Francis Fukuyama thinks that biotechnology needs to be regulated so that scientists don't make some fundamental change to the human essence. I just finished reading The Age of Spiritual Machines, in which Ray Kurzweil predicts humans will begin transferring their consciousnesses into machines by the end of the century, after making heavy use of biotech implants. According to another article I read in Scientific American (The Fate of Life in the Universe, November 1999; by Krauss, Starkman), this is the only way that organisms can continue to exist. The problem is that in an infinitely expanding universe, matter density is constantly declining. At some point (probably more than 100 trillion years away, when all the stars are dead), intelligent beings won't be able to gather enough resources to stay alive. The only consciousnesses that will survive are those that exist in very low-power machines that spend eons in hibernation to conserve resources. So, if we're going to have to make fundamental changes to human nature to survive past 100 trillion years anyway, what's the point in resisting biotech now? 😉