K Zoo

Not Just a Pretty Face: Legal and Ethical Issues in Regenerative Nanomedicine Human Enhancement and Nanotechnology, Western Michigan University, March 28-29, 2009 Linda MacDonald Glenn, Albany Medical Center Jeanann S. Boyce, Montgomery College

Linda MacDonald Glenn, JD, LLM
Assistant Professor, Albany Medical Center, Alden March Bioethics Institute
JD, LL.M. in Biomedical Ethics from McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Senior Fellow Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Women’s Bioethics Project Scholar
In a former life, trial lawyer and advocate.
Linda MacDonald Glenn

Co-Presenter
Dr. Jeanann Boyce
Professor of Computer Science at Montgomery College and Adjunct Professor of Information Science at Johns Hopkins and Bowie State University.
Member of Robotics International, Society of Manufacturing Engineers.
Teaches AI programming and Information Systems, ED Chair District of Columbia Engineering & Architectural Societies
Developed and implemented first Ethics in the Information Age courses at University of Maryland University College and Montgomery College

NIH Definition

NIH Definition of
Tissue engineering / regenerative medicine is an emerging multidisciplinary field involving biology, medicine, and engineering that is likely to revolutionize the ways we improve the health and quality of life for millions of people worldwide by restoring, maintaining, or enhancing tissue and organ function.
Tissue engineering can have diagnostic applications where the tissue is made in vitro and used for testing drug metabolism and uptake, toxicity, and pathogenicity.

Ability to Exploit Living Cells in Variety of Ways
Biomaterials: including novel biomaterials that are designed to direct the organization, growth, and differentiation of cells in the process of forming functional tissue by providing both physical and chemical cues.
Cells: including enabling methodologies for the proliferation and differentiation of cells, acquiring the appropriate source of cells such as autologous cells, allogeneic cells, xenogeneic cells, stem cells, genetically engineered cells, and immunological manipulation.
Biomolecules: including angiogenic factors, growth factors, differentiation factors and bone morphogenic proteins

Ways con’t…
4. Engineering Design Aspects: including 2-d cell expansion, 3-d tissue growth, bioreactors, vascularization, cell and tissue storage and shipping (biological packaging).
5. Biomechanical Aspects of Design: including properties of native tissues, identification of minimum properties required of engineered tissues, mechanical signals regulating engineered tissues, and efficacy and safety of engineered tissues
6. Informatics to support tissue engineering: gene and protein sequencing, gene expression analysis, protein expression and interaction analysis, quantitative cellular image analysis, quantitative tissue analysis, in silicon tissue and cell modeling, digital tissue manufacturing, automated quality assurance systems, data mining tools, and clinical informatics interfaces.

Stem Cells Research
Includes research that involves stem cells, whether from embryonic, fetal, or adult sources, human and non-human. It should include research in which stem cells are isolated, derived or cultured for purposes such as developing cell or tissue therapies, studying cellular differentiation, research to understand the factors necessary to direct cell specialization to specific pathways, and other developmental studies.

Tissue Engineering Is Not..
It should not include transgenic studies, gene knock-out studies nor the generation of Chimeric animals.

Tissue Engineering
4 Brothers—Jay, Chuck, Marty, and Frank Vacanti
Cartilage molded around a
biodegradable polymer,
impregnated with
patient’s own cells
Scaffold, surgical coral

Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative:University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UPMC Health System
McGowan Institute on Regenerative Medicine
Biomedicals
Medical devices and Artificial Organs
Cellular Therapeutics -Tissue engineering with nanomagnets Nanowerk Mar.29, 2009 Hemodynamics
they perform the cell patterning using external magnetic forces with which they control the organization of cells on a substrate and create a 3D multicellular assembly to guide cell adhesion.

Tissue Engineering (cont’d)

Nanofluidic Chips
$100 Genome analyzer is the goal
Currently can read entire human genome in less than 8 hrs.
BioNanomatrix Corporation
Untangles up to 1,ooo,ooo DNA base molecules
Mild electrical charge drives the DNA through the chip
Potential medical diagnostic tool to tailor treatment to a patient’s genetic profile.

Nanopiezotronics
Nanowires which can power medical devices and serve as tiny sensors
Zinc oxide bends through local vibrations creating an electrical current
Can be used in implants, such as the knee to monitor stress as a sensor
Neural implants such as hearing aids without batteries

Laser Suturing
Uses commonly used liquid, Rose Bengal
With the light, but not the heat of the laser
Forces the collagen in cells to knit together
Replaces needle and thread
Useful for nerve, eye, and blood vessel surgeries
Still in clinical trials

Cellular Fusion
Microfluidic chips paired with stem cells to create hybrids of fused membranes
Can be used to reprogram cells
Potentially creating embryonic stem cells from adult ones

Using Electron Beam Melting to Create Patient Specific Craniofacial Titanium Implants
Custom prostheses from CT data
Design strategy for cranioplasty and mandibular reconstruction
Porous implants
Custom Titanium implants with controlled mechanical properties

BioMEMS for Surgery
Micro Electro Mechanical Systems
Can combine sensors with surgical tools
Sensor catheters
Perform heart surgery on a beating heart with small incision

The Law of Accelerating Returns
The price-performance, capacity & bandwidth of information technologies progresses exponentially through multiple paradigm shifts
Specific to information technology
not to arbitrary exponential trends (like population)
Still need to test viability of the next paradigm
A scientific theory
25 years of research
Part of a broader theory of evolution
Inventing: science and engineering
Moore’s law just one example of many
Yes there are limits
But they’re not very limiting
Based on the physics of computation and communication
and on working paradigms (such as nanotubes)

Reverse Engineering the Brain : the ultimate source of the templates of intelligence

The (converging) Sources of the Templates of Intelligence
AI research
Reverse Engineering the Brain
Research into performance of the brain (human thought)
Language: an ideal laboratory for studying human ability for hierarchical, symbolic, recursive thinking
All of these expand the AI tool kit

2015: The Incredible Shrinking Computer
Images written directly to our retinas
Ubiquitous high bandwidth connection to the Internet at all times
Electronics so tiny it’s embedded in the environment, our clothing, our eyeglasses
Full immersion visual-auditory virtual reality
Augmented real reality
Interaction with virtual personalities as a primary interface
Effective language technologies

Advances in nanoelectronics coupled with our growing understanding of human brain function has enabled neuroscientists to conceive of brain implantable computational systems to:
- repair damaged portions of the brain
- enhance neural capabilities beyond our natural capabilities

Examples are: - sense the onset of seizures and suppress them via implanted deep brain stimulators. - interface the brain with neuroprosthesis or disabled limbs. - augment brain memory function by replacing damaged hippocampal structures.

2029: An intimate merger
$1,000 of computation = 1,000 times the human brain
Reverse engineering of the human brain completed
Computers pass the Turing test
Nonbiological intelligence combines
the subtlety and pattern recognition strength of human intelligence, with
the speed, memory, and knowledge sharing of machine intelligence
Nonbiological intelligence will continue to grow exponentially whereas biological intelligence is effectively fixed

Nanobots provide…
Neural implants that are:
Noninvasive, surgery-free
Distributed to millions or billions of points in the brain
Full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses
You can be someone else
“ Experience Beamers”
Expansion of human intelligence
Multiply our 100 trillion connections many fold
Intimate connection to diverse forms of nonbiological intelligence

Average Life Expectancy (Years) Cro Magnon 18 Ancient Egypt 25 1400 Europe 30 1800 Europe & U.S. 37 1900 U.S. 48 2002 U.S. 78

Promise versus Peril
GNR enables our creativity
and our destructiveness
Ethical guidelines do work to protect against inadvertent problems
30 year success of Asilomar Guidelines

Promise versus Peril cont.
So what about advertent problems (asymmetric warfare)?
Designer pathogens, self-replicating nanotech, unfriendly AI (Yudkowsky)….
So maybe we should relinquish these dangerous technologies?
3 problems with that:
Would require a totalitarian system
Would deprive the world of profound benefits
Wouldn’t work
Would drive dangerous technologies underground
Would deprive responsible scientists of the tools needed for defense

Okay, let’s say that overcoming disease is a good thing, but perhaps we should stop before transcending normal human abilities….
So just what is normal?
Going beyond “normal” is not a new story.
Most of the audience wouldn’t be here if life expectancy hadn’t increased (the rest of you would be senior citizens)
We are the species that goes beyond our limitations
We need not define human by our limitations
“ Death gives meaning to life…and to time”
But we get true meaning from knowledge: art, music, science, technology

Scientists: “We are not unique”
Universe doesn’t revolve around the Earth
We are not descended from the Gods
But from apes….worms….bacteria…dust
But we are unique after all
We are the only species that creates knowledge….art, music, science, technology…
Which is expanding exponentially

So is the take-off hard or soft?
Exponential growth is soft…
Gradual…
Incremental…
Smooth…
Mathematically identical at each point…
But ultimately, profoundly transformative

Property-Personhood Continuum (Proposed Legal Paradigm) Property (Inanimate Objects) Full Personhood (Attendant rights & responsibilities) Quasi-property (Chimeric Humanoids) Fetuses Embryos Ex Utero Cyborgs Androids A/I Negative Liberties Biotechnology at the Margins of Personhood: An Evolving Legal Paradigm, J. of Evolution and Technology Cognitively impaired

Recommendations and Conclusions
The establishment of a common lexicon between policy makers, implementation agents, and multidisciplinary users for terms such as ‘proportional autonomy.’
Creation of recommendations similar to the Asilomar Guidelines.
More rigorous informed consent because of potential irreversibility.

Recommendations and Conclusions
As different forms of sentient beings and cyborgs are created in the technical environments, if we don’t start thinking policy NOW, the courts will be the ones to determine where these creations fall on the continuum of personhood.
(And hard cases make bad law)

The future?
“ We need not fear the Us versus Them scenario as computers get smarter, because we will be them. We will continually incorporate more and more computer technology into ourselves and our lives, until we become one with it. .” – Ray Kurzweil
( It’s already happening! How many of us carry our PDAs or wireless devices his small wireless computer to our meetings (and everywhere else). When someone has a question no one can answer, in just a few seconds, we conjure up the answer with Google)

Transcendent Man Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA http: unithertechnologyconference.com

Thank you for your attention!
For further info, contact us:
[email_address] ; [email_address]

K Zoo

by Linda MacDonald Glenn on Sep 17, 2009

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K Zoo — Presentation Transcript