News of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
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Editor: Marcelo Rinesi - mrinesi(at)fibertel.com.ar
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The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) was founded in 2004 by philosopher Nick Bostrom and bioethicist James J. Hughes to support and promote thinkers examining the social implications of scientific and technological advances, especially human enhancement technologies. The IEET publishes the Journal of Evolution (JET) and Technology.
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CONTENTS:
News from the Front
TRANSVISION 2006: CALL FOR PROPOSALS
IEET CONFERENCE 2006: CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Aubrey de Grey in the Chronicle of Higher Education
IEET Fellows for 2005-2006
Events
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NEWS FROM THE FRONT
A MESSAGE FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
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I feel like a man lost in the desert rescued by an ice cream truck.
That’s how it feels to have our new Assistant Director Marcelo Rinesi working day and night on straightening out the three years’ backlog of WTA To Do items. This week we are putting the finishing touches on the new IEET website, which will facilitate the rapid collection, posting and dissemination of IEET Fellows’ writings, building our presence in the noosphere. Marcelo has been contacting local WTA activists to formalize and support their relationship to the WTA. And all this comes just in time as I’m preparing for a whirlwind tour of Atlanta, Zagreb, Prague, Cracow, Budapest and Miami speaking and building our movement.
Please make plans now to join us in Stanford, California May 26-28, 2006 for the IEET’s inaugural conference on Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights, and then in Helsinki, Finland August 17-19, 2006 for the WTA’s annual TransVision (TV06) conference. The IEET conference will help advance our case for human enhancement in the political, legal and ethical spheres, and the TV06 conference will focus on the practical technologies being developed today to make us smarter, healthier and more able.
Life-extension researcher Aubrey de Grey noted, correctly, in the great profile of his work in the Chronicle of Higher Education this week [http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i10/10a01401.htm] that his work promoting anti-aging science probably saves 100,000 lives a week. But Aubrey does not work in isolation. He has us at side. You also saves lives, and improve the world, with your promotion of transhumanism. By linking together all your efforts through the transhumanist movement, in all your diverse spheres, from talking to friends and blogging, to making art and writing fiction, to lab experiments, to organizing meetings and giving money, you inspire people to envision that a radically different world is possible, that our lives can be better than just OK. Keep up your good work and I expect I’ll see you soon.
J. Hughes
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TRANSVISION 2006: CALL FOR PAPERS
TransVision 2006: Emerging Technologies of Human Enhancement
August 17-19, 2006
Helsinki, Finland @ University of Helsinki, Main building
Prospective presenters are invited to submit proposals for presentations or full papers for TransVision 2006, the 8th annual conference organized by the World Transhumanist Association (Finland chapter).
For all the information related to the conference, check http://transhumanismi.org/tv06/
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IEET CONFERENCE CALL FOR PROPOSALS
“Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights”
May 26-28, 2006
Stanford University Law School, Stanford, California
http://ieet.org/HEHR/
Organized by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Co-Sponsors*: Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences
*Sponsors list in formation
Much of the criticism of enhancement technologies has focused on the potential for increased discrimination against women, people of color, the poor, the differently enabled, or “unenhanced” humans. Some bioethicists have proposed a global treaty to ban enhancement technologies as “crimes against humanity.”
Defenders of enhancement argue that the use of biotechnologies is a fundamental human right, inseparable from the defense of bodily autonomy, reproductive freedom, free expression and cognitive liberty.
While acknowledging real risks from genetic, prosthetic, and cognitive enhancement, defenders of enhancement believe that bans on the consensual use of new technologies would be an even greater threat to human rights.
Health care, disability and reproductive rights activists have argued that access to technology empowers full and equal participation in society. On the same grounds a generalized right to “technological empowerment” might connect defenders of enhancement technologies with disability activists, reproductive rights activists with would-be parents seeking fertility treatments, the transgendered with aesthetic body modifiers, drug policy reformers and anti-aging researchers with advocates for dignity in dying.
Yet, what, if any, limits should be considered to human enhancement? On what grounds can citizens be prevented from modifying their own genes or brains? How far should reproductive rights be extended? Might enhancement reduce the diversity of humanity in the name of optimal health? Or, conversely, might enhancements inspire such an unprecedented diversity of human beings that they strain the limits of liberal tolerance and social solidarity? Can we exercise full freedom of thought if we can’t exercise control over our own brains using safe, available technologies? Can we ensure that enhancement technologies are safe and equitably distributed? When are regulatory efforts simply covert, illiberal value judgments?
Between the ideological extremes of absolute prohibition and total laissez-faire that dominate popular discussions of human enhancement there are many competing agendas, hopes and fears. How can the language of human rights guide us in framing the critical issues? How will enhancement technologies transform the demands we make of human rights?
With the Human Enhancement and Human Rights conference we seek to begin a conversation with the human rights community, bioethicists, legal scholars, and political activists about the relationship of enhancement technologies to human rights, cognitive liberty and bodily autonomy. It is time to begin the defense of human rights in the era of human enhancement.
Examples of topics that might be addressed:
Day One: Human Enhancement and Control of the Body
For instance, papers might address:
- How much morphological diversity can the polity sustain?
- Animal-human chimeric enhancement and animal rights
- Reproductive cloning: Irrelevant, futile or an important battle?
- Disability rights and cyborg assistive technology
- Life extension and the right to die: Two sides of the same coin?
- Germline engineering and the consent of the future generations
- Procreative liberty and the genetic enhancement of children
- The medicalization of transgenderism
- Cosmetic surgery and future body modification
Day Two: Cognitive Enhancement Technology
For instance, papers might address:
- Enhancing capacities for citizenship
- Social equality and cognitive enhancement
- Freedom of thought as a basis for rights to use cognitive enhancement
- Psychoactive drug law reform
- Religious liberty and entheogens
- Regulating the risks of neural implants and brain machines
- The myth of the “authentic self”
- Challenges to human personhood and citizenship from cognitive enhancement
- Use of technologies of personality modification in criminal rehabilitation
Instructions for Submitting Presentations
Include all of the following information in a two-page proposal for your presentation
- Title of presentation
- Type of presentation: paper, panel, poster, workshop
- Abstract (25-100 words) for inclusion in the conference program
- Media to be used and audiovisual equipment needed (if any).
- Designated contact person (only one per proposal)
- Complete name, title, organization, address, phone and fax numbers, and e-mail address for each session presenter
- Brief biographical sketch of each presenter
Please submit your proposal electronically to the conference chair James Hughes at director@ieet.org
The presenters of accepted proposals will need to pre-register for the conference by April 15, 2006 at the reduced rate of $100 in order to be included in the program.
For more information please contact the conference chair James Hughes Ph.D., Public Policy Studies, Trinity College, Williams 229B, 300 Summit St., Hartford CT 06106, director@ieet.org, (860) 428-1837.
Timeline for Presenters
Proposals due by: January 1, 2006
Notification of acceptance: March 1, 2006
Deadline for pre-registration by presenters: April 15, 2006
Publications
You may submit your full paper for consideration for publication in the Journal of Evolution and Technology. A special issue on Human Enhancement and Human Rights will be published in the Spring of 2006 [http://jetpress.org/#Rights] but papers will also be welcome on these topics at any time.
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AUBREY DE GREY PROFILED IN THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i10/10a01401.htm
A long profile of IEET Fellow and WTA award recipient Aubrey de Grey and his work on Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education October 28, 2006. The review is very positive, describing the growing and grudging acceptance by biomedical researchers of Aubrey’s ideas on stopping aging: “de Grey is a serious, thoughtful, sincere, prolific, even brilliant researcher and thinker who seems to have devoted every last ounce of his intellect to conquering the single biggest medical menace facing mankind. Along the way, he has acquired plenty of supporters and detractors - and gained the respect of some of the top scientists in the world.”
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NEW (AND RETURNING) IEET FELLOWS
The IEET is honored to announce the new IEET Fellows: Andy Miah, Marshall Brain, Douglas Rushkoff, Wrye Sententia and Riccardo Campa, as well as the return of fellows Ramez Naam, Mike Treder, Aubrey de Grey, Jamais Cascio, Russell Blackford, Dale Carrico and Jeff Medina.
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CALL FOR PAPERS: HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE OF JET
One of the most fundamental demands of liberal democracies is that sane, adult citizens have a right to control their own bodies and minds. Yet, we systematically contravene bodily and cognitive self-determination on a variety of grounds. The arguments for restricting human enhancement and genetic self-determination are similar to those deployed against reproductive choice, sexual freedom, free speech and choice in dying.
Both supporters and opponents of human enhancement technologies use human rights discourse to frame their arguments, even as our definition of “human” begins to erode.
How will emerging technologies challenge the paradigm of human rights?
Do we need a new post-human rights model to understand the challenge of our emerging transhuman polity? Does the idea of equal rights for humans, posthumans and machines make any sense? How can we preserve political equality for both humans and posthumans? For the Human Rights issue JET wants submissions from thinkers willing to point out and analyze unrecognized challenges, or lay out proactive, preventative plans for neutralizing threats to freedom before they become real.
We are open to all articles relating to the theme, though target issues include the following:
* How should transhumans, posthumans, or machine intelligences
respond to the inevitable challenges to their rights?
* What is the legal and moral case to allow terminally ill patients
to choose euthanasia?
* Should society let mentally deteriorating patients choose cryonic
suspension early?
* To what extent should the FDA be allowed to regulate supplements
and cognitive function enhancement drugs?
* Does the concept of human essence or dignity have relevance in a
world with technologies that can radically change the human body
and mind?
Contributions should be between 2000 and 10,000 words. Authors are encouraged to discuss their ideas with the editor J. Hughes at:
james.hughes(at)trincoll.edu
Manuscripts should be prepared according to the JET guidelines and be submitted by December 1, 2005. Please email completed manuscripts to JET editor J. Hughes at the above email address.
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EVENTS
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- ExtroBritannia at the London MCM Expo - Oct 29-30, London
http://tinyurl.com/8zop6
- AAAI Fall 2005 Symposium on Machine Ethics - Arlington VA USA -
11/3-6/2005
http://tinyurl.com/8qyfv
- Immortality Inst - “The Human Brain” - Atlanta, GA - Sat. Nov. 5, 2005 http://tinyurl.com/ase7m
- Forum on freedom of scientific research in the European Union - Nov 9-10, Brussels
http://tinyurl.com/dvza9
- InterCultural Bioethics: Asia and the West - Turkey - Nov 14-18, 2005 http://tinyurl.com/aw2jz
- BBC “Material World” Recording: Bioethics and Gene Therapy - Nov 15, Newcastle Upon Tyne http://tinyurl.com/8ujuq
- Brave New Britain: New Technologies and the Future of Human Nature - Nov 15, London
http://tinyurl.com/8gxg9
- Population-Level Bioethics conference - Nov 17-18, Harvard http://tinyurl.com/7r4bx
- Citizenship and Biopolitics in the 21st Century - Nov 21, Prague http://tinyurl.com/dxz8a