02.26.15.TranshumanMedicine
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Transhumanism and the Future of Law and Medicine discusses key issues at the intersection of transhumanism, law, and medicine. The document outlines topics such as human enhancement, the politics of human enhancement, transhuman jurisprudence, transhuman medicine, radical life extension, and options for legal and medical approaches. It also announces a first world summit on human enhancement coming in 2016 to discuss enabling technologies and their economic implications.
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02.26.15.TranshumanMedicine
- 1. 1 Transhumanism and the Future of Law and Medicine Sander Rabin MD JD The Center for Transhuman Jurisprudence, Inc. The Future of our Minds, Bodies, and Genomes legal #heet Fifty-Fifth Annual Meeting American College of Legal Medicine 27 February 2015
- 2. 2 What is …?
- 3. 3 Where are we headed?
- 4. 4 What is human enhancement?
- 5. 5 What are the politics of human enhancement?
- 6. 6 What’s at the heart of the conflict?
- 7. 7 What exactly is playing God?
- 8. 8 Is there an Archimedian point?
- 9. MORPHOLOGICAL FREEDOM PARTICIPANT EVOLUTION PROCREATIVE LIBERTY COGNITIVE LIBERTY 9 TECHNOLOGICAL SELF DETERMINATION RADICAL LIFE EXTENSION What is transhuman jurisprudence?
- 10. 10 What is transhuman medicine?
- 12. 12 Who gets to wear the prosopon?
- 13. 13 Programmable Legal Capacity and Competence
- 14. 14 What are the ends of medicine?
- 15. 15 What are the legal options?
- 16. 16 What are the medical options?
- 17. 17 What are we up to?
- 18. 18 A First World Summit on Human Enhancement Enabling Technology economic #heet Coming in 2016 http://www.tranhumanjuris.com @transhuman juris
Editor's Notes
- ▷Transhumanism is a global academic, cultural, social, and political movement, unified by a commitment to using #heet to overcome human biological limitations ○ PostHuman: An Introduction to Transhumanism investigates three dominant areas of transhumanism: super longevity, super intelligence and super well-being, and briefly covers the ideas of thinkers Aubrey de Grey, Ray Kurzweil and David Pearce. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTMS9y8OVuY. ▷The question of human enhancement is not a matter of if but when. Human’s visceral impulses towards self-interest - power, permanency, profit, pride, ego and pleasure - the core foundation of human nature - will inevitably drive us towards increasingly ambitious forms of human enhancement, setting aside considerations about human dignity and destiny . Thus, our policy debate should focus on how best to regulate emerging strategic technologies and their application to human enhancement now, before we lose control of our humanity. ○ Nayef R. F. Al-Rodhan, The Politics of Emerging Strategic Technologies: Implications for Geopolitics, Human Enhancement and Human Destiny p. 12. (Palgrave Macmillan April 28, 2011).
- ▷ Portable > Wearable > Applicable > Implantable > Symbiotic Merger: Cyborgization ▷ Our bodies are becoming less distinguishable from the material products used to enhance them. ▷ The popularity of wearable technology points to the coming seamless integration of bodily and technological functions and suggests not a trend but an emerging way of life. ○ Benjamin Wittes and Jane Chong, Our CyborgFuture: Law and PolicyImplications (September 2014).Available at http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2014/09/cyborg-future-law-policy-implications (last visited January 21, 2015). ▷ In June 2014, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in in which the justices unanimously ruled that police officers may not, without a warrant, search the data on a cell phone seized during an arrest. Writing for eight justices, Chief Justice John Roberts declared that: “[M]odern cell phones . . . are now such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.” ○ Riley v. California, 573 U. S. ____ (2014). ▷My students have become cyborgs. They are constantly wired in and uncomfortable if they don’t have continuous access to the internet. As they leave class, the smart phones glow immediately. For the cyborg generation, part of their memories and their minds reside online. … For the cyborg generation, their memories are stored on the internet and in the cloud. Their knowledge is a Google search away. Their personal experiences are recorded forever in Facebook photos and status updates. The cyborgs will soon replace the old humans. ○ Ira Hyman, In Praise of The Cyborg Generation (April 3, 2012). Available at http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mental-mishaps/201204/in-praise-the-cyborg-generationIn (Last visited January 21, 2015).
- ▷Human enhancement refers to extended cognitive skills, extended sensory capacities, a significant increase in life expectancy, mood modulation as well as new capabilities that might be provided to healthy individuals. ▷Idea of human enhancement - to extend limits imposed by nature or culture and to enhance capacities - is as old as human history itself. ▷Human enhancement is a highly contentious ethical debate, with experts on both sides calling it the single most important issue facing science and society in this new century. ▷Human Enhancement Enabling Technology (#heet) ☐ Convergent Technologies | Emergent Technologies ☐ NBIC is an acronym for Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information technology and Cognitive science.
- ▷Bioconservativism is a stance of hesitancy about technological development, especially if it is perceived to threaten a given social order. ○ http://ieet.org/index.php/tpwiki/bioconservative ▷Technoprogressivism is a stance of active support for the convergence of technological change and social change. Techno-progressives argue that technological developments can be profoundly empowering and emancipatory when they are regulated by legitimate democratic and accountable authorities to ensure that their costs, risks and benefits are all fairly shared by the actual stakeholders to those developments.
- ▷ Crux of debate on human enhancement reflects opposition of two cultures and their beliefs as to what is true about: ☐ Nature ☐ Human Nature ☐ Human Purpose ☐ Direction of Evolution ▷ Traditional | Humanities > Bioconservative ☐ Domain other than scientific knowledge is basis for human enhancement decisions and design. ☐ Nature provides guidance about the good. ☐ Human nature is fixed. ☐ Knowledge about morality discovered in nature by reason. ☐ Technology will not improve human condition. ☐ Attempts to improve human condition will produce as much difficulty as aim to eliminate. ☐ Health is at most a finite species-specific norm. ▷ Modern | Scientific ☐ Scientific knowledge is exclusive basis for human enhancement decisions and design. ☐ Nature is silent about the good ☐ Human nature malleable. ☐ Knowledge about morality constructed by humans ☐ Technology will improve human condition. ☐ Health is at least a finite species-specific norm. Health is at least a finite species-specific norm.
- ▷ Playing God | Promethean Hubris | Faustian Bargain ▷ What exactly counts as “playing God”, and why is that morally wrong; i.e., where exactly is the proscription in religious scripture? ▷ If we define the concept as manipulating nature, then we all have been guilty of that since the first man picked up a stick. ▷ Making life-and- death decisions is a plausible candidate as a definition, but then physicians as well as soldiers (even in holy wars?) could be accused of this charge. ○ Patrick Lin & Fritz Allhoff, Untangling the Debate: The Ethics of Human Enhancement. Available at http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=phil_fac. Last visited January 21, 2015.
- ▷ An Archimedean point (Punctum Archimedis) is a hypothetical vantage point from which an observer can objectively perceive the subject of inquiry, with a view of totality. The ideal of "removing oneself" from the object of study so that one can see it in relation to all other things, but remain independent of them, is described by a view from an Archimedean point. [1] For example, the philosopher John Rawls uses the heuristic device of the original position in an attempt to remove the particular biases of individual agents in an attempt to demonstrate how rational beings might arrive at an objective formulation of justice. ○ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedean_point ▷ There is no Archimedean point. ▷ Divergent directions reflect principled approaches. ▷ With the exception of profit motive, our present default course is largely unprincipled.
- ▷ Four Pillars of Transhuman Jurisprudence ○ http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/communities/humanrights/ ○ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participant_evolution ○ New Legal Frameworks seek to Accommodate Transhumanism - http://salvomag.com/blog/2012/04/2758/ ▷ Murray sued government health insurer over denial of coverage of then cutting edge, expensive hip procedure. Government insurance covered other hip procedures, but Murray & MD felt newer hip repair procedure was superior. Murray claimed forced to accept procedure that limited him to his normal species-typical functioning for a middle-aged man, despite fact that procedures available to improve hip beyond normal function. Murray effectively claimed violation of morphological freedom in that failure to provide latest ‘enhancement’ infringed “right to life” & “security of the person” under Canadian law. ○ William Lloyd Murray v. Alberta et al., 2007 ABQB 231, 76 Alta. L.R. (4th) 118. Statement of Claim filed in the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta 4 August 2006, cited in Patrick J. Monahan, “Chaoulli v. Quebec and the Future of Canadian Healthcare: Patient Accountability as the “Sixth Principle” of the Canada Health Act.” Available at http://www.cdhowe.org/pdf/benefactors_lecture_2006.pdf. Last visited January 21, 2015. ▷ The proposed transhuman right of cognitive liberty is the right to modify or refuse modification of the mind by drugs, implants and other techniques. While not explicitly upheld as a legal right, its protections are inferred from a case in which an order for the compulsory administration of an antipsychotic drug to render someone competent to stand trial was overturned by the Supreme Court. The freedom to refuse modification implies a right of privacy for the mind. Neuroprivacy is essential to cognitive liberty. Cognitive liberty was tacitly recognized in Sell v. United States, 539 U.S. 166 (2003) - right to keep mind free from outside interference except in rarest circumstances. ▷ Collins, disabled, near-quadriplegic veteran, entirely dependent on mobility assistance device (MAD) to move & respond to hypotensive episodes. Airline damaged MAD leaving him without replacement & bedridden with ulcer. Airline offered $1500 arguing harm to property not person. MAD no longer “inanimate separate object” but “interactive prosthetic.” MAD operated as extension of Collins’s body, functioning as lower limbs and lower torso muscles, i.e., MAD was extension of Mr. Collins. By harming MAD harm extended to Mr. Collins. Settled for $20,000. ▷ BMI prosthetics blurring bodily boundaries Other blurred boundaries natural | artificial, animate | inanimate Person | Non-Person | Property ▷ The Paradox of the Ship of Theseus: How many parts of Mr. Collins could be replaced until he was no longer legally Mr. Collins? United States Supreme Court may have given one possible answer to the paradoxical question; the historical case involves replacement of the parts of a “person” and whether or not the replacements ended up creating a new identity. The juridical “person” was a shipping vessel. In the 1922 case New Bedford Dry Dock Company v. Purdy, Claimant of the Steamer “Jack-O-Lantern”, the question before the Court was, “[i]n rebuilding operations the test is whether the identity of the vessel has continued, or has been extinguished.” The appellee argued that because substantial portions of the vessel had been replaced and because the ship was now being used for amusement rather than as an auto ferry the previous identity had been extinguished and a new identity formed. But the court stated in its opinion that “[t]his court has not undertaken and will not now essay to announce rigid definitions of repairs and new construction; but we do not accept the suggestion that the two things can be accurately differentiated by consideration of the ultimate use to which the vessel is to be devoted” and held that as long as the hull and skeleton of the original vessel remained in intact, the original identity was retained. ○ New Bedford Dry Dock Co. v. Purdy, Claimant of the Steamer “Jack-O-Lantern,” 258 U.S. 96, 99 (1922) (emphasis added). Conceivably, one could make a similar argument when it comes to replacement parts for “natural” persons, extrapolating the case law that has already created precedent for “juridical” persons. If one were to argue by analogy, you could replace almost everything, so long as a skeleton and shell was left. ○ Glenn, Linda MacDonald, Case Study: Ethical and Legal Issues in Human Machine Mergers (or the Cyborgs Cometh) (July 8, 2012). Annals of Health Law – ASLME Special Edition, Vol. 21, 2012. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2102425
- ▷Transhumanist medicine: ☐ is a model of health predicated on self-transcendence-through-technological-transformation. ☐ must be be taken seriously because its underlying philosophy - - molecular biomedicine, with its commitment to individualized technological interventions in disease: ◇ dominates our understanding of what health is and how it can be achieved ◇ drives the Western medical research agenda ▷ Throughout the 20th century the idea of health has steadily added layers of avoidance and optimization to the prevention, management and cure of disease; e.g., pre-symptomatic genetic diagnosis/screening followed by technical intervention at the molecular or cellular level to eliminate, repair or improve sub-optimal organic structure and function. ▷ The emergence of heet and transhumanism, we are witnessing a further reification of the belief that biomedical innovation and intervention – now at the molecular level – represent the primary determinants of health. ▷ Western society had already begun to expect and demand enhancement as a method of improving and extending life. ☐ Developments such as: ◇ vaccination, ◇ mood and behavior-modifying prescription pharmaceuticals, ◇ cosmetic surgery, ◇ growth and estrogen hormone therapy, ◇ artificial organs, ◇ hair implants, ◇ steroids, ◇ biochemical and physiological sexual aids, ◇ cochlear implants, ◇ laser eye surgery, and ◇ other prosthetics have represented incremental changes that, taken together, perhaps constitute the crossing of the threshold between therapy and enhancement, and a growing intolerance of sub-normative or even normative human functioning. Key to this approach are notions of species-normative functioning serving as metrics for identifying disease. ▷ The advent of a transhumanist medicine supplants the determination of species-typical norms with the creation of new metrics of physiology that are revised with each round of technological innovation. ▷ Will this be to the detriment of other frameworks that characterize health through broader notions of “well-being” which require social inclusion, justice, equitable access to resources, ecological balance, etc? ○ Kerr, Ian R. and Wishart, James, A Tsunami Wave of Science: How the Technologies of Transhumanist Medicine are Shifting Canada's Health Research Agenda, Health Law Revie (2008). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1302543. Last visited 21 January 2015 ○ Anders Sanberg, “Morphological Freedom -- Why We not just Want it, but Need It”, online: School of Computer Science and Communication, Stockholm University <http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/Texts/MorphologicalFreedom.htm>; Dale Carrico, “The Politics of Morphological Freedom”, online: IEET <http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/carrico20060803>.
- ▷ What’s at Stake? ☐ In the novel Amped, [Daniel H. Wilson, Amped (2012) ] children implanted with neural prostheses to control epileptic seizures find that their intelligence is enhanced, and are denied legal characterization as a protected class, entitled to anti-discrimination provisions of the XIVth amendment. The article appearing in the New York Times on July 9, 2014 [Benedict Carey, Probing Brain’s Depth, Trying to Aid Memory. New York Times, July 9, 2014] eerily foreshadows this plot element of Amped.
- ▷ Only legal persons have rights ▷ Only legal persons have capacity and competence ▷ One unlikely way the future of human enhancement and AI may unfold is with little or no legal interaction. Even with limiting or prohibitive laws, a significant number of people with social, political and economic advantages will likely avail themselves of contraband technologies or foreign-sourced technologies, raising the question of whether the law can make any difference in the dissemination of these technologies at all. ▷ A more likely scenario is one in which statutory or court-made federal law lags behind the social, economic and cultural impacts of these technologies and creates an ad hoc regulatory infrastructure involving the Justice Department, HHS, FDA EPA, etc. The fact that the U.S. is a nation with 51 legal jurisdictions will not simplify matters. ▷ In any event, the most critical legal issues will, in my opinion, not be how to regulate human enhancement and AI, but whether nor not constitutional protections are afforded to creations of human enhancement and AI. The extension of constitutional protections to the creations of human enhancement and AI in turn depends on whether, as subjects of the law, they are legally regarded as ‘property’ or ‘persons.’ The capacity to enter into legal transactions outside of court and the competency to invoke the law within a court are afforded only to legal persons. ▷ Legal Personhood Taxonomy ☐ Embryos and Fetuses ☐ Xenostransplantation is the transplantation of cells, tissues or organs from one species to another. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenotransplantation ☐ See, e.g., Linda MacDonald Glenn, Ethical Issues in Genetic Engineering and Transgenics. http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotechnology/glenn.html ☐ A chimera is single organism composed of genetically distinct cells produced by the merger of multiple fertilized egg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics) ☐ See, e.g., Nonanthropocentric Personhood Ethics.http://ieet.org/index.php/tpwiki/non-anthropocentric_personhood_ethics/. ☐ See, e.g., Nonhuman Rights Project. http://www.nonhumanrightsproject.org ☐ Lawrence B. Slocum, Legal Personhood for Artificial Intelligence, North Carolina Law Review, Vol. 70, p.1231 (1992). http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1108671 ☐ Mind uploading refers to the hypothetical process of copying mental content (including long-term memory and "self") from a particular brain substrate and copying it to another computational device. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading ☐ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics ☐ See, e.g., Human Germline Genetic Modification: Issues and Options for Policymakers. http://www.dnapolicy.org/pub.reports.php?action=detail&report_id=3 ▷ Programmable Legal Capacity and Competence
- ▷ Neural Implants that enhance cognition and memory will be relevant in deciding legal capacity and competence.
- ▷All developed countries have unsustainable health care systems headed toward crises. ☐ aging societies, ☐ increasingly expensive technologies, ☐ decreasing mortality and increasing morbidity ⇰ chronic diseases and disability ▷ There are more and more sick people in our midst, people who cannot be cured but will need care, often for a lifetime. ▷ Must move beyond the usual policy debates about health care debates about ☐ financing, ☐ access, and ☐ organizational matters to face a deeper, usually neglected questions. ▷ Having learned that medical technology’s success in reducing mortality has resulted in an increase in morbidity, should medicine retain as its transcendent goal the management of disease and the forestalling of death? ☐ If not, what should the ends of medicine be in coming decades? ☐ What should medicine do for people? ☐ What should people have access to, and for what reason? ▷ Thinking about the ends of medicine requires us to face up to some very old and fundamental questions. ☐ What constitutes a good human life? ☐ What constitutes human flourishing? ☐ What is the relationship of medicine to a good human life and human flourishing? ☐ When medicine cannot cure, what should it seek to offer people? ☐ Is death a natural limit that should command our respect or is it an artificial limit that we should seek to obliterate? ☐ Is human enhancement a legitimate end of medicine?* ☐ Can we articulate a moral limit beyond which human enhancement should not go? ▷ Arguments against human enhancements often refer to the proper goals of medicine as an explanation for why enhancements would be, at best, secondary priorities for the medical profession compared with alleviating suffering. To the extent that healthcare will always be under a primary obligation to alleviate suffering, this argument leads to the conclusion that there is no place within the proper goals of medicine for enhancement, at least not until all primary needs have been met. However, the practice of preventive medicine weakens the distinction between therapy and enhancement. Medical intervention before diagnosis and the onset of suffering assures that a disease never arises; as such, it protects people against their natural biological vulnerabilities and extends lifespan by eliminating a disease that otherwise would have ended a life prematurely On this basis, treating age-related illness serves both health and enhancement. Other interventions include vaccinations for children, or fluoridation of drinking water, which have similar preventive functions. These interventions provide a level of health that would be unattainable if not for an alteration to species-normative functioning.Whenever medicine prevents it enhances. Many forms of enhancement will be just like this and consequently consistent with the proper ends of medicine . ▷ Health care systems can provide prevention and public health services, caring and health-related welfare services, primary and emergency care, and advanced, cure-oriented technological diagnostics and therapeutics. But what are the proper and sensible priorities in providing such services? ☐ What kinds of distinctions should be made among different population groups needing care? ☐ What are the appropriate moral and social criteria for making such distinctions? ☐ What are the appropriate criteria for allocating services among different health care sectors? ☐ What are appropriate priorities among different age and disease groups? ☐ What is a sensible balance between services for mental and physical health? ☐ What is a sensible and morally acceptable balance between health care services devoted to overall population health and the meeting of individual needs? ☐ If everything cannot be provided, what is comparatively most important to provide? ☐ What philosophy, and vision, of the goals of medicine should lie behind such priorities? ○ Daniel Callahan and Erik Parens, The Ends of Medicine: Shaping New Goals ○ The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future (p. 58). (Wiley 2013)
- ▷ Four Pillars ☐ Morphological Freedom ☐ Cognitive Liberty ☐ Procreative Liberty ☐ Participant Evolution ▷No laws ☐ Impact hypothetical ☐ No legislation. ☐ No justiciable controversies in the courts. ▷Still, will have to deal with issues raised by human enhancement, e.g: ☐ Nature of legal personhood > Constitutionally protected rights ☐ Programmable legal competence & capacity ☐ Equitable distribution > potential dangerous divide between enhanced and un-enhanced individuals > class distinctions in education employment opportunity > class warfare ▷ Should human enhancement be regulated to prevent or moderate some negative impacts? ☐ Human enhancement more than matter of individual choice. ☐ Potential for manipulation of human design ☐ Supplant role of natural selection in evolution ? ▷3 possibilities: ☐ no restrictions/regulations; ☐ some restrictions/regulations; or, ☐ moratorium or full ban. ▷ No restrictions reckless, given risks. Unlikely tolerate total market freedom, either because of ☐ market failures or ☐ unacceptable moral failures. ▷ Moratorium unrealistic. ☐ Worldwide scope needed to prevent use of a banned human enhancement technology; ☐ No worldwide moratorium on anything proven to work. ☐ International treaties not always ratified or honored. ☐ National moratorium will drive people to: ☐ Black market clinics or ☐ Human enhancement tourism locations. ▷ Given irrepressible appeal of enhancements, some regulation is ‘least worst’ situation. ▷ Where might transhuman law gain traction in the coming 5-10 years? ▷ Commercialization: ☐ Wearable > Applicable > Implantable | Vanity Prestige Status Emblems of Power ▷ Medicine ☐ Germ line genetic engineering ▷ Sports ☐ Performance Enhancement ▷ Enhanced war veterans return to society ☐ Traumatic Brain Injury > Neuroproshtheses ▷ National Security Medical Cybersecurity Neurosecurity > Cognitive Liberty ▷ Radical Life Extension ☐ Cryonics How might we unite a global community to consider / take seriously these matters of enhancing human cognition? ▷ Daunting ▷ The major driving forces of human motivation - core foundation of human nature are 5 P’s: ☐ Permanency (survival, self-preservation) ☐ Power ☐ Profit ☐ Pleasure ☐ Pride (vanity) > make human enhancement inevitable. ▷ Already international military enhancement arms race ▷Human enhancement: ☐ has ramifications for human dignity and human rights; ☐ will affect global security; ☐ inequalities and differences reinforced along pre-existing lines of social, religious, economic, national division ☐ national/international divide blurry, e.g., reports of China’s attempts at designing genius babies, based on a collection of DNA samples and embryo screenings, is project that could lead to increased national economic productivity. ▷Agree with Nayef Al-Rodhan that: ☐ Urgent global action at UN level needed to define international moral and bioethical guidelines on what potential enhancements are acceptable to global societies and on what terms. ☐ Prioritize preservation of Human Dignity as much more than just absence of humiliation. includes nine dignity elements: ◇ governance by rule of reason, ◇ security: Food Shelter Freedom from Trauma ◇ human rights, ◇ social accountability, ◇ transparent governance, ◇ equal justice, ◇ equal opportunity, ◇ sustainable innovation ◇ inclusiveness. ▷Any enhancement that violates any of these nine dimensions of human dignity cannot be considered an improvement and will have serious societal and destiny implications in the long run. ▷ Four Pillars ☐ Morphological Freedom ☐ Cognitive Liberty ☐ Procreative Liberty ☐ Participant Evolution ▷No laws ☐ Impact hypothetical ☐ No legislation. ☐ No justiciable controversies in the courts. ▷Still, will have to deal with issues raised by human enhancement, e.g: ☐ Nature of legal personhood > Constitutionally protected rights ☐ Programmable legal competence & capacity ☐ Equitable distribution > potential dangerous divide between enhanced and un-enhanced individuals > class distinctions in education employment opportunity > class warfare ▷ Should human enhancement be regulated to prevent or moderate some negative impacts? ☐ Human enhancement more than matter of individual choice. ☐ Potential for manipulation of human design ☐ Supplant role of natural selection in evolution ? ▷The concern that human enhancement may promote values other than those we feel bound to (e.g. justice, equity, etc.) is at the core of efforts to identify new criteria for permissible enhancements. ▷As an example, the conditions that must be met in order to attribute personhood, could be considered as the definite ethical boundaries for permissible human enhancement interventions. So that, for example, if: self-consciousness; and, ☐ a capacity to weigh reasons for action; and, ☐ a capacity to develop a life plan are preserved, then ☐ there are no major concerns that would forbid human enhancement. ▷3 possibilities: ☐ no restrictions/regulations; ☐ some restrictions/regulations; or, ☐ moratorium or full ban. ▷ No restrictions reckless, given risks. Unlikely tolerate total market freedom, either because of ☐ market failures or ☐ unacceptable moral failures. ▷ Moratorium unrealistic. ☐ Worldwide scope needed to prevent use of a banned human enhancement technology; ☐ No worldwide moratorium on anything proven to work. ☐ International treaties not always ratified or honored. ☐ National moratorium will drive people to: ☐ Black market clinics or ☐ Human enhancement tourism locations. ▷ Given irrepressible appeal of enhancements, some regulation is ‘least worst’ situation. ▷ Where might transhuman law gain traction in the coming 5-10 years? ▷ Commercialization: ☐ Wearable > Applicable > Implantable | Vanity Prestige Status Emblems of Power ▷ Medicine ☐ Germ line genetic engineering ▷ Sports ☐ Performance Enhancement ▷ Enhanced war veterans return to society ☐ Traumatic Brain Injury > Neuroproshtheses ▷ National Security Medical Cybersecurity Neurosecurity > Cognitive Liberty ▷ Radical Life Extension ☐ Cryonics How might we unite a global community to consider / take seriously these matters of enhancing human cognition? ▷ Daunting ▷ The major driving forces of human motivation - core foundation of human nature are 5 P’s: ☐ Permanency (survival, self-preservation) ☐ Power ☐ Profit ☐ Pleasure ☐ Pride (vanity) > make human enhancement inevitable. ▷ Already international military enhancement arms race ▷Human enhancement: ☐ has ramifications for human dignity and human rights; ☐ will affect global security; ☐ inequalities and differences reinforced along pre-existing lines of social, religious, economic, national division ☐ national/international divide blurry, e.g., reports of China’s attempts at designing genius babies, based on a collection of DNA samples and embryo screenings, is project that could lead to increased national economic productivity. ▷Agree with Nayef Al-Rodhan that: ☐ Urgent global action at UN level needed to define international moral and bioethical guidelines on what potential enhancements are acceptable to global societies and on what terms. ☐ Prioritize preservation of Human Dignity as much more than just absence of humiliation. includes nine dignity elements: ◇ governance by rule of reason, ◇ security: Food Shelter Freedom from Trauma ◇ human rights, ◇ social accountability, ◇ transparent governance, ◇ equal justice, ◇ equal opportunity, ◇ sustainable innovation ◇ inclusiveness. ▷Any enhancement that violates any of these nine dimensions of human dignity cannot be considered an improvement and will have serious societal and destiny implications in the long run.
- ▷Are there acceptable enhancement criteria? ▷The concern that human enhancement may promote values other than those we feel bound to (e.g. justice, equity, etc.) is at the core of efforts to identify new criteria for permissible enhancements. ▷As an example, the conditions that must be met in order to attribute personhood, could be considered as the definite ethical boundaries for permissible human enhancement interventions. So that, for example, if: self-consciousness; and, ☐ a capacity to weigh reasons for action; and, ☐ a capacity to develop a life plan are preserved, then ☐ there are no major concerns that would forbid human enhancement.
- ▷The Possibility of a Transcendent Civilization ▷ For today’s political, social, cultural, and economic leaders, there seems to be little aspiration to move beyond the ‘favored’ paradigm: ☐ the development of a strong democratic state ☐ combined with a market economy ☐ that is built on ◇ the rule of law and ◇ private-property rights. ▷While much more has to be done to improve this political and economic framework, it should not blind us to the fact that accelerating scientific and technological progress is launching us into a future that transcends these concerns. ☐ The post-anthropic era, will have radically different participants and stakeholders in the economic, social, and political order. ▷ We have reached a threshold: heet seems to be putting the human species in danger by letting go of its biological substrate and offering it a victory over its biological substrate. ▷ As we stand at the transhuman frontier, we can say that we are part of a cosmic process that started with the Big Bang more than thirteen billion years ago. ☐ Does evolution stop with the advent of the human on the stage of cosmic history? ☐ Can we also say that the effort to consciously participate in the unfolding of this grand evolutionary process is the greatest purpose we can find and identify with? ▷ What is the best way to serve evolution (or our purpose) in the largest sense?