With everything else that’s happening in the world today, debates about whether humanity should embrace as yet nonexistent technologies that could enhance our physical and intellectual abilities and someday make us “more than human” may seem frivolous.
While America was rushing to see sharp metal blades jut from Wolverine?s fists during the opening of the third “X-Men” movie last weekend, an academic conference was being held at Stanford University to discuss what might happen if people with special powers really existed.
John Sutherland meets a transhumanist who wrestles with the ethics of technologically enhanced human beings.
First it was “gray goo,” the threat of self-replicating machines populating the planet. Now an environmental think tank is raising the specter of “green goo,” where biology is used to create new materials and new artificial life forms.
The brain-gain revolution is already under way. But will these “neural enhancement” drugs turn us into Einsteins or Frankensteins?
Scientists are often accused of trying to play God. Cloning experts, genetic engineers and atomic physicists have all fiddled with aspects of the world that many believe should remain the preserve of some higher power.
It is possible to read someone`s mind by remotely measuring their brain activity, researchers have shown. The technique can even extract information from subjects that they are not aware of themselves.
Science is beginning to find ways to control happiness in the brain artificially.
While many in the treatment field have long called addiction a “disease,” they’ve used the word in vague and metaphorical ways, meaning everything from a disease of the mind to a disease of the spirit. Many assumed that an addict suffers from a brain-chemistry problem, but scientists had not been able to peer into our heads to begin to prove it.
GPs tend not to refer people for treatment as there are perceived to be much more serious mental health and addiction problems.
