226-227. “The set of individuals accorded full moral status by Western societies has actually increased, to include men without property or noble descent, women and non-white peoples,” Bostrom writes. x�b```f``9�����q����X��,��� � ӄ� ��t���f�{`y�q����G���ѐ�`qᣢ@Õ�Z��k�jڅW?��`��~�.�Ӧn *��pyr�hPl[T䱻�?x-MCUo�.��{"b�U�X��� Y�h����L�\q-��L�. Roughly around the same time, Chinese researchers announced they had attempted to genetically alter 213 embryos to make them HIV resistant. “Today we have more health, more intelligence and more lifespan than we did 100 years ago, and we’re more compassionate and more empathetic today then we were then,” Hughes says, pointing to a 2011 book by Harvard University psychology professor Steven Pinker, “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.” The book makes the case that as human society has grown richer and more sophisticated, it also has become less violent. So where is all of this new and powerful technology taking humanity? J. Savulescu & N. Bostrom: pp. Opposition also would be likely from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which teaches that the body is sacred and thus must not be altered. Scientists have already identified certain areas in human DNA that seem to control our cognitive functions. 0000008203 00000 n Almost 50 years later, in 2003, two international teams of researchers led by American biologists Francis Collins and Craig Venter succeeded in decoding and reading that blueprint by identifying all of the chemical base pairs that make up human DNA. “There are things that I value and am proud of in my life, like my recent book,” he says. …when we attempt to be something more than human, are we running the risk of trying to become, in some ways, like God, as did Adam and Eve? But this brave new world also is a sterile place, where people rarely feel love, where children are “decanted” in laboratories and families no longer exist, and where happiness is chemically induced. Some transhumanists see a huge upside to making changes at the embryonic level. But many of the same scientists who have hailed CRISPR’s promise, including Doudna, also have warned of its potential dangers. In theory, someone’s “smart genes” could be manipulated to work better, an idea that almost certainly has become more feasible with the recent development of CRISPR. Most scientific experts believe that attempts to clone humans will result in even higher failure rates. Supporters might see new enhancements as a way to help the Muslim world catch up with the West or “at least not get left further behind,” she says. Jewish leaders and thinkers from all of the faith’s major movements probably would favor developments that improve cognitive ability or physical strength. In Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” a scientist creates a new man only to ultimately die while trying to destroy his creation. “CRISPR’s power and versatility have opened up new and wide-ranging possibilities across biology and medicine,” says Jennifer Doudna, a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley and a co-inventor of CRISPR. “The sky’s the limit.”. Advances in computing and nanotechnology have already resulted in the creation of tiny computers that can interface with our brains. First, though, the report explains some of the scientific developments that might form the basis of an enhancement revolution. CRISPR is already dramatically expanding the realm of what is possible in the field of genetic engineering. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. In fact, he argues, you may even have an ethical responsibility to genetically modify your children. For one thing, it is unlikely there are just a few genes or even a few dozen genes that regulate intelligence. 0000013636 00000 n The logic is simple: alter the gene lines in an embryo’s eight or 16 cell stage (to, say, eliminate the gene for Tay-Sachs disease) and that change will occur in each of the resulting person’s trillions of cells – not to mention in the cells of their descendants. 0000007296 00000 n All of the Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – share the belief that men and women have been created, to some extent, in God’s image. These changes, if they occur, will upend some social norms and possibly religious norms as well. 0000003995 00000 n Instead of leaving a person’s physical well-being to the vagaries of nature, supporters of these technologies contend, science will allow us to take control of our species’ development, making ourselves and future generations stronger, smarter, healthier and happier. In recent years, the prospect of advanced genetic engineering has become much more real, largely due to two developments. �������RH�00�&i&�V �����e`��4&&�D� ��j “The goal posts will have moved further down the field, that’s all.”. Some worry that there could be unintended consequences, in part because our understanding of the genome, while growing, is not even close to complete. Human enhancement is just as likely, or even more likely, to mitigate social inequalities than to aggravate them, says Oxford University’s Bostrom, a leader in the transhumanist movement. Enhancement that extends life and makes people more intelligent “would be seen as good because you’d have more time to work on enlightenment and … you could be more effective in helping others,” he says. But as with CRISPR and gene editing, artificial blood could ultimately be used as part of a broader effort at human enhancement. 0000010971 00000 n This code would apply a similar principle of measurability to scientific behaviour that scientists so cherish in their day-to-day pursuit of knowledge. For instance, researchers still do not fully comprehend how people age or fully understand the source of human consciousness. 6 Enhancement. “The enhancement project could allow people who have natural inequalities to be brought up to everyone else’s level,” he says. “Its most plausible use, and most likely use, is the technology of human enhancement,” he said, according to the South China Morning Post. Scientists such as Ian Wilmut (who produced Dolly) and Rudolf Jaenisch (of MIT) have concluded that the most likely cause of abnormal development in cloned animals is … In April 2016, scientists from the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, revealed that they had implanted a chip in the brain of a quadriplegic man. “The risks here of creating greater inequalities seem to be obvious,” says Todd Daly, an associate professor of theology and ethics at Urbana Theological Seminary in Champaign, Ill. “And I’m not convinced that people who get these enhancements will want to make sure everyone else eventually gets them too, because people usually want to leverage the advantages they have.”, For some thinkers, concerns about inequality go much further than merely widening the existing gap between rich and poor. CRISPR’s power and versatility has opened up new and wide-ranging possibilities across biology and medicine. In 2013, for instance, the church-affiliated International Science and Life Congress met in Madrid and issued a declaration that warned that “new human species, artificially manipulated” would create “a real danger to human life as we know it.”, Conservative evangelical Protestant churches also are likely to be wary of treatments or technologies that enhance, rather than heal, people, says Daly of Urbana Theological Seminary. (For data on whether Americans say they would want to use potential technology that involved a brain-chip implant to improve cognitive abilities, see the accompanying survey, see U.S. Public Wary of Biomedical Technologies to ‘Enhance’ Human Abilities.). Some futurists, such as Kurzweil, talk about the use of machines not only to dramatically increase physical and cognitive abilities but to fundamentally change the trajectory of human life and experience. Indeed, like virtually any computer, these cells could receive “software updates” that would allow them to fight a variety of threats, such as a new infection or a specific kind of cancer.1. 0000001096 00000 n “What you might see instead are efforts to assure fair distribution of these benefits, so that can we mitigate any injustices or inequalities that might be caused by this.”. “When you push in one direction, biology usually pushes back.”. “In principle, the way our blood stores oxygen is very limited,” Sandberg says. In Islam, according to Sherine Hamdy, an associate professor of anthropology at Brown University, human enhancement would be viewed with concern by some scholars and leaders and embraced by others. 0000026740 00000 n “So we could dramatically enhance our physical selves if we could increase the carrying capacity of hemoglobin.”, According to Sandberg and others, substantially more oxygen in the blood could have many uses beyond the obvious benefits for athletes. Launch of pioneering Ph.D. program bolsters Harvard’s leadership in quantum science and engineering. We must not stop now. trailer Most scientists say that what is preventing them fromembarking on HGE is the risk that the process will itselfgenerate new mutations, which will be passed on to futuregenerations. Such films explore the promise and pitfalls of exceeding natural human limits. 0000019669 00000 n Medicine is at a turning point, on the cusp of major change as disruptive technologies such as gene, RNA, and cell therapies enable scientists to approach diseases in new ways. Even if scientists find the right genes and “turn them on,” there is no guarantee that people will actually be smarter. “An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense ‘intuitive linear’ view,” writes Kurzweil, an American computer scientist and inventor whose work has led to the development of everything from checkout scanners at supermarkets to text-reading machines for the blind. We are no longer living in a time when we can say we either want to enhance or we don’t. A little more than a year later and an ocean away, scientists with the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) announced that by 2017, they plan to begin giving human subjects synthetic or artificial blood. Right now, cognitive enhancement largely involves drugs that were developed and are prescribed to treat certain brain-related conditions, such as Ritalin for attention deficit disorder or modafinil for narcolepsy. It’s possible cellular immune enhancement is an artifact of the animal models or the experimental system. <]>> 0000001798 00000 n Many thinkers from different disciplines and faith traditions worry that radical changes will lead to people who are no longer either physically or psychologically human. The findings are then used to improve diagnost… These and other medications have been shown in lab tests to help sharpen focus and improve memory. But while modafinil and other drugs are now sometimes used (off label) to improve cognition, particularly among test-cramming students and overwhelmed office workers, the improvements in focus and memory are relatively modest. By Eric Cohen. An even more intriguing possibility involves making genetic changes at the embryonic stage, also known as germline editing. Others, like Boston University bioethicist George Annas, believe Kurzweil is wrong about technological development and say talk of exotic enhancement is largely hype. Other scientists successfully linked a paralyzed man’s brain to a computer chip, which helped restore partial movement of previously non-responsive limbs. This enhancement revolution, if and when it comes, may well be prompted by ongoing efforts to aid people with disabilities and heal the sick. 0000035234 00000 n 142 0 obj <>stream “But the way to cure the problem in this case is to make the world more equal, rather than banning the technology.”. Live for ever: Scientists say they’ll soon extend life ‘well beyond 120’. If we consider human vision, substantial advances started from the time spectacles were developed (possibly in the 13th century), continuing in the last few years, with researchers implanting artificial retinas to giv… “But how can I value the writing of my book if I’ve been cognitively enhanced, and doing such a thing becomes much easier?”, But supporters contend that life still will be meaningful and challenging in a world where enhancement is widespread. 0000012111 00000 n “In the 1970s, we thought that by now there would be millions of people with artificial hearts,” he says. Both of them make up 43% of the total expenditure for medical research. H�l��N�0��}��2�8����Iԅ��� Bq0R��D����I�&=����߈�+�Y�4ǂ3 �),b�A�s%p��b�A��"h�����w� I1H�}4�X�������y�uem��σ)��a=[n,1�}��5��6v���T�vS�ܵԘ�Fx#����C��^��Ŗ{�ڲ� pť-`Ec�ˣ3m{9C����qP���Q��$��QzN���i�>I���E��qĺn�gT�'�k��&花A�$� � 0 �*�3 Writing in Time magazine, Venter, who helped lead the first successful effort to sequence the human genome, warns that “we have little or no knowledge of how (with a few exceptions) changing the genetic code will effect development and the subtlety associated with the tremendous array of human traits.” Venter adds: “Genes and proteins rarely have a single function in the genome and we know of many cases in experimental animals where changing a ‘known function’ of a gene results in developmental surprises.”. ��in�x��, Introduction chapter from Human Enhancement \(Oxford University Press, 2008\), ed. These early and primitive brain-machine interfaces have been used for therapeutic purposes, to help restore some mobility to those with paralysis (as in the example involving the quadriplegic man) and to give partial sight to people with certain kinds of blindness. Right now, most scientists working in the brain-machine-interface field say they are solely focused on healing, rather than enhancing. enhancement and anti-enhancement groupings: transhumanists on one side, who believe that a wide range of enhancements should be developed and that people should be free to use them to transform themselves in quite radical ways; and bioconservatives on the other, who believe that we should not substantially alter human biology or the human condition.¹ 1-22, \(Oxford University Press, 2008\), ed. Of nearly 140 different COVID-19 vaccine candidates, 15 are already in human trials. “Most Jewish bioethicists have no qualms about enhancement, and they see it as extension of the command [in Jewish law] to ‘improve the world,’” says Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, the director of Jewish studies at Arizona State University. �a����r�n��8V�E�$Y���kJ�M��i�����S\�%���`�� _ �j.& It’s also possible that enhanced blood will be genetically engineered rather than synthetically made. The desire to be stronger and smarter, Faggella says, will quickly give way to a quest for a new kind of happiness and fulfillment. In his view, not only should you stop fearing such changes, you should consider them for yourself. For example, over time, there have been biomedical interventions attempting to restore functions that are deficient, such as vision, hearing or mobility. 0000035206 00000 n In the opening chapters of Genesis, the Hebrew Bible depicts a successful incident of human enhancement, when Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because the Serpent told them it would make them “like God.”. “One of the biggest advantages of this approach is that you would not have to worry about your body rejecting your new blood, because it will still come from you,” says Oxford University’s Sandberg. Even the optimistic Sandberg says that enhancing the brain could prove more difficult than some might imagine because changing biological systems can often have unforeseen impacts. When combined with researchers’ growing understanding of the genetic links to various diseases, CRISPR could conceivably help eliminate a host of maladies in people before they are born. Theoretically, it also could create people with gills or webbed hands and feet or even wings – and, as Garreau points out in his book, could lead to “an even greater variety of breeds of humans than there is of dogs.”. (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main “I think a lot of evangelical leaders and pastors will see this as unwise and will call on people to avoid it.” Indeed, Albert Mohler, one of the intellectual leaders of evangelical Christianity’s largest U.S. denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, already has, calling it “a new form of eugenic ideology.”, According to Daly and others, evangelicals’ opposition to enhancement would be based in part on the notion that man should not “play God.” According to Daly, “when we attempt to be something more than human, are we running the risk of trying to become, in some ways, like God, as did Adam and Eve?” He adds, “This is an important issue for Christians that, I think, will help drive the debate for us.”. “This may be the area where serious enhancement first becomes possible, because it’s easier to do many things at the embryonic stage than in adults using traditional drugs or machine implants,” says Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute, a think tank at Oxford University that focuses on “big picture questions about humanity and its prospects.”. “I believe that we’re now seeing the beginning of a paradigm shift in engineering, the sciences and the humanities,” says Natasha Vita-More, chairwoman of the board of directors of Humanity+, an organization that promotes “the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities.”, Still, even some transhumanists who admire Kurzweil’s work do not entirely share his belief that we will soon be living entirely virtual lives. The film Gattaca takes place in a future where non-genetically enhanced humans are considered “invalid.”. However, nanoparticles could be precursors to microscopic machines that could potentially do a variety of tasks for a much longer period of time, ultimately replacing our blood. 1-22)/RD[0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5]/Type/Annot/AP<>>> endobj 109 0 obj <>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text]>>/Type/XObject/BBox[92.9329 127.961 558.317 159.844]/FormType 1>>stream He points to many confident predictions in the last 30 or 40 years that turned out to be unfounded. While gene editing itself is not new, CRISPR offers scientists a method that is much faster, cheaper and more accurate. “I’ve talked to hundreds of people doing this research, and right now everyone is wedded to the medical stuff and won’t even talk about enhancement because they don’t want to lose their research grants,” says Daniel Faggella, a futurist who founded TechEmergence, a market research firm focusing on cognitive enhancement and the intersection of technology and psychology. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Enhancement is troubling, he says, because it could be used to alleviate suffering, which is necessary to work off bad karma (debt from bad deeds and intents committed during a person’s past lives). Already there is talk of implanting a tDCS pacemaker-like device in the brain so recipients do not need to wear electrodes. Many of these advances come from a convergence of more than one type of technology – from genetics and robotics to nanotechnology and information technology. For a very long time, the scientific and bioethical consensus was that we must not do human germ-line modifications—that we should not change gametes and embryos in … WASHINGTON—Saying there’s no way around it at this point, a coalition of scientists announced Thursday that one-third of the world population must die to prevent wide-scale depletion of the planet’s resources—and that humankind needs to figure out immediately how it wants to go about killing off more than 2 billion members of its species. Troubled by the way this law both harmed patients and created a barrier to biomedical innovation, Tania Simoncelli and her colleagues at the ACLU challenged it. 2004. Others speak of “post-humanity,” and predict that dramatic advances in genetic engineering and machine technology may ultimately allow people to become conscious machines – not recognizably human, at least on the outside. Back in the 1980s, we first starting hearing a lot about the promise of genetic engineering and gene therapy, the idea of being able to edit human genetic code and propagate the new code throughout the body. Questions remain about the feasibility of radically changing human physiology, in part because scientists do not yet completely understand our bodies and minds. By Sean Martin 0000013265 00000 n “I mean scientists are already working on … small biological robots made up of small particles of DNA that bind to certain things in the brain and change their chemical composition. More recently, Annas says, “people thought the Human Genome Project would quickly lead to personalized medicine, but it hasn’t.”, Faggella, the futurist who founded TechEmergence, sees a dramatically different future and thinks the real push will be about, in essence, expanding our consciousness, both literally and figuratively. By shrinking the electronic components to microscopic size, researchers have been able to build ever smaller, more powerful and cheaper computers. As a result, today’s iPhone has more than 250,000 times more data storage capacity than the guidance computer installed on the Apollo 11 spacecraft that took astronauts to the moon. “In the last 200 years, technology has made us like gods … and yet people today are roughly as happy as they were before,” he says. In the future, scientists say, brain-machine interfaces will do everything from helping stroke victims regain speech and mobility to successfully bringing people out of deep comas. Genetic engineering also offers promising possibilities, although there are possible obstacles as well. Indeed, they say, it is an extension of what humans have been doing for millennia: using technology to make life better. How scientists plan to clean up plastic waste threatening marine life. What we all have an inescapable moral duty to do is to continue with scientific investigation of gene editing techniques to the point at which we can make a rational choice. We are already living in an age of enhancement. “So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century – it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate).”. “I see no clear expression of opposition coming from any of the [mainline] denominations over this, because they will not view it as threatening,” he says. To increase the food production, Scientists had already made a lot of experiments successfully further to plants, Animals and even the weather, In that case to have a little modification with humans, Plants, The weather will make human lives to last longer than an early death. The next step might be machines that augment various brain functions. Given that the science is still at a somewhat early stage, there has been little public discussion about the possible impacts of human enhancement on a practical level. endstream endobj 110 0 obj <> endobj 111 0 obj <> endobj 112 0 obj <> endobj 113 0 obj <> endobj 114 0 obj >> endobj 115 0 obj <>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text]>>/Type/XObject/BBox[208.269 97.7042 363.493 114.455]/FormType 1>>stream Manipulating this genetic code – a process known as genetic engineering – could allow scientists to produce people with stronger muscles, harder bones and faster brains. “Based on our past experience, we know that most of these things are unlikely to happen in the next 30 or 40 years,” Annas says. The chip can send signals to a sleeve around the man’s arm, allowing him to pick up a glass of water, swipe a credit card and even play the video game Guitar Hero. 0000018836 00000 n In the last few years, for instance, researchers have implanted artificial retinas to give blind patients partial sight. artificial retinas to give blind patients partial sight, announced they had attempted to genetically alter 213 embryos, according to the South China Morning Post, U.S. Public Wary of Biomedical Technologies to ‘Enhance’ Human Abilities, American Voices on Ways Human Enhancement Could Shape Our Future, The scientific and ethical elements of human enhancement, the ability to see and to control individual atoms and molecules, developing and testing nanoparticles that could enter the bloodstream, fundamentally change the trajectory of human life and experience, The Scientific and Ethical Dimensions of Radical Life Extension. Forget 40 being the new 30. But transhumanists predict that a convergence of new technologies will soon allow people to control and fundamentally change their bodies and minds. Kurzweil – who has done more than anyone to popularize the idea that our conscious selves will soon be able to be “uploaded” – “>has been called everything from “freaky” to “a highly sophisticated crackpot.” But in addition to being one of the world’s most successful inventors, he has – if book sales and speaking engagements are any indication – built a sizable following for his ideas. It’s that simple.”, A good example, Vita-More says, is cognitive enhancement. Based on our past experience, we know that most of these things are unlikely to happen in the next 30 or 40 years. These microscopic particles are a far cry from synthetic blood, since they would be used once and for very specific tasks – such as delivering small doses of chemotherapy directly to cancer cells. Happiness is found in marriages, in families, in neighborhoods … None of these are promised by enhancement. Others would oppose enhancements out of a desire “not to change what God has created.”, Other churches and religious traditions, however, probably would not be opposed or even divided on the issue, scholars say. “I think most [evangelical] churches will warn against this,” he says. Having more energy or even more intelligence or stamina is not the end point of the enhancement project, many transhumanists say. There are countless examples where technology has contributed to ameliorate the lives of people by improving their inherent or acquired capabilities. About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. As far back as data goes, a human's life expectancy hovered right around 40 years, no matter where they lived. Three forms of human enhancement currently exist: reproductive, physical, and mental. This includes efforts to manufacture synthetic blood, which to this point have been focused on therapeutic goals. ... of the pro-life … Both basic research and translational and applied research are interconnected. endstream endobj 116 0 obj <> endobj 117 0 obj <>/Font<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB]/ExtGState<>>> endobj 118 0 obj <> endobj 119 0 obj <> endobj 120 0 obj <>stream 0000007686 00000 n “To date, I haven’t seen any clear evidence to support ADE or ERD, but it’s something you want to be aware of for sure,” Burton says. As these examples show, many of the fantastic technologies that until recently were confined to science fiction have already arrived, at least in their early forms. “As long as we are still human, these things will be important.”, Furthermore, an enhanced life will still contain challenges and limits, just different ones, says Ronald Cole-Turner, a professor of theology and ethics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, which is associated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Synthetic white blood cells also could potentially be programmed. To those who support human enhancement, many of whom call themselves transhumanists, technological breakthroughs like these are springboards not only to healing people but to changing and improving humanity. Kurzweil is not the only one who thinks we are on the cusp of an era when human beings will be able to direct their own evolution.