Perfect humans are not the goal

Just a brief post to clear up a misconception. Proponents of human enhancement sometimes are portrayed as if we want to create a race of perfect human beings, or bring everyone closer to an ideal. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

The truth of it is summed up nicely by Kyle Munterick of IEET (See original article by Kyle Munkittrick, titled ‘No concept of “Perfect” in transhumanism’ ):

“Transhumanists and technoprogressives don’t imagine or want a perfect world, they imagine, want, and work towards a world with fewer problems and more choices.”

Enhancement is very much a personal choice – what one person may see as an enhancement, another person may see as detrimental. Proponents of human enhancement simply seek to let every person decide for themselves what they should be.

Furthermore, as I’ve argued previously,  it’s actually the opponents of human enhancement that seek to ensure a race of perfect humans. They have a certain idea of what constitutes a perfect human (and it usually is very close to what we already are, with the possible exception perhaps of better health), and seek to ensure that even those who don’t agree with them can never access enhancements. They use loaded phrases like ‘humans are meant to have X’ or ‘without Y, we would no longer be human‘ to construct their perfect human. And the fact they support therapies (reducing disabilities), but not enhancements (adding abilities), proves conclusively that they have a concept of a perfect human being.

In their mind, a perfect human has a genome based on the random reassignment of two (no more or no fewer) other genomes. A perfect human is entirely biological, with no bionics or cybernetics of any kind (except if such are needed for ‘therapeutic use’). A perfect human has two arms and two legs but no wings, no tail, no gills and no scales. A perfect human can only be either male or female, and reproduces only with the opposite sex (and doesn’t reproduce too young or too old). A perfect human has to slip into a state of semi-consciousness every day for approximately eight hours (no more, no less). A perfect human takes a long time to learn new things and eventually forgets. With each passing year, a perfect human gets older (not too quickly, not too slowly) and no later than a century after birth (but not too much earlier), a perfect human dies.

Most proponents of human enhancement don’t just replace this pathetic and outdated idea of perfection with another. We do away with the concept entirely. It’s your body, don’t let anyone else tell you what you can’t do to it. Become what you want to become so that you can be what you want to be. That is human enhancement.

Making a real-world Pandora

While many movie-goers were saddened as they left the world of Pandora and came back to Earth, I was not. Instead, as I left the cinema after seeing James Cameron’s Avatar, I was instead happily musing about how the beautiful flora and fauna of Pandora could be created. For real. Here, on Earth.

For me, I was most amazed by the prevalence of bioluminescence among the plants, and even animals, of Pandora. The bioluminescence is especially obvious with the Trees of Souls and Tree of Voices, but nearly all plants and fungi seem to have bioluminescent properties. Bioluminescence is obvious in some Pandoran insects and lizards, and the sentient Na’vi also have lines of blue photophores on their skin.

A tank of firefly squid (Watasenia scintillans) caught off the coast of Namerikawa, Japan.

Fortunately, bioluminescence is not something entirely alien. Many organisms on our own planet are also bioluminescent, though most bioluminescent animals live in the deep ocean (though exceptions, such as glowworms and fireflies, are well-known). Bioluminescence has evolved in insects, molluscs (especially squid), fish, jellyfish, fungi, plankton and bacteria, but to my knowledge no naturally bioluminescent plant species exist on Earth.

I had to say ‘naturally’  in the last sentence of the above paragraph because in recent times, many animals and plants have been genetically engineered to express the firefly (Photinus pyralis) enzyme called luciferase. This enzyme, in the presence of its substrate (luciferin) produces a yellow-green bioluminescence. There are also many other natural and mutated enzymes, allowing for bioluminescence with colours of red , orange, yellow, green, blue and even violet.

Bioluminescence of the bitter oyster fungus (Panellus stipticus) found near Springdale, Wisconsin, USA.

With advances in the knowledge of the chemistry and biology of bioluminescence, genetically-engineered bioluminescent plants and animals may become as commonplace on Earth as on Pandora. As very efficient solar-powered lights (in addition to being very attractive), gardens might be lit by the very plants that inhabit them. We might make animals that can use bioluminescence as a signal, like pets that literally light up when they see their owner. The bioluminescent magic seen in Avatar is entirely feasible!

Na’vi are human-like in appearance, but are much taller (almost 3m tall) and have some alien characteristics – blue striped skin, pointy and mobile pinna (external part of the ear), catlike tails and (with the exception of the avatars) only four digits on their hands and feet. They also have larger (and yellow) eyes compared to human proportions, flatter noses and slimmer physiques. It’s also mentioned in the film that the Na’vi are stronger and have hardier bones. Each of these characteristics is at least biologically plausible, and so it might be possible to turn a human into something resembling very closely a Na’vi.

Some humans have traits that make them more Na’vi-like than others, and with research the genetic reasons for this difference could yield ways to make a human into a Na’vi. Pituitary gigantism (causing greatly increased growth hormone) can produce humans with heights of up to 2.7m, and it’s possible that a similar pathway can be used for genetic enhancement of skeletal height without the associated health issues of gigantism. Enhancement of bone strength might also solve some of these health problems, and I foresee that stronger bones and muscles will be a desirable trait for future human enhancement (and therefore will be well-researched). Finally, the fact that some humans naturally have very slender physiques suggest the trait might be able to be genetically engineered, and narrow waists, though historically achieved through the use of corsets, should also prove amenable to genetic modification.

An okopipi, or blue poison dart frog (Dendrobates azureus), native to Suriname and Brazil (by ucumari on flickr.com)

Inspiration for more alien features of the Na’vi was found in the animals of Earth, and perhaps we might be able to borrow from these animals genomes. As the very distant ancestors of humans had a tail, restoring one should prove relatively simple also. Animals with mobile pointed pinna exist and are well known (such as the common cat), so with some research, humans could be engineered to have similar. Reducing the number of digits might be more difficult, as five digits is the normal for most, but fortunately not all, limbed vertebrates (and, as the avatars still had five digits, reducing digits to four might not be desirable). Blue skin should be possible, though blue pigment molecules are rare, but one could perhaps be engineered and human skin engineered to produce it instead of the red and brown pigment molecules pheomelanin and eumelanin). Similarly for yellow iris pigmentation (either that, or contact lenses).

Creating the other animals of Pandora, however, might prove more difficult. The other animals seem to mostly be hexapods; Direhorses, Ikran, Thanator and Titanothere all have six legs. The base body plan for limbed vertebrates on Earth is four limbs, and there are no six-limbed vertebrates from which any inspiration can be drawn. Nonetheless, there is nothing biologically implausible about hexapodal mammals and reptiles, so one day such creatures could be created.

The Ikran (also known as Mountain Banshee) could prove the most problematic to engineer. Earth’s gravity is greater than that of Pandora, and the musculature required for powered flight is therefore much greater (and heavier). Because of this, flying creatures on Earth are seldom very large, with the largest ever to exist (Argentavis) weighing only around 100kg (certainly less than the mass of a Na’vi) and a wingspan of 6-8m (the Ikran wingspan is 14m). Though with great re-engineering of muscle tissue, strong but light muscles could circumvent this issue. But don’t even get me started on a Toruk.

So, finally I want to mention perhaps the most imaginative aspect of Pandoran biology – the entire ecosystem of Pandora is seemingly connected into one super-consciousness, termed Eywa. The roots of plants carry signals from one tree to another, and animals (including the Na’vi) have a ‘queue’ (or many queues) extending from the back of their neck, which they can use to connect to other animals (allowing sensory and motor systems to merge) or to certain plants, like the Tree of Souls and Tree of Voices, allowing memories to be accessed and other functions.

A weeping willow (Salix × sepulcralis) photographed with an infra-red filter in Washington D.C, USA (by zachstern on flickr.com)

An analogy is drawn by Dr Augustine between the network of plants on Pandora and a network of neurons in a brain. While this might be valid in terms of numbers of connections, the electrochemical signals used by neurons only travel at a maximum velocity of 120m/s. If the network of Pandora uses similar mechanisms, it would take many minutes for signals to propagate across even a small section of forest and perhaps hours to reach the entire landmass. This is far too slow to produce any coherent or conscious thought. I’m sure there’s some sort of fantastical explanation, as I’ve heard talk of psionic energy or something similarly unreal, allowing for light-speed communication. That might also explain how the animals of Pandora were connected to this network at all times without being tethered to a tree (but simultaneously makes the queue rather redundant as a form of communication).

Anyway, the biological plausibility of interfacing two animals with a queue together is much higher. The queue seems to extend from the base of the head, near the brainstem, which makes it another extension to the central nervous system, secondary to the spinal cord (it occurs to me that extending the spinal cord into the tail, and using that as a queue, might be easier to engineer). This could feasibly allow any motor signals to be sent via either the spinal cord or the queue depending on what is being controlled (e.g. the Na’vi’s hands or the Ikran’s wings), and for any sensory information to be relayed from the brain to the other organism (e.g. the Ikran’s wings to the Na’vi’s brain). A very strong Tsahaylu (connection) between two Na’vi is said to occur during mating. While I’m sure feeling what your mate does and influencing their actions would, as a reciprocal form of communication, lead to totally awesome lovemaking, I doubt that this would lead to any merging of consciousness, as this distances between the brains would be too great for coherent thoughts. Nonetheless, perhaps sharing of memories and feelings could occur, though perhaps not complete thoughts.

I don’t think it will be possible to recreate every aspect of Pandora in the near future. Floating mountains would likely be a significant geoengineering problem for many years to come. And low gravity

I think the sadness and even weltschmerz experienced by those fans of Avatar is entirely justified, but being dissatisfied with reality is nothing new to transhumanists. But I just want to say this: if you want to live in a world like Pandora, then why not go ahead and make this world (or a small section of it) just like it! If you want to be a Na’vi, then why not engineer yourself to be just like one! Go study biology: plant and animal genetic engineering, bioluminescence, biomechanics, neuroscience and so on. Are you prepared to work toward making a better planet, a better ecosystem, and better people?

Super-strong genetically-engineered monkeys

Scientists from Ohio State University and the Center for Gene Therapy at Ohio’s Nationwide Children’s Hospital have successfully demonstrated the genetic enhancement of muscle growth in monkeys (Kota et al. 2009).

In brief, the researchers used a viral vector (AAV1, adeno-associated virus 1) containing the human gene for follistatin, a glycoprotein which encourages muscle growth (by blocking myostatin). Researchers injected this vector into the right quadriceps muscle of macaque monkeys, thereby permanently genetically modifying that muscle to produce more follistatin.

Isolated quadriceps muscles from the left-hand unmodified (control) side and the right-hand genetically-modified (CMV-FS) side of a macaque monkey.

As expected, muscle size and strength increased over a 3 month period after treatment, and was maintained at that enhanced level for a year (the effects of the enhancement likely would have lasted for the rest of the monkeys’ lives, but the monkeys were killed after a year for autopsy). Quadriceps circumference increased from around 16-17cm to about 21cm. In addition, twitch strength (force produced by rapid muscle contraction) increased by about 25% and tetanic strength (force produced by sustained contraction) by 12.5%. This increase was not correlated with any change to other organs or hormones.

As always, there are a few caveats. Firstly, drugs were used to suppress the immune systems of the monkeys for two weeks prior to the injections,  in order to increase the efficiency of the viral vector and to avoid immune reactions (the immune system attacks viruses, even relatively harmless ones like AAV).

Second, mystatin inhibition can reduce the elasticity of tendons (Mendias et al, 2007), increasing risk of injury. My solution was to limit the modifications of myostatin to myocytes (muscle cells), rather than tenocytes (tendon cells). This most recent study attempted to do just that, by using a muscle creatine kinase promoter to control expression of the inserted follistatin trangene (therefore, only cells that also express creatine kinase would express the follistatin insert, and I assume tenocytes don’t express much creatine kinase). With this extra limitation, however, the researchers did not see as dramatic increases in muscle growth as those I presented above (which were from a vector that would be expressed in any cell).

Nonetheless, this study shows a successful localised insertion of a transgene in monkeys and a permanent increase in muscle size and overall strength, without any changes to other organs or levels of testosterone (or other hormones). I’m sure a good workout at the gym has some benefits to health (specifically cardiac health) that wouldn’t be mimicked by changes to follistatin or myostatin, but regardless this is another step towards super-strength and other enhancements.

Olfactory enhancement

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, I’ve been busy. In the meantime, here is a draft of a post I’d written a while ago about enhancing the human sense of smell:

Compared to that of most other mammals, the human sense of smell is generally considered pitiful. It is estimated that dogs can smell up to hundreds or thousands of times better than humans. Why is this?

While smelling is a useful way to investigate the world, it’s not quite as useful as vision or even hearing. With a brain big enough to process the information, it makes more sense to dedicate resources to visual and auditory processing rather than chemosensation (olfaction – smell – and gustation – taste). Animals like dogs use smell as a means of investigating objects and for communication. Primates, such as humans, have evolved a sophisticated visual system that, in combination with our large brains and the use of hands, provides more information about objects, and language provides a better means of communication. Indeed, evidence suggests that the evolution of trichromatic vision (the ability to see the full spectrum of red, green and blue colours) was a major cause of the loss of the sense of smell (Gilad et al, 2003).

Olfaction took a backseat to vision in higher primates, but why should it then have decayed, rather than just stagnated? As alluded to above, it could be that it was more efficient to use the brain for vision rather than olfaction. There is limited space available in the skull and a brain takes up a lot of energy, so you’d want to get the best out of the brain as possible. Alternatively, evolutionary psychologists have theorised that for apes, because they usually live in groups, the ability to smell others (and thus experience the emotional reaction towards them) became a disadvantageous trait. That is, before showers were invented, living in a close-knit group with active and hairy apes would have been most unpleasant for those apes with the best sense of smell, but living in crowds would be easier for those with poor ability to smell. So evolutionarily, it was easier to lose the ability to smell, and with it the evoked emotions, and to rely on more specific means of choosing a mate or friends (like visual cues or using language).

Yet smell (and also taste) can have some significant advantages over the other senses, which is why dogs are used as sniffer dogs to detect illicit items or blood and as search dogs to track down missing people or vigilantes. Some things are invisible yet can be smelled, such as toxic gases, allowing a supersmeller to tell if food is safe to eat or if a drink has been spiked. An odour will linger, and thus can provide clues about the past where a visual inspection would not be useful. Perhaps you could use use your enhanced sense of smell to track down your friends if they desert you, or determine who used your computer without your permission. Odour molecules also can pass through opaque surfaces (like fabrics, or dirt). Imagine being able to use smell to work out which of piece of luggage has your mobile phone inside, or detect if a house is infested with termites, or locate landmines burried underground.

So, enhancement of the human olfactory system may prove to be a very simple yet effective improvement to our sensory abilities.

And it might just be simple to do too. Likely the most important factor governing how effectively odours can be recognised is the variety of olfactory receptors (ORs), as an odorant molecule in the air has to bind to a receptor in order to be detected. Humans only have 300 functional OR genes, whereas dogs have about 800 and mice have about 1000 (Niimura & Nei, 2007). Comparative genetic studies have shown that humans still have the remnant of the vast repertoire of olfactory receptors found in animals such as mice, but 70% of those genes are inactivated (Rouquier et al, 2000). These inactivated genes, known as pseudogenes, still remain in the genome, but have been mutated so severely over the course of evolution that they can no longer function. But enough of each gene remains that a good guess can be made about what the gene was, and these functional versions of genes are most likely still found in rodents or canines (in which evolution was selecting for OR integrity). There are about 800 functional and non-functional olfactory receptor genes still left in the human genome, so restoring the 70% of pseudogenes with their functional equivalents would give a human enhanced in this way the ability to detect almost three times the number of distinct odorant molecules.

Evolution, however, created these olfactory receptor genes during the distant past, explaining why we can distinguish between many types of fruit or flowers by smell but we are limited in our ability to distinguish cleaning solvents. Many odorant molecules commonly encountered in the modern world would not be recognised. Strong-smelling (or tasting) compounds are added to many toxic chemicals in order to allow us to detect and recognise them (e.g. natural methane gas and hydrogen gas are odorless, but odorants butanethiol or tetrahydrothiophene are added in very minute concentrations so that humans can detect gas leaks). A promising endeavour, therefore, might be to design (or evolve) odorant receptors for dangerous artificial compounds.

It should be stressed, however, that the number of olfactory receptors is not the only factor that governs how well we can smell. The entire olfactory pathway is important. Deletion of the a subtype of voltage-gated potassium  (Kv 1.3) channel in mice produces super-smeller mice’ that are 1000-10,000 times more sensitive to odours (Kadool et al, 2004). The researchers hypothesise that this potassium channel is involved in olfactory signal transduction (the process by which the binding of an odorant molecule causes the olfactory receptor cell to fire an action potential back to the brain) and the gene for it need only be deleted, or downregulated, in the olfactory bulb to produce this olfactory enhancement. The position and size of the noses could also be important, as many mammals have noses which are closer to the ground and therefore pick up many more odorant molecules than humans, with our upright bipedal posture, do. This is perhaps not such a big problem because we can work out which objects we want to smell and use our hands to bring those objects closer for inspection. In addition, associative memory and congitive discrimination of smells plays a strong role in recognition of smells (possibly humans don’t need as many odorant receptors because we have such a good memory for smells and can use our large brains to interpret the nuances of each smell). But we’d want to enhancements memory and cognition anyway, regardless of how our sense of smell might benefit.

In summary, humans have a reduced number and diversity of olfactory receptors compared to other animals, which correlates with our poor sense of smell. Why this loss occurred is debated, but there must be some disadvantages to having a great sense of smell. We need to be cautious that we don’t uncover an unbearably stinky world. But despite all that, olfactory enhancement would fill a deficit in the sensory repertoire of humans and is therefore a very useful enhancement to be investigated.

Abortion and freedom from nature

I’ve been skulking around various blogs on bioethical issues recently, and I came across this geme from the Christian blog ‘Of Virtue and Life’:

What I am arguing [...] is that pregnancy is natural and by saying abortion helps in the liberation of women, it is essentially saying that abortion helps liberate women from nature – which is completely off the wall.

The bottom line for the entire situation is that abortion really doesn’t help in women’s liberation. Having a child doesn’t lower a woman or make her subservient to a man – it is simply a natural process. How is it liberating to go against what is natural? (emphasis mine)

It is that final question that I italicised that I wish to discuss in this post, as in my opinion it can be very, very liberating to go against what is natural. It is excedingly liberating to be free from nature, and being free from natural limitations on our body and mind. Humans are more liberated now that death does not come so early in life, and we would be most liberated if in the future death existed only as a choice and was never forced upon us by natural causes. Other examples of natural things from which we may want to be liberated include the natural human tendancy to put on weight or the natural human limitations on memory or even the fact that humans are not naturally born with wings. But many other natural aspects of everyday life are not entirely pleasant, such as pregnancy and childbirth.

But first I wish to reinforce the fact that there is nothing inherently good about what is natural. To think so would be the naturalistic fallacy, which is essentially wishful thinking in reverse (wishful thinking is where you think what should be is what will be, and the naturalistic fallacy is where you think what is is also what ought to be). You cannot switch between an is and an ought, as the former is a statement of fact and the latter is a statement of value.

Even from a Christian perspective, I cannot see how one could assume what is natural is also what is good. While it is the Christian belief that the nature of reality was created by a benevolent God, apparently the free will of a couple of humans brought sin which corrupted the world, and therefore not everything we see in nature can be assumed to be good (though God clearly let sin corrupt the world and therefore such corruption was onbiviously not against the will of a benevolent God, which brings too many theodical issues for this post).

But getting back to the topic, this means we cannot assume that pregnancy and childbirth are good simply because they are natural.

Furthermore, I think there is good arguments to suggest that many, albeit natural, aspects of pregnancy and childbirth are very bad. Very few women choose a natural childbirth because the options of drug-assistance or surgical deliveries provide much more appealing unnatural childbirths. Many women dislike the effects pregnancy has on their body, both during pregnancy and after childbirth, and are eager to return to their pre-pregnancy figures. And even after childbirth, many things about children are not particularly desirable, such as incessant crying and the cost of raising them. While a strong maternal desire and love of children drives many women to endure these distasteful aspects of pregnancy, I think it stands to reason that the process could be much improved by liberating women from the natural downsides to having children.

In addition to the above-mentioned natural but undesirable aspects of pregnancy,  the most important natural aspect from which we try to liberate ourselves is the choice to go through the whole pregnancy process at all. It’s natural that heterosexual sex between fertile humans can result in pregnancy, but the vast majority of humans (in the first world, at least) take measures to avoid this natural consequence of sex, though most contraceptives are not foolproof. Because of this (and because of the unfortunate – and likely natural – occurance of rape) pregnancy is not always consensual, a woman can only have complete control over whether she goes through pregnancy and childbirth if she can opt out of the process at any time. So the most liberating scenario for a woman is total and unrestricted access to abortion regardless of her stage of pregnancy.

So I think we can conclude that women are indeed liberated by having the option to abort. And men too can be liberated by abortion, as couples who do not wish to have children are therefore able to ensure they remain childless. That pregnancy and childbirth are natural does nothing to change this, as the freedom to liberate ourselves from nature is freedom nonetheless. Nobody is truly free if they are a slave to nature.

Uploading your mind

Mind uploading is a radical form of human enhancement, whereby the human mind is transferred from the vulnerable organic medium of the brain to a computer system of some kind. With such an upload comes the benefit of being able to use your consciousness at electronic speeds (allowing for hours of thought processes to take place in mere seconds), and essentially be in multiple locations at the same time. In addition, the human brain vulnerable to many of the frailties of the human body whereas a computer system does not suffer from age or strigent bodily requirements for blood and nutrients (though computers do get viruses, and they do require electricity and ventilation). Finally, a computerised version of the brain is theoretically much easier to enhance or alter than the biological version.

Firstly, there is the continuity problem, which is by far the most difficult to solve because it is largely philosophical rather than practical. This problem is based on the fact that the process of ‘uploading’ does not actually move a files, but rather involves making a copy of the file on the server (and deleting the old files). Therefore if I upload my mind, I may not have transferred my mind to the computer but instead merely made another copy of my mind on the computer. And the last thing you want is to have two copies of the same mind, because it will be impossible to tell the copies apart as both will literally feel as if they are the original (hence why I said two copies, and not the original and the copy). And in fact, a computerised copy of your mind would be far easier to copy than the organic version, and therefore somebody could split (or be split) into several indistinguishable copies of themself.

The proposed solution to avoid copying a mind is to keep information flowing between the organic and inorganic portions of the mind. Because the mind could be viewed as a process rather than an entity, it would therefore be necessary to keep the process continuous between the biological mind and the computerised mind during the process of uploading. As soon as the copies can no longer transfer information between each other, they will diverge into seperate entities (another interesting topic is whether minds can be merged by allowing full information transfer, such that two people could become one in a much more real way than any human relationship in the past).

So any practical solution must not only feature the ability to read information from the brain, but also to send information from the computerised mind back into the uncopied portions of the mind to maintain continuity.

There are just so many philosophical issues here, but fortunately we have a lot of time to ponder them as there are a great deal of technical problems with mind uploading.

As the mind is (essentially) produced by the brain, mind uploading requires the ability to emulate the entire brain. This is not an easy task, as the human brain contains a hundred billion neurons with trillions of connections between them. And even an individual neuron is such a very complex cell that it cannot be emulated fully. Further, neurons are not the only cells in the brain that matter – glial cells, which are just as numerous as neurons, also have a very important functional role. It’s not theoretically impossible, but any emulation will be a poor one indeed until vast advances in both neuroscience and computer power are made.

Importantly, to create a viable approach to mind uploading (as opposed to ‘merely’ an artificial intelligence) it is not enough to merely be able to emulate a human brain, but it is essential to emulate a particular human brain. If I want to upload my brain, the resulting simulation has to be my brain and not just any human-like brain. This would require a very high resolution and instantaneous snapshot of my brain. Analagously, this is like capturing an image of a metropolis like New York down to the level of millimetres, capturing both the position and the velocity of every vehicle, person and object. While we may have high resolution photography that can capture one person or object to the required resolution, doing the entire city at the same instant is exponentially harder. And likewise even if we can scan a brain to a very high resolution if we focus on just one small slice of a brain region, but to do the entirety of the brain at one instant would be a far greater task. And we have to capture not just the structure of each cell but also the current state of that cell and the cerebrospinal fluid surrounding each cell. It’s a mammoth task indeed, and one that may not be completed until far after a passable emulation of a human brain is accomplished.

And finally we don’t only have to be able to read the brain in sufficient detail, we also need to manipulate it in similar fidelity to maintain continuity. Information in the brain is stored in neuronal architecture, cellular structure and activity and concentrations of molecules in and around neurons. So if we have a portion of the brain simulated on a computer, and if a simulated neuron tries to send a signal to an organic neuron, that organic neuron would have to be stimulated at the appropriate time. Or if a simulated hormone is drifting toward a portion of the brain not uploaded yet, then a hormone would have to be released into the corresponding organic portion of the brain. This would require a completely perfect brain-computer interface, perhaps an even greater technical feat than a brain emulation.

I think I have listed enough technical problems for now, some of which may prove, with increasing knowledge of the brain, to be less (or more) of a problem than I’ve made out. Regardless, mind uploading seems like a very very distant technology to me, and therefore I would rather focus on achieving the goals of longer-lived bodies and enhanced minds using genetic enhancements and primitive brain-computer interfaces, and focus on the political, ethical and philosophical dilemmas that arise from more near-term issues in human enhancement.

Journal of Evolution and Technology has some reading material

I know I’m not posting as frequently as I could be, but the Journal of Evolution and Technology has two special issues that may be of interest to readers of this blog:

• Becoming More Than Human: Technology and the Post-Human Condition Special Issue

Intro: Sky Marsen   “Introduction”

1-2:  Cory Doctorow:  “Leaving Behind More Than a Knucklebone”

3-7:  Patrick D. Hopkins:  “A Moral Vision for Transhumanism”

8-16: William Sims Bainbridge:  “Cognitive Expansion Technologies”

17-27: Samuel H. Kenyon:  “Would You Still Love Me If I Was A Robot?”

28-34: Riccardo Campa:  “Pure Science and the Posthuman Future”

35-41: Gregory E. Jordan:  “The Invention of Man: A Response to C. S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man”

42-50: Joseph Jackson:  “The Amorality of Preference: A Response to the Enemies of Enhancement”

51-61: PJ Manney:  “Empathy in the Time of Technology: How Storytelling is the Key to Empathy”

62-66: George Dvorsky:  “Better Living through Transhumanism”

67-72: Nick Bostrom:  “Letter from Utopia”

• Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights (HETHR) Special Issue

-vi:  James Hughes:  “Introduction”

1-9:  Patrick Hopkins:  “Is Enhancement Worthy of Being a Right?”

10-26: Fritz Allhoff:  “Germ Line Genetic-Enhancement and Rawlsian Primary Goods”:

27-34: Martin Gunderson:  “Enhancing Human Rights: How the Use of Human Rights Treaties to Prohibit Genetic Engineering Weakens Human Rights”

35-41: Patrick Lin and Fritz Allhoff:  “Against Unrestricted Human Enhancement”

42-49: Fred Gifford:  “Ethical Issues in Enhancement Research”

50-55: Aubrey de Grey:  “Our Right to Life”

56-69: Gregory Fowler and Kirk Allison:  “Technology and Citizenry: A Model for Public Consultation in Science Policy Formation”

70-78: Laura Colleton:  “The Elusive Line Between Enhancement and Therapy and Its Effects on Health Care in the U.S.”

79-85: Anita Silvers:  “The right not to be normal as the essence of freedom”

86-93: Martin Gunderson:  “Genetic Engineering and the Consent of Future Persons”

94-107: Martine Rothblatt:  “Are We Transbemans Yet?”

108-115: Mark Walker:  “Cognitive Enhancement and the Identity Objection”

116-123: Eva Caldera:  “Cognitive Enhancement and Theories of Justice: Contemplating the Malleability of Nature and Self”

124-128:  Dawn Jakubowski:  “Cognitive Enhancement and Liberatory Possibilities of Antidepressant Therapy”

129-142: George Dvorsky:  “All Together Now: Considerations for biologically uplifting non-human animals”

As you can see, both issues have articles that cover interesting topics and the articles are all worth a read. Check out the contents of these issues, and read them for free.

I don’t think any of those articles, nor their authors, express arguments that are perfectly identical to mine (in other words, I have a bone to pick with most of their articles). But don’t worry, I’ll soon be blogging more frequently again, or at least I hope to.

Boosting brainpower

The practical and ethical issues with intelligence enhancement are receiving more attention, with a recent article in New Scientist titled “Will designer brains divide humanity“.

For the most part, the article is quite basic, but I have an issue with one part in particular:

The next stage of brainpower enhancement could be technological – through genetic engineering or brain prostheses. Because the gene variants pivotal to intellectual brilliance have yet to be discovered, boosting brainpower by altering genes may still be some way off, or even impossible. Prostheses are much closer, especially as the technology for wiring brains into computers is already being tested.

This is none other than cybernetic favoritism! I mean sure, genes effecting intelligence aren’t obvious, but it’s also not obvious how and where to interface a brain chip to increase intelligence. And though neural prostheses are being tested, no neural prosthesis has increased any aspect of intelligence in any brain, whereas there have been 33 genetic alterations that increase the learning and memory of mice (not to mention that all the differences in intelligence between animals are genetic in origin). Considering the annoyance of having surgery for neural implants compared to the ease of a simple injection for genetic modification, I would personally put my money on the genetic enhancement of intelligence. Nonetheless, both avenues should be pursued, and might eventually complement one another.

Onto the ethical issues discussed in the article, most are fairly basic. Starting with human dignity, referring to comments made by Dietrich Birnbacher, a philosopher at the University of Düsseldorf in Germany:

One potential problem arises from altering what we consider to be “normal”: the dangers are similar to the social pressure to conform to idealised forms of beauty, physique or sporting ability that we see today. People without enhancement could come to see themselves as failures, have lower self-esteem or even be discriminated against by those whose brains have been enhanced, Birnbacher says.

These concerns are all quite valid, but aren’t necessarily impossible barriers. If enhancement technology was supported by the government, then no people wanting such technology would be left without it. And the discrimination I will deal with in a minute, after looking at the next section:

The perception that some people are giving themselves an unfair advantage over everyone else by “enhancing” their brains would be socially divisive, says John Dupré at the University of Exeter, UK. “Anyone can read to their kids or play them music, but put a piece of software in their heads, and that’s seen as unfair,” he says. As Dupré sees it, the possibility of two completely different human species eventually developing is “a legitimate worry”.

I do actually worry about enhancement being socially divisive, but I am not sure this would occur only by discrimination of the enhanced towards the un-enhanced. As I have argued previously, it’s entirely possible that the enhanced will be viewed as unnatural disgraces to humanity, and the pure, natural humans would discriminate against them because of it.

The rest of the article deals with issues such as brain plasticity, evolution and epigenetics. These are not particularly relevant to any ethical concerns and neither will they significantly enhance the intelligence of the average reader of this blog, so I’m not going to address them here.

Miah on enhancement

Andy Miah has an article on enhancement in The Guardian.

It’s short, but I agree with many of the conclusions. And apparently the European Parliament will be looking at the issue of enhancement soon, so I’ll be blogging on that as soon as more news comes to hand.

Zavos, the man who cried ‘clone’

The fertility doctor Panayiatos ‘Panos’ Zavos has (yet again!) claimed to have created some human clones, this time saying he’s implanted 11 cloned human embryos into 4 women. These embryos are allegedly created by taking the nuclei of “blood cells” (but obviously not erythrocytes) of a 10-year-old girl – who died in a car accident – and transferring those nuclei into bovine ova. Then the nuclei were extracted from the viable bovine/human cybrid embryos and transferred into human ova, and the viable ones of those implanted.

Remember, SCNT hardly works at the best of times, and to have done it twice (first into bovine ova, then into human ova) seems to be an enormous undertaking. And Zavos seems to spend more time talking to the media than actually doing labwork, so where would he find the time?

In case you weren’t aware of Zavos, just note that this claim seems to be itself a clone of one Zavos announced back in 2004 (after announcing his intentions to clone a human embryo in 2001 and again in 2002, and claiming a successful pregnancy that same year). For a guy who’s supposedly a mad scientist doing controversial research in a secret facility, he certainly is a big fan of the press. And this current stories reports he’s even filmed himself at his secret facility doing the work!

But the important thing is, despite constant media attention there is still no hard evidence of any human cloning, done by Zavos or anyone else. Until I see the indepentantly-verified genetic tests proving a baby is a clone, I call any report of reproductive human cloning and especially any with a mention of Zavos (or Raelians) to be a big fat HOAX!