Bill McKibben's brave new book, Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age explores (excerpt) how human genetic technologies will soon give scientists the ability to re-engineer our children, undermining our common humanity, and leading to a 'posthuman' future.

The human germ-line engineering debate continues to capture the popular imagination, sitting at the core of bioethics debates, while neurotechnology quickly slips into existence.

It is my firm belief that neurotechnology's ability to provide tools that can temporarily influence human emotional, cognitive and sensory states via neuroceuticals will have more profound implications for humanity, in a much nearer time frame, than genetic engineering for several reasons:

• Regulation and distribution systems are in place:  The FDA and pharmaceutical development and distribution systems are already globally refined, tested and trusted processes
  
• Social acceptance is proven: Humans are already using early forms of neuroceuticals on a vast scale.  For example, 17% of the US white-collar work force is currently using anti-depressants. 

Humans will perform germ-line engineering on other organisms on vast scale, but human germ-line engineering won't become widely accepted until significant experimentation with less permanent tools helps people learn exactly what traits they would want their progeny to exhibit. 

Moreover, as neurotechnology becomes more precise and flexible, it may indeed turn out that humans will choose neurotechnology over genetic engineering to enhance themselves and their offspring.  Instead of debating the bioethics of germ-line engineering, we really should be focusing on the neuroethics of neurotechnology.