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If yes, how much and who decides?
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If yes, how much and who decides?
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Robo-quandary
Marquette professor looks at growing debate of using technology to enhance humans
We can't decide whether to embrace or strangle our inner cyborg.
The "Bionic Man/Bionic Woman" in us gives thanks for microchips that help our damaged bodies, pills that keep our brains happy and focused, Palm Pilots that put information in our hands and eye implants that improve our vision.
But will we welcome a future that includes: designer children, their brains 20% smarter and wiped clean of the most violent impulses; older adults living 20 years longer than today; wireless links connecting our brains to e-mail transmitters; perhaps even human eyes endowed with night vision?
Quietly, technology that remedies the failings of our bodies and provides us with high-speed information might be leading us to the brink of a new and ethically complex frontier - one in which we have the ability to redesign ourselves and our children.
This is the brave new world Marquette University assistant philosophy professor Keith A. Bauer examines in a forthcoming paper titled "Wired Patients," due to be published this year in the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics.
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Such technologies raise possibilities that go beyond medical need and into the realm of human enhancement. Enhancement, Bauer writes, "brings to mind sci-fi images of cyborgs with superior physical and mental powers. But we don't have to imagine some possible future to see how human function can be enhanced with microchips and biosensors."
"We already have cyborgs. It's not a question of science fiction. It's science fact," said Brian Kopell, an assistant professor of neurosurgery at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Wauwatosa.
>
Transhumanism debate
Although many Americans don't realize it, a major debate is under way over transhumanism - a movement that endorses using new technology to expand the capabilities of the human mind and body.
Supporters say that we've always sought ways to extend life and improve the human species and that to do otherwise would be to cede our destiny to the slowly grinding wheels of evolution.
As James Hughes, executive director of the non-profit Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, put it: "We're not doing anything natural these days. Modern life is entirely different from what life evolved to be. We evolved to wander the savanna for four hours at a stretch.
"You can either try to live as if we're still on the savanna, or try to design the human body to live in the circumstances we're in now."
Opponents, however, say that if we seek to redesign ourselves and our children, we will be widening the gap between haves and have-nots, changing the lives of future generations and assuming God-like powers.
"Many of these new technologies are very powerful and will allow us to manipulate the natural world in ways that we've never seen before," said Richard Hayes, executive director of the non-profit Center for Genetics and Society. "The question is: What sorts of manipulations contribute to the social well-being and what kinds do not?"
Hayes said nations must decide which technologies to support, which to weigh carefully and "which ones have consequences that are so socially pernicious that we want to take them off the table." In particular, Hayes is wary of technology that would let parents manipulate the genes in eggs or sperm to "design a child like we would design some kind of kitchen furniture."
The debate about where technology might be leading us is in one sense familiar, in another quite new.
"Almost always, new developments evoke horror and fear and gradually acceptance. We saw that with in vitro fertilization and organ transplantation," said Robyn S. Shapiro, director of the Center for the Study of Bioethics at the Medical College. "This is a little bit different. This is really tinkering with the basic building blocks of who we are."
Such changes, she adds, raise the specter of eugenics, the discredited notion of improving the human race by restricting reproduction to only those people with traits deemed "desirable."
Complex questions
But transhumanism raises some ethically complex questions. Scientists have learned much about brain characteristics associated with violence. Should they pursue therapies that would allow doctors to cleanse a child's brain of a dangerously violent predisposition?
In his paper, Bauer avoids aligning himself with either the transhumanists or their opponents, focusing instead on explaining the issue and mapping out what he calls "the moral topography."
"I haven't drawn the conclusion that this is going to lead to Utopia," he says. "I haven't drawn any conclusion that this will lead to dystopia. But it's fascinating. We're on the cusp of something significant here."
In medicine, Bauer writes, the use of microchips and biosensors offers intriguing trade-offs. We can make health care more proactive by allowing doctors to monitor problems before a major event such as a heart attack, but then we might alter the doctor-patient relationship and risk losing our ability to protect confidential information.
"We should not lose sight of the fact that, as we transform the human body internally with microchips and biosensors," he writes, "we also transform externally how individuals interact and live in the world."
Bauer, 42, followed an unusual path to the debate over transhumanism. After dropping out of his high school in Indiana, he painted houses, worked as a radio disc jockey and finally finished high school. He went on to college (Mary Washington University) and then graduate studies (the universities of Virginia Commonwealth, Duquesne and Tennessee).
Bauer's years in radio gave him an interest in communication technology, while his studies in philosophy and clinical social work led him to the fields of health care and bioethics. The subject of transhumanism brought together these interests and Bauer's fondness for science fiction, especially the works of Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury.
Today, concepts once viewed as science fiction - using genetics to enhance ourselves and our children - appear on the horizon.
"Among the biggest concerns I have are germline modifications, modifications that will be inherited," Bauer said. "I'm not just modifying myself, but I'm modifying the species."
Government efforts to control such technologies, he warned, might be messy and complicated, undermined by a polarized debate at home and economic competition with countries abroad. Also, regulatory bodies must decide whether to debate these questions only when a controversial technology such as IQ-boosting is being researched, or at an earlier point when a benign technology first raises the possibility of something more outlandish.
At the Medical College, Shapiro said it is best to raise and discuss ethical questions "as soon as possible."
"Sadly," she added, "we have to say that almost always law and ethics lag behind advances in the sciences."
Marquette professor looks at growing debate of using technology to enhance humans
We can't decide whether to embrace or strangle our inner cyborg.
The "Bionic Man/Bionic Woman" in us gives thanks for microchips that help our damaged bodies, pills that keep our brains happy and focused, Palm Pilots that put information in our hands and eye implants that improve our vision.
But will we welcome a future that includes: designer children, their brains 20% smarter and wiped clean of the most violent impulses; older adults living 20 years longer than today; wireless links connecting our brains to e-mail transmitters; perhaps even human eyes endowed with night vision?
Quietly, technology that remedies the failings of our bodies and provides us with high-speed information might be leading us to the brink of a new and ethically complex frontier - one in which we have the ability to redesign ourselves and our children.
This is the brave new world Marquette University assistant philosophy professor Keith A. Bauer examines in a forthcoming paper titled "Wired Patients," due to be published this year in the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics.
>
Such technologies raise possibilities that go beyond medical need and into the realm of human enhancement. Enhancement, Bauer writes, "brings to mind sci-fi images of cyborgs with superior physical and mental powers. But we don't have to imagine some possible future to see how human function can be enhanced with microchips and biosensors."
"We already have cyborgs. It's not a question of science fiction. It's science fact," said Brian Kopell, an assistant professor of neurosurgery at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Wauwatosa.
>
Transhumanism debate
Although many Americans don't realize it, a major debate is under way over transhumanism - a movement that endorses using new technology to expand the capabilities of the human mind and body.
Supporters say that we've always sought ways to extend life and improve the human species and that to do otherwise would be to cede our destiny to the slowly grinding wheels of evolution.
As James Hughes, executive director of the non-profit Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, put it: "We're not doing anything natural these days. Modern life is entirely different from what life evolved to be. We evolved to wander the savanna for four hours at a stretch.
"You can either try to live as if we're still on the savanna, or try to design the human body to live in the circumstances we're in now."
Opponents, however, say that if we seek to redesign ourselves and our children, we will be widening the gap between haves and have-nots, changing the lives of future generations and assuming God-like powers.
"Many of these new technologies are very powerful and will allow us to manipulate the natural world in ways that we've never seen before," said Richard Hayes, executive director of the non-profit Center for Genetics and Society. "The question is: What sorts of manipulations contribute to the social well-being and what kinds do not?"
Hayes said nations must decide which technologies to support, which to weigh carefully and "which ones have consequences that are so socially pernicious that we want to take them off the table." In particular, Hayes is wary of technology that would let parents manipulate the genes in eggs or sperm to "design a child like we would design some kind of kitchen furniture."
The debate about where technology might be leading us is in one sense familiar, in another quite new.
"Almost always, new developments evoke horror and fear and gradually acceptance. We saw that with in vitro fertilization and organ transplantation," said Robyn S. Shapiro, director of the Center for the Study of Bioethics at the Medical College. "This is a little bit different. This is really tinkering with the basic building blocks of who we are."
Such changes, she adds, raise the specter of eugenics, the discredited notion of improving the human race by restricting reproduction to only those people with traits deemed "desirable."
Complex questions
But transhumanism raises some ethically complex questions. Scientists have learned much about brain characteristics associated with violence. Should they pursue therapies that would allow doctors to cleanse a child's brain of a dangerously violent predisposition?
In his paper, Bauer avoids aligning himself with either the transhumanists or their opponents, focusing instead on explaining the issue and mapping out what he calls "the moral topography."
"I haven't drawn the conclusion that this is going to lead to Utopia," he says. "I haven't drawn any conclusion that this will lead to dystopia. But it's fascinating. We're on the cusp of something significant here."
In medicine, Bauer writes, the use of microchips and biosensors offers intriguing trade-offs. We can make health care more proactive by allowing doctors to monitor problems before a major event such as a heart attack, but then we might alter the doctor-patient relationship and risk losing our ability to protect confidential information.
"We should not lose sight of the fact that, as we transform the human body internally with microchips and biosensors," he writes, "we also transform externally how individuals interact and live in the world."
Bauer, 42, followed an unusual path to the debate over transhumanism. After dropping out of his high school in Indiana, he painted houses, worked as a radio disc jockey and finally finished high school. He went on to college (Mary Washington University) and then graduate studies (the universities of Virginia Commonwealth, Duquesne and Tennessee).
Bauer's years in radio gave him an interest in communication technology, while his studies in philosophy and clinical social work led him to the fields of health care and bioethics. The subject of transhumanism brought together these interests and Bauer's fondness for science fiction, especially the works of Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury.
Today, concepts once viewed as science fiction - using genetics to enhance ourselves and our children - appear on the horizon.
"Among the biggest concerns I have are germline modifications, modifications that will be inherited," Bauer said. "I'm not just modifying myself, but I'm modifying the species."
Government efforts to control such technologies, he warned, might be messy and complicated, undermined by a polarized debate at home and economic competition with countries abroad. Also, regulatory bodies must decide whether to debate these questions only when a controversial technology such as IQ-boosting is being researched, or at an earlier point when a benign technology first raises the possibility of something more outlandish.
At the Medical College, Shapiro said it is best to raise and discuss ethical questions "as soon as possible."
"Sadly," she added, "we have to say that almost always law and ethics lag behind advances in the sciences."
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