Hollywood hates the posthumans?

Do movies consistently portray the posthumans in a negative light? Do they have a case for defamation? Charlie Jane Anders at io9.com presents the evidence:

Whenever you see someone going beyond standard-issue humanity in movies or TV, it’s portrayed as monstrous and evil. Whether it’s cyborgs, mutants or humans hacking their bodies, Hollywood exercises its anti-posthuman agenda. Meanwhile, novels have been celebrating the customizers and reinventers for years now. What can we do to derail Hollywood’s insidious campaign against our posthuman brothers and sisters? The first step is understanding where it comes from.

Oh, and read the comments too. Contrast the opinions of the sci-fi fans at io9 with that of the public about the HFEA in the UK, it’s an amazing difference.

In related news, James Hughes’ ChangeSurfer Radio this month had an interview with Patricia Manney, the new chair of the World Transhumanist Association, called BioHollywood - with emphasis on the portrayal of monsters and posthumans in cinema.

Gordon Brown caves to Catholic scaremongering

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has yielded to the public pressure (most of it by religious nuts like Cardinal O’Brien) and is now going to let his ministers and MPs vote freely on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. Well, at least on three of the controversial clauses:

• Cybrid embryos - the HF&E Bill would allow for the creation of embryos containing both human and animal DNA, but only for research and they must be destroyed at a certain date
• Fatherless IVF - under the HF&E Bill, fathers would no longer be required for an IVF pregnancy, allowing single-women and lesbians to have IVF children
• Saviour siblings - the HF&E Bill would permit the use of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis for ensuring that an embryo is a potential donor for a sick brother or sister

This decreases the chance of the Bill passing, but with any luck it should still be able to get through. I hope.

PS: Sorry for being late on this. I went away for four days, and didn’t have time to blog on anything.

Eugenics and ‘Newgenics’ Part 3: Moral criticisms and quandaries

The word ‘eugenics’ is usually used in a derogatory manner, suggesting that there is either something immoral about with the goal of eugenics or that the way it was implemented was immoral (or both).

The goal of eugenics, as stated in part 1, was “to create or maintain a race of people who fit the image of the Wunschbild (ideal person)”. Looking at two important documents in human rights - the Preamble to the United States Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there are no rights that puts the improvement of the human race as a concern, and hence there is no way that it could override equality, the right to life or the right to reproductive freedom. Equally, there is no human right that, even when taken to its conclusion, forbids the betterment of the human race as a whole, provided it doesn’t contravene any of the rights of the individual. Therefore, we cannot easily produce an answer, and consequently I shall leave this aspect of eugenics until Part 4 of this blog series.

Perhaps the most obviously moral travesty present in the history eugenics is the murder of those deemed ‘unfit’. Genocide was not a common policy of eugenicists, but in Nazi Germany enough support was obviously present to justify it. The right to life is a ‘unalienable right’ mentioned in the US Declaration of Independence and is guaranteed by Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and thus denying it to some other clearly human person is wrong. Pragmatically, only the real and present danger to somebody else’s life can justify overturning this right.

A further objection could be raised against the discrimination that eugenics brought about (or actualised) against people with a - supposed - genetic makeup. On the basis that all humans should be equally afforded the same rights, respect and protection, to do otherwise is wrong. This is another of the ‘self-evident truths’, and is in fact Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

A lesser, though not insignificant, objection to the past policies of eugenics is that they involved domination, by governments, over the reproductive lives of its populace. It is now generally accepted that everyone has the right to have a family with whomever they desire, and in fact this is guaranteed by Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Therefore, it was contrary to a fundamental human right to prevent people from marrying, force people to have children, mandate sterilisation and withhold birth control.

These rights were well known, and to an extent well-respected, before eugenics even took off. The US Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776, and mentioned specifically the equality and right to life of all men. Likewise, the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified in 1868 and stated that the State has no right to interfere in liberty without due process of the law. One may wonder how eugenics could even be considered morally acceptable in America and other Western nations into the early 20th century. Indeed, some anti-miscegenation laws in the United States were not repealed until 1967. As the only way for such a violation of rights to be justified was if it conflicted with a more important right, the eugenicists had to create some particular ‘right’.

It wasn’t particularly hard to do so, provided people believed the (pseudo-)scientific reasoning behind it. If one could have people believe that Jews and gypsies could cause the death of many others, then it could be justified to remove their right to life (as people wielding a gun with intent to kill may be shot by police). If one could have people believe that paupers, prostitutes and alcoholics are the cause for most crime, then sterilisation could be justified (as today we remove the right to liberty for many criminals, in the form of prison). If it could be believed that a child deserves a healthy life, it may be considered justifiable to not allow reproductive liberty to harm children by bringing them into existence with an unfit genetic constitution. Indeed, many states of the US and countries of the world still have laws against incest, supposedly protecting the ‘right to health’, or some such right, in hypothetical children that may result. Today, we take issue with not only the validity of the premise and the priorities placed on the rights supposed to be in conflict, but also the possibility of more friendly solutions to the problem(s).

Perhaps, this sort of rights-friendly thinking could be a basis for what has been called ‘liberal eugenics’ by Nicholas Agar or ‘newgenics’ by others (not sure who coined the term), to describe the voluntary control (rather than state control) over reproduction to create better humans (though not necessarily a ‘race). But could this be even possible without creating grounds for discrimination (or worse evils), and could it contravene a particular right to an ‘open future’? I leave these questions until my next blog entry.

Part of a Four Part Blog Series:

• Eugenics and ‘Newgenics’ Part 1: Historical Background
• Eugenics and ‘Newgenics’ Part 2: Separating science from pseudoscience
• Eugenics and ‘Newgenics’ Part 3: Moral criticisms and quandaries
• Eugenics and ‘Newgenics’ Part 4: Lessons for the future, from the past

Islamic bioethics > Christian bioethics

Wired Science Blog has an entry titled “A Beginner’s Guide to Muslim Bioethics“. I’m surprised at how progressive some of the Islamic bioethicists are. Perhaps they are some of the more liberal of the bunch, but nonetheless it surprised me.

Here is a shortlist by Hamza Eskandarani, a bioethicist of of King Faisal University:

[Intra-uterine insemination], [In vitro fertilization], [Intra cytoplasmic sperm injection], etc. are permitted for married-only heterosexual couples.

No donation of any sort is allowed. Surrogacy is also not permitted. However, some Shea clerics permit the use of donated embryos and oocytes as practiced in Iran.

Freezing of sperm, oocyte, embryo, and ovarian and testicular tissues are permitted so long as the samples are kept in conditions which will not permit them to be mixed, donated, or utilized outside marriage.

Sex selection can be performed in case of medical necessity or family balance (although some Islamic scholars object to it).

Embryo reduction is still debatable and we have to wait for clear Fatwa (casting of opinion or non-binding but authoritative religious proclamation); some scholars permit it on the ground of life-threatening to the mother and other fetuses.

Micromanipulation is permitted to overcome infertility cases as well as investigate the resulting embryo but not to mix cells or DNA. It is believed that ensoulment of the embryo happens after 40 days of fertilization and research on embryo should not be permitted after day 14 of the fertilized egg. [...]

Gene therapy is permitted which as long as the benefits outweigh the detriments.

Reproductive cloning is not permitted, however, therapeutic cloning is allowed as long as the cloned cells are derived from a completely legal source.

So, it seems that they are more capable of looking at benefits vs. risks, rather than taking an absolutist position. This is helped considerably by the fact that Muslims consider personhood to begin a few days after conception, rather than very close to the time of conception (or before it) by many Christians. Still, if some biotech procedure is prohibited under Sharia, there could be far more considerable resistance to it than in the Christian nations. For example, I doubt that any Islamic bioethicist would allow for transgenic humans, or even a human having genes from a source other than one of the two parents (say, cytoplasmic transplants or genetic modifications for good looks or intelligence).

For further reading, there is a good list of Islamic views on controversial medical practices here (some in Arabic too): Islamic Views on Medical Issues

Christianity and Human Enhancement

I touched on these issues in my Darwin Day blog entry, but Michael Anissimov at Accelerating Future has recently asked some questions on the issue on his blog, and I would like to have a go at answering them.

Although I am an atheist (perhaps more accurately a nontheist), I do think there is a point in answering these questions. Although religion isn’t technically supposed to influence public policy in secular nations, in a democracy public opinion carries a lot of weight and is still driven by religious ideology. A word of warning though that I am not able to comment as a Christian, but just able to summarise my anecdotal experience when arguing the issue with other Christians.

To answer these questions in a way that relates to this blog, I will answer them in reverse order (because the first question is the best) and won’t answer question five (because it doesn’t relate). So, here goes.

4) Say that humans develop a technology to bring someone “back to life” a few hours after brain activity ceases. Could this be used to research possible visions of Heaven, such as those in “light at the end of the tunnel” and other near-death experience accounts? How would we distinguish between genuine visions of Heaven and hallucinations caused by neurological trauma?

I’d like to think the answer is that near-death experiences will become less associated with religious ideas as science pushes out the”God of the gaps”, but I don’t really think it is likely. I think that religion will coexist with science in this area, claiming that just because we can find a mental correlate for these experiences, it doesn’t mean they are not divinely inspired. After all, that appears to be the current path taken with religious experiences from temporal lobe seizures, brain activity during prayer and various other parts of neurotheology. The feeling is that both the religious experience and the brain equivalent are caused by God. Hence, maybe a Christian could say that God was working through the scientists giving somebody a near-death experience.

3) Say that a brain chip is invented that makes its user more morally sophisticated and theologically insightful. Would this contradict the notion that good comes from God, and show that the “soul” is actually rooted in the biochemistry of the brain? Or would this signify the brain implant is somehow better tapping into the power of God? How would we tell the difference?

I doubt this sort of thing would show that the soul is routed in biochemistry, because neuroscientists have already uncovered much of the biological basis for feelings that are considered the domain of the soul, such as guilt, fear and happiness. But just as I said for question four, a Christian can simply believe that the soul is the cause of the biochemical and cellular processes that result with pleasure and pain. As for the morality issue, people often receive moral assistance (help doing what they know is right) from laws of the country, laws of other religions and other people. But I believe that most Christians think that acting moral for those reasons isn’t enough to save a person, one has to act moral because one is ‘born again’ and being led by Christ. Perhaps I should quote a Biblical passage for this:

Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him; Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats? And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. (Mark 7:18-20 - KJV)

So, if one follows what Jesus is saying here, that external agents cannot defile a person, perhaps it is true that external agents (save God) cannot save a man. That is, a brain implant for morality will not be considered to save a man - that must be done by oneself. Christians believe that good comes from God in origins, but only if it comes from God in ourselves each day will it save our souls.

2) Would it be a sin to extend someone’s lifespan indefinitely using anti-aging therapies, because that would forever prevent them from getting into Heaven? Or would indefinite life extension merely be God’s will, because if he wanted us to die anyway, he could easily make it happen at any time?

Considering that the universe is going to suffer a heat death eventually, and that accident is likely to still exist, I doubt that a person would be prevented from getting to heaven eventually. The prophecies for a New Earth mentioned in Revelation 21:1 can be compatible with the incineration of the planet when our sun (Sol) becomes a red giant in 5 or so billion years. So we should be able to last at least that long. By then, Christianity will either be gone, or changed enough for any further musings to be futile.

1) If man was created in God’s image, would it be blasphemous for people to radically alter their body and brain as it becomes technologically possible, through genetic engineering or nanotechnology? (See “What I want to be when I grow up, is a cloud” by J. Storrs Hall.)

This is a massive question, and I doubt there will a Christian consensus on the issue. There are those Christians who will say things like “Jesus never enhanced, only healed” and quote Ecclesiastes 7:13 until the day their physically-unchanged bodies wither and die. Then there will be those oft-quoted ones that consider human enhancement to be part of some divine co-creation scheme with their Creator. Most Christians will probably fall somewhere in the middle, probably closer to the former. They will likely be very cautious towards any technologies, but eventually may accept them. It really depends whether some activists campaign hard to attack the science and how much the people want the technology themselves. It’s possible that the science even be condemned so much that gene enhancement clinics are bombed and cyborgs suffer hate crimes, or it’s possible that the science is integrated into religious themes (wasn’t Samson a superhuman, with some ‘divine’ strength enhancement in his hair?).

Such questions are good to consider, but any answers we get from particular Christians are never going to reflect what will happen to society as a whole. Personally, because religion can’t directly influence public policy, I think we should worry about the secular objections to human enhancement for now. Faith responds better to hard evidence, whereas the secular objections may be tackled with rational speculation. I don’t mean to ignore the religious objections, just that I feel they are over-emphasised in the debate.

Thanks to Michael Anissimov for the excuse to write another blog entry today!

German Parliament reviews stem cell law

Germany only formed their Stem Cell Act in 2002, but already the German Research Foundation is calling for a loosening of restrictions. For background, the 1990 Embryo Protection Act forbids the production of human embryonic stem cell lines, as it makes anything other than assisted reproductive technology to be an ‘improper use’ of an embryo. Section 2, part 1 reads:

“Anyone who disposes of, or hands over or acquires or uses for a purpose not serving its preservation, a human embryo produced outside the body, or removed from a woman before the completion of implantation in the uterus, will be punished with imprisonment up to three years or a fine.”

Yes, this is restrictive, but one may notice there was a little loophole if a researcher imported, from other countries where the research is legal, embryonic stem cells (rather than human embryos themselves). So, the Stem Cell Act effectively closed this up, except for conditions stipulated in Section 6 (Approval). It’s too long to go through now, but basically the stem cells need to have been created before 2002 in another country, derived entirely from surplus IVF embryos, research purposes need to be very important and the whole process still has to be approved by a ‘competent agency’ (such as the Robert Koch Institute).

Yeah, I’d say they’re restrictive too, although an outright ban would not be unusual for a European country (e.g. Ireland, Austria, Denmark, France).

Back to the recent news, what scientists want to do is to be able to import embryonic stem cell lines created during or after 2002. That restriction was in place to ensure that new stem cell lines were not created for German use (or, as the pro-life camp sees things, to ensure that embryos were not destroyed by German orders).

Juergen Heschele of the University of Cologne said this:

“Now, scientists are significantly more careful about preparing and cultivating human embryonic cells, so it is internationally accepted that the newer cell lines are much better”

So, the German Stem Cell Act basically needs to be updated every year to permit the stem cell lines created the year before. However, if that was sure to happen, a cunning foreign agency could possibly create stem cell lines for the Germans and then cryonically preserve them for the next year. This is more-or-less what some members of Germany’s National Ethics Council wrote last year:

“… a change in the Jan. 1, 2002 cut-off date [stipulated by the Stem Cell Law] would essentially mean to endorse the destruction of embryos abroad and to profit from procedures which are banned [in Germany] by the Embryo Protection Law.”

So, I feel the Germans are set to debate this issue for a long time to come. I feel what really needs to happen is a change in the biopolitical zeitgeist (10 points for working a German loanword into a blog entry about Germany?) so that the Germans may see that embryo research is ethical. Maybe once some embryonic research produces a cure for diabetes, which no doubt costs Germany billions of Euros each year in medical and social impacts, they will change their mind.

Blog - Activate!

This blog entry marks the beginning of the Human Enhancement and Biopolitics Blog. I created this blog with the intention to make public my comments and opinions on the the technologies of human enhancement and the public opinions and policies that regulate their development.

By human enhancement, I only mean those changes to the human body that are considered enhancements by the brain within that body (or, to an extent, the parents of that body).  I say this because the term ‘human enhancement’ can have a negative tone to it, implies a eugenic conformity to an ‘optimum’ state of being.  I support personal liberty and freedom of choice, and I assume that most people will use emerging technologies to change themselves (or their children) to something they see as ‘better’. This is how I define human enhancement. So, I will be blogging about any technology or speculative technology that can be used in such a way.

In addition, I intend to comment on the public perceptions of these technologies. I feel it is important to ensure the public is well informed about science, and the way in which science affects our lives. Therefore, I will be blogging about any significant public policy changes that could affect the development of these technologies, and any significant technologies that could affect public opinion (and hence, in democratic societies, affect public policy). I shall also give my opinion on these changes.

So, that’s the intention of the blog. We’ll see how long I can keep it going.