Abstract: This article investigates the conceptual distinctions between therapy and various forms of human enhancement. It begins by proposing a typology of human enhancements in order to make more rigorous and grounded discussions about the distinction between therapy and enhancement. Three types of human enhancement are proposed: 1) engineering traits of accepted value, 2) engineering traits of contested value and 3) radical transhuman enhancements. Subsequently, the paper explores the distinctions between the ethical justifications that are advanced for therapeutic interventions, comparing them with human enhancements, concluding that the salient characteristic of health-related suffering enables enhancement to gain legitimacy from the perspective of traditional medical ethics. Finally, the paper considers a number of practical obstructions to the realization of radical transhuman enhancements. Specifically, it discusses procedural obstacles to approving experimental medical research for human enhancements, the likely commercialization of human enhancements that would ensue from their development, and the need to develop experimental medical interventions via animal models.
Recommended Citation
Miah, Andy (2008) “Engineering Greater Resilience or Radical Transhuman Enhancement?,”
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Geoengineering: Go slow! Carbon reduction: Hurry!
by Mike TrederWe need a crash development program for wind, solar, tidal, wave, geothermal - and possibly nuclear - energy infrastructures. Geo-engineering is too risky except as an absolute last resort.
Open Source In-Vitro Meat
by Edward MillerThe massive amount of meat production is currently wreaking havoc on the environment, and too often the animals are treated inhumanely.
Enabling Nanotechnologies
by Mike TrederEnabling nanotechnologies are those that may represent significant steps toward the eventual realization of exponential general-purpose molecular manufacturing.
Shadows of the Endarkenment from Montreal
by Russell BlackfordMargaret Somerville, the high priestess of the ethical endarkenment, is at it again. This new article in the Ottawa Citizen provides her latest irrational protestations about the imagined evils of biomedical research and innovation.
Paper Batteries, 200mpg Cars, and Biobricks
by Jamais CascioResearchers in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute announced in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences the invention of a paper battery.
Technocitizenship, innovation and the biopolitics of medical devices
by J. HughesThree hundred and fifty years ago, while pioneering the use of microscopes, the British scientist Robert Hooke foresaw that science would eventually create artificial organs and implantable devices to enhance sight, hearing and memory. He wrote “By the addition of such artificial Instruments and methods, there may be, in some manner, a reparation made for the mischiefs, and imperfection, mankind has drawn upon itself.”
When Cooling is Heart-Warming
by Anne CorwinIn Newsweek, Jerry Adler offers a fascinating look at the ever-shifting line between life and death primarily through the story of one man who “died” and yet lived to tell the tale.
Journal of Evolution and Technology June 2007, 16(1): Contents
Robert Freitas 
"The Ideal Gene Delivery Vector: Chromallocytes, Cell Repair Nanorobots for Chromosome Replacement Therapy"
(pgs 1-97)
Robin Hanson, James Hughes, Michael LaTorra, David Brin, Giulio Prisco
The Hanson-Hughes Debate on "The Crack of a Future Dawn"
(pgs 99-126)
An Ravelingien
“Xenotransplantation and the harm principle: Factoring out foreseen risk”
(pgs 127-149)
David Koepsell
“Individual and Collective Rights in Genomic Data: Preliminary Questions”
(pgs 151-159)
Woody Evans
“Singularity Warfare: A Bibliometric Survey of Militarized Transhumanism”
(pgs 161-165)
Milan M. Cirkovic
Book review: Justina Robson’s Natural History
(pgs 167-170)
Brain Imaging with SQUIDs in India
by Priyamvada SivasubramanianPriya interviews Dr. T. S. Radhakrishnan on the use of Superconducting Quantum Interference Device (SQUIDs) to image brains at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, about 60 kilometers south of Chennai (Madras).
Implanted Medical Computers
by Mike TrederNot in a flying car, but in biomedical implants, the future is racing toward us. It looks less like The Jetsons and more like Holy Fire—but it’s a near-future that could only be viewed as science fiction just a few years ago.
DIY Cancer Therapy: Should dying people be allowed to experiment?
by Giulio PriscoNature News reports this week that cancer patients are buying DCA - a new drug with anti-cancer properties - on the Net, end-running clinical trials and causing drug regulators and researchers consternation.
The Natural Biogerontology Portfolio: Defeating Aging” as a Multi-stage Ultra-grand Challenge
by Aubrey de GreyAbstract: The early days of biogerontology were blessed with an undiluted forthrightness concerning the field’s ultimate goals, epitomized by its leaders. Luminaries from Pearl to Comfort to Strehler declared the desirability of eliminating aging with no more diffidence than that with which today’s oncologists aver that they seek a cure for cancer. The field’s subsequent retreat from this position garnered a modicum of political acceptability and public financial support, but all biogerontologists agree that this fell, and continues to fall, vastly short of the funding that the prospect of even a modest postponement of aging would logically justify. The past 20 years’ discoveries of life-extending genetic manipulations in model organisms have weakened the argument that a policy of appeasement of the public’s ambivalence about defeating aging is our only option; some of the biogerontologists responsible for these advances have espoused views of which our intellectual forefathers would be proud, without noticeably harming their own careers. With the recent emergence of a detailed, ambitious, but practical roadmap for the comprehensive defeat of aging, this process has moved further: our natural and most persuasive public stance is, more than ever, to reembrace the same unassailable logic that served pioneering biogerontologists perfectly well. In particular, we are in a position to explain that the disparate strands of contemporary biomedical gerontology are not in conflict, but rather that they constitute a portfolio of approaches with a range of potential efficacies and degrees of difficulty of implementation, which can save more lives together than any can save individually, and all of which thus merit intensive pursuit.
Poll: We become posthuman with…
Dale pulls out his prolix Winchester on this question here. To me it looks like the average tipping point is somewhere around the point that we start playing with personal identity with emotion and memory modification, and pooling our brains into the Borg. But then again, the range here is from 10,000 BC to never.
New poll: Should people be able to sell one of their kidneys?
Exploring Nano-Ethics
by Chris PhoenixThere are two kinds of ethicists. The first kind makes you think about what it is you want, and why. The second kind tells you what you should want. The first kind of ethicist is very valuable. The second can be damaging.
GRM Warfare
by Jamais CascioDenise Caruso’s new column at the New York Times kicks off with an essay on patents in the world of biotechnology. Most of the piece looks at how to build an intellectual property regime for biotechnology that serves the interests of society, not just a handful of companies. She cites a troubling, if not surprising, statistic: more than 20% of the human genome has already been patented, mostly by corporate biotech.
The Quiet (But Real) Revolution
by Anne CorwinGuardian writer Simon Jenkins apparently has the impression that the age of technological revolution is 100 years dead.
Cognitive Enhancement: A Review of Technology
by Nick BostromCognitive enhancement aims at amplifying or extending the abilities of the mind through internal or external hardware or software. Up until recently only internal software in the form of trained efficient mental algorithms and the general enhancing effects of paperbased information management was available. As cognitive neuroscience has advanced the range of potential internal enhancement treatments have increased3, as well as the availability and power of external hardware/software support.
Geriatrics, Gerontology, and Engineering—A Necessary Link
by Anne CorwinEvery day, elderly people die as a result of phenomena in their bodies that you rarely, if ever, see in younger people (and that are interpreted as definitive signs of disease when they are).
The Emerging Technoprogressive Mainstream and the New Democratic Agenda
by Dale CarricoThe New Year has provided the occasion for the usual spate of to-do lists, wish-lists, and so on for the upcoming Congress. I for one am quite pleased to note how many of these lists have testified to what I have been calling here at Amor Mundi the politics of an emerging technoprogressive mainstream.
Anti-Intellectual Arguments Against Anti-Intellectualism Are Always Such Fun!
by Dale CarricoIn a recent NYT Op-Ed Nicholas Kristof points out the frightening and lamentable facts that “40 percent of Americans believe in evolution, and only 13 percent know what a molecule is… One-fifth of Americans still believe that the Sun goes around the Earth, instead of the other way around. And only about half know that humans did not live at the same time as dinosaurs.” He rightly goes on to claim that this is “a symptom of something much deeper and more serious: a profound illiteracy about science and math as a whole.”
Emergence 2006-12-04
Making Science by Serendipity
by Riccardo CampaRobert K. Merton and Elinor Barber’s The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity is the history of a word and its related concept. The choice of writing a book about a word may surprise those who are not acquainted with Merton’s work, but certainly not those sociologists that have chosen him as a master. Searching, defining, and formulating concepts has always been Merton’s main intellectual activity.
Americans get a taste of Canadian biopolitics
by George DvorskyNow that George Bush has vetoed a bill rejecting legislation passed by Congress that would have expanded federal research on embryonic stem cells, Americans have been given a taste of what Canadians have had to deal with for the past four years.
Constructing the case for enhancement at Stanford
by George Dvorsky
This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend and speak at the Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights (HETHR) conference at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. The conference, which was sponsored by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics (CCLE), and the Stanford Law School (SLC), brought together a diverse array of thinkers who spent the weekend ruminating over the challenging issues surrounding human enhancement.
George W. Bush Is Getting Brain-jacked
by J. HughesDespite the president’s best efforts to stop human enhancement, the spirit of Vannevar Bush is rising to smite him
Proceeding with clinical trials of animal-to-human organ transplantation. A way out of the dilemma
by An RavelingienAbstract The transplantation of porcine organs to humans could in the future be a solution to the worldwide organ shortage, but is to date still highly experimental. Further research on the potential effects of crossing the species barrier is essential before clinical application is acceptable. However, many crucial questions on efficacy and safety will ultimately only be answered by well-designed and controlled solid organ xenotransplantation trials on humans. The question then rises of what conditions are necessary in order to resume clinical trials if risks of PERV-transmission cannot be excluded through pre-clinical models. An alternative means of overcoming the safety and ethical issues is: willed body donation for scientific research in the case of permanent vegetative status. In this paper the argument will be presented that conducting trials on such bodies with prior consent is preferable to the use of human subjects without lack of brain function.
The Doctor-Patient Relationship: Does it Really Matter?
by J. HughesA large body of literature uses the “doctor-patient relationship” (DPR) is if it were a discrete phenomenon with positive effects on patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes. This paper examines the three assumptions made by this literature: 1) that the DPR is a discrete dichotomous variable, rather than a poorly inter-correlated cluster of attributes; 2) that this cluster of attributes are the most significant predictors of the variables they are purported to effect; and 3) that the beneficial influence of a primary care relationship requires a physician rather than a paraprofessional.
First the components of the DPR addressed in the literature are specified: total physician-patient contact, the comprehensiveness of relationship, patient participation diagnosis and treatment, affectivity of communication, and the intensity of interaction. Since these components are not necessarily co-linear, it is suggested that DPRs are not a discrete, unidimensional variable.
Next, the paper discusses the particular task involved in medical care, and whether these are best carried out by one worker with a medical degree; history-taking; information synthesis; education and counseling; diagnostic and treatment procedures; case-management; and diagnostic and treatment decision-making. The complexity of medical practice, cost-containing managerial efforts at rationalization, and mobilization of non-physician health workers threaten to disaggregate these tasks and assign them to non-physicians.
Next, the paper examines some of the outcomes attributed to the DPR, such as physician and patient satisfaction, compliance with treatment regime, clinical outcomes, and lowered costs. It is argued that the DPR itself appears to make only a minor contribution to determining any of these outcomes.
Finally, the paper asserts that the organized power of the medical profession has supported a black-box approach to the DPR in order to defend physician autonomy against organizational and technological control. A reinterpretation of the DPR literature may suggest that organizational and technological innovations could reduce the role of the physician, and achieve or surpass all the desired outcomes of medicine.
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