, as is frequently said, it is the course of the essence of human nature to change human nature, and on and on and on.