[extropy-chat] Better Humans? The Politics of Human Enhancement

[Jose Cordeiro]

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Better Humans?
The politics of human enhancement
 


In partnership with The Wellcome Trust, Demos is setting out to stimulate a public debate about the implications of human enhancement technologies.

 


Our scientific understanding has accelerated at an unprecedented rate over the past two decades. These advances in understanding are now being traslated into new technologies.

Many of these are medical in their application, such as new drugs for mental illness and Alzheimer’s disease, new techniques to reverse muscular dystrophy or new interfaces between biological and technology to ‘cure’ impairments such as blindness or deafness.

However some of these new technologies could be used for enhancement purposes – to make us better than perfect.

There are three main types of possible human enhancement:

   Genetic selection – The ability for parents to choose the characteristics of their offspring through genetic selection. 
   Performance improvement – the ability to improve either temporarily or permanently mental or physical abilities. 
   Anti-ageing – Enhancement could accelerate the trend towards longer life. Some scientists predict life expectancy of 120 within decades 

The project

The aim of this project is to initiate a public debate about issues of human enhancement in the UK. We’ll be commissioning a series of essays from different perspectives about the implications of human enhancement to be published as a Demos collection in January 2006.

We’ll also be listening to public concerns and attitudes towards enhancement at a series of events during the summer of 2005.

Examples of questions that the project will consider include:

   If enhancement technologies become widely and cheaply available, does their misuse become inevitable? 
   How should the law respond to human enhancement technologies? 
   Will our system of medical regulation be sufficient to cope with enhancement technologies? 
   How should employers respond to performance enhancement? 
   How will examination boards cope? 
   How should enhancements be defined? 







La vie est belle!

Yosé (www.cordeiro.org)

Caracas, Venezuela, Americas, TerraNostra, Solar System, Milky Way, Multiverse


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