Live-blogging from the Transforming Humanity Conference Day 1 Part 1
J. Hughes
2010-12-03 00:00:00



Notes on the afternoon's talks here





The conference is opened by organizers John Shook and Ron Lindsay. Shook is the recent author of The God Debates and Lindsay is the new director of the CFI, and the author of Future Bioethics.




The first talk is delivered by Allen Buchanan, a very prominent bioethicist at Duke Universitty. He is probably most familiar to transhumanists because of his co-authorship of the defense of genetic enhancement From Chance to Choice, but also the recent Beyond Humanity?: The Ethics of Biomedical Enhancement. His talk is titled Breaking Evolution's Chains. He starts by warning that isn't really arguing for germline engineering, although it will sound like he is.

Concerns that people express about human enhancement incldue: a) threats to human nature and relationships, b) unintended consequences, biological and social c) characters concerns (Sandel's giftedness, etc.), d) exacerbation of injustice and inequality, and e) dual use concerns, enhancements being used for control and weapons.

Focusing on biological consequences of germline genetic enhancement, about which people are specifically concerned with the alleged irreversibility of changes, which are not in fact irreversible, and with "playing God". Buchanan is addressing the second concern. Irreversibility is not worth arguing since genetic mods will be reversible, and because unintentional genetic drift is not preferable.

Critics of genetic engineering imply that the human body is perfectly tuned as if it was the product of finely balanced engineering, foolhardy for mere humans to improve on. In fact evolution is a blind walk "a morally blind, fickle, tightly-shackled tinkerer." Buchanan then goes through a list of imperfect designs in humans and animals, and notes that intentional genetic design can overcome such flaws. Intentional gene mods can introduce beneficial lateral gene transfers from both extinct and existing gene lineages.

The critics present a false dichotomy of risky changes versus sticking with our safe and stable genome. Our genetic drift may be leading us to lose valuable genes, and we may have to use bio-enhancement just to preserve the status quo, especially since we are so radically changing our environment. Enhancement is improving capacities, but we may need to enhance fertility to address our being poisoned, enhancement of our skin to avoid skin cancer, and enhancement of healthy longevity to avoid being crushed by aging. Intentional design allows modularity and seamlessness.

The concern about unintentional consequences and dual use applications do have some legitimacy, and we need precautionary heuristics to determine the riskiness of different interventions. For instance it is better to target "downstream" genes in development rather than "upstream;" enhancements should boost people to the top of the existing range of abilities but not beyond it; the enhancement should not be contagious, but containable within the organism; the enhancement should not be of global traits but to a contained module within the organism; effects of enhancement should be reversible (which with genes it will be); the intervention should not require changes to the structure of the body; the causal links of genes and associated traits should be well-understood. We need a lot of this specified cautionary heuristics instead of some global rule like the "precautionary principle."

George's notes on Buchanan's talk here.






Next up is Gavin Enck, a graduate student at the University of Tennessee, speaking on Cognitive Enhancers, Students, and Virtues. He argues that cognitive enhancers like ritalin and modafinil are different from caffeine and laptops in the duration and direction of their effect (which isn't really true - ritalin can diminish concentration for some). He also argues that cognitive enhancers in education are the same as performance enhancement drugs in sports - the use of unfair advantages in violation of the game rules. (But when did students ever sign a contract to not compete stimulated? I know of no school that ever included that in their integrity contract, and it is certainly not observed as part of the general social contract.)

Enck also thinks cognitive enhancement is different from having an advantage on the basis of genetics, social background,educational enrichment and so on, since the student had little control over those factors but can choose to take the pill. (I guess their parents are then morally blameworthy for giving their children unfair social advantages since they violate the obvious social contract that no one will give their kids social and cognitive advantages?)

Enck then turns to spinning out a virtue argument: it is virtuous to abstain from cognitive enhancement. This is a virtue since the goal of education is to "seek true beliefs" (really?! not in the social sciences and humanities), and seeking true beliefs doesn't require chemical assistance (why not? Bodhidharma thought drinking tea would permit him to stay awake during meditation). He gives the analogy of a soldier on and off stimulants: even if he saves more lives stimulated he wasn't virtuous (what!?). He concludes that he is sure that his argument is fundamentally flawed and self-contradictory, with which I (J. Hughes) will have to agree. The first questioner points out that the argument is a "pollution model" which does not plausibly argue that drugs are morally different than caffeine, or that the decision to use an enhancement in order to enable the performance of virtuous acts somehow makes the acts less virtuous. When pressed he acknowledges that the consequences of the act may make enhancement more moral.

George's notes on Enck's talk here.







Maya Sabatello is presenting Controlled Parenthood. Sabatello is a human rights and international law scholar who teaches at NYU's Center for Global Affairs and Columbia University's Human Rights Program. She is also the United States representative of B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, a leftwing group critical of the Israeli occupation. She has worked on children's and disability rights. New reproductive technologies have "shattered" the traditional family as we know it, she argues, adding new ways that parents can be connected to kids. She wants to answer whether reproductive rights include the right to use these new technologies. On the one hand, covering infertility treatments has come to be seen in many health systems as a right for families. Infertility treatment is also a concomitant to the right to contraception and abortion since the use of the latter tio delay fertility often requires use of the former. Gays and lesbians may also require reproductive technologies in order to exercise their right to become parents.

On the other hand there are many critics of including repro tech within repro rights, for religious and psychological reasons. The international legal codes governing repro tech use are riddled with flawed heteronormativity, bias against the disabled, and assumptions about the desirability of gender balance.

Feinberg has argued that parents need to maximize their children's life choices and "open future." This principle might be used to argue against gay parents (since their kids apparently would have less open futures? It also could be used to argue against reproductive rights for disabled parents, poor parents, political dissident parents, fundamentalist parents, etc. And the principle of maximizing an open future can also be used to argue for parents using enhancement repro tech in order to widen their kids choices.)

Many argue for a balance of parental rights to reproductive choice against the child's future interests, but this doesn't take into account the collective rights of the family (which is apparently threatened by the use of repro tech?)

She would like to see a more child-centered approach to governing repro tech. (a) Children can't give informed consent. (b) Children's interests are indivisible from the collective, part of the family. (c) Children's autonomy should take account of whether the selection of genetic characteristics is medically justified, since IVF can increase risk of congenital defects, and parents are supposedly systematically biased against having genetically disabled kids on the basis of false information. The only legitimate decision for parents is whether the repro intervention will increase the likelihood of a child's survival. (She appears to be arguing for the banning of prenatal testing and abortion of disabled fetuses.)

(But no, then she steers back into bioliberal territory.) She notes the concern that repro tech screws up kids' (genetic and cultural) identities. Repro selection supposedly "imposes" an identity on kids who were selected for their gender or ability or as a savior sibling. Studies have shown how show, however, that parents are just as bonded, and kids just as psychologically healthy, when repro techs have been used. In fact, in general, kids produced through artificial repro tech (ART) are better off than their peers. Attempts to prevent repro tech on these basis are flawed.

She is also critical of the idea that repro tech screws up the genetic-cum-emotional ties of parents and kids. In fact, ART children who are not genetically tied to their parents are just as bonded as those who are. The gene donor is not that important to ART kids.

So her conclusion is not pro- or anti-repro-tech-as-repro-rights, but rather that the actual experience of kids being more foregrounded in moral consideration.

George asks whether parents can or should be held liable for not using disability screening or enhancement when they could, since they have an obligation to provide the best possible future. She agrees that parental liability for not using tech is possible, but difficult since the long-term consequences aren't known well.

George's notes on Sabatello's talk here.






In the afternoon we were joined by Jonathan Moreno, a very prominent bioethicist and author of Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense. His talk is on Enhancement and National Security.

He argues that you can't understand the technological progress, and political and social implications of enhancement, without focusing on its innovative use by the military. Stimulants, modafanil, LSD all were extensively used and studied by the military. A substantial amount of psychological and parapsychological research since WWII has been directly or indirectly funded by the military. It is fascinating at looking at the history that military interest in parapsychology and New Age enhancement has been supplanted by brain-machine interfaces, augmented cognition, nanotechnology and pharmaceuticals.

Then he reviewed all kinds of military and civilian research projects, including transcranial magentic stimulation, brain-machine interfaces, imaging, optogenetics (using fiberoptic lines to transmit light to light-sensitized neurons to turn them on and off).

One of the problems the military is confronting with supersoldiers is a naturalistic bias that some soldiers have in their image of what soldiering is supposed to be. They want to be natural men, pitching their natural honor and energy in battle, not cyborgs. (Presumably there are an equal number eager to explore the coolness of being cyborgs though. And in the end, as Moreno notes, naturalists can be convinced that tech is useful if it saves their and their buddies' lives.)

The defense and intelligence communities are also commissioning research on the future of neurotechnologies to figure out the kinds of security threats they may pose.

George's notes on Moreno's talk here.