The Techno Sapiens Are Coming

10.31.05

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Eradicate cancer. Retain and recall everything you can find on the Internet. Give your child a high IQ. Drastically reduce fatalities of U.S. soldiers involved in wars. Give sight to the blind. Soon, you won't have to be God to fulfill this wish list. But you may not be human, either. Such is the promise and peril of nanotechnology.

First defined by engineer and scientist K. Eric Drexler in the 80s and 90s, nanotechnology uses tools that operate on the "nano" scale. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter in length. The DNA molecule is 2.3 nanometers wide. Nanotechnology, then, deals with the manipulation of matter at the atomic or molecular level. While an average layperson may have seen some depictions of this technology, few know what its current and future applications are. Fewer yet can wrap their minds around nanotechnology's ethical implications.

Nanotechnology is developing in two ways. The top-down approach creates microscopic machines, or delivery systems. The bottom-up approach harnesses the biological world. For example, the ribosome, present in every cell, is an amazing nanoscale factory: it takes RNA, a long strand of translated genetic information, and turns it into a protein that can then serve as an enzyme. In either case, nanotechnology makes the stuff of miracles possible.

Oncologists use a biological nanomachine—antibodies attached to ball-shaped molecules—to deliver the radiation drug Zevalin to the cells specifically affected by lymphoma, which saves healthy tissue from exposure to radiation.

Wired magazine reported in September 2002 that the Dobelle bionic eye system enables the blind to see. And Optobionics Corporation in Naperville, Illinois, has so far successfully tested its artificial silicon retina—a 2-millimeter-wide chip with 5,000 photodiodes—on patients with damaged retinal cells.

In my practice as a hematologist, I may soon deal with bioengineered blood cells. They could serve as a blood alternative to carry oxygen and help us avoid many risks and liabilities of blood transfusions.

Other future applications include devices that would: 1) generate and lay down new connective tissue to heal arthritic joints and torn ligaments; 2) dissolve plaque in heart and brain blood vessels; 3) manufacture and deliver certain drugs in the body, such as insulin; and 4) replace or repair damaged brain cells in people with disorders such as Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease.

When you combine nanotechnology with cyborg technology (interfacing living nervous tissue with electronic devices), the results are breathtaking. Researchers in Georgia are helping people stricken with a horrible disorder called locked-in syndrome. Its sufferers appear to be in a persistent vegetative state but are in fact completely aware of their surroundings. Via electrodes implanted near the motor regions of these patients' brains, they have been taught to control the cursor on a computer screen by their thoughts. This means they essentially type with their thoughts and thus can communicate with others.

It's not hard to imagine that such tools will move beyond therapy into augmentation, or enhancement, of "normal" individuals—or what is more objectively called "bioengineering."

Direct neural interfacing with computer systems would be attractive to people who need to have access to lots of information. Centers such as MIT, Stanford, and the University of Toronto have programs in developing "wearable computers," devices that seamlessly become part of our day-to-day apparel, yet allow 24/7 connection to the Internet and other computer databases. The interface uses optical projectors in specially engineered glasses and a small handheld module. Hitachi and Charmed Technologies are already marketing such devices. We're very close to taking the ultimate step toward "seamless" interfacing by direct brain implants.

Astronomer and physicist Robert Jastrow, for example, envisions this in his 1983 book The Enchanted Loom: "A bold scientist will be able to tap the contents of his mind and transfer them into the metallic lattices of a computer…. It can be said that this scientist has entered the computer and now dwells in it. At last the human brain, ensconced in a computer, has been liberated from the weakness of the mortal flesh…. It is in control of its own destiny…housed in indestructible lattices of silicone, and no longer constrained in its span of years…such a life could live forever." (Well, at least as long as one can supply the needed batteries or power.)

Many scholars are anticipating cyborg and nanotech enhancements as means of forestalling aging or even pursuing immortality. The possibilities belong mostly in the realm of science fiction right now, but they seem less and less improbable as the years go by.

The ethical implications of nanotechnology are great, but even more troubling is the philosophy of some of its proponents, who subscribe to transhumanism. This is the belief that someday we will reengineer our natures to such an extent that a posthuman species, or several new species, will be created that are "superior" to homo sapiens.

That we are biological creatures is simply our current status, transhumanists believe, but it is not necessary for defining who we are or who we should be. Bart Kosko, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California, puts it more bluntly in his book Heaven in a Chip: "Biology is not destiny. It was never more than tendency. It was just nature's first quick and dirty way to compute with meat. Chips are destiny."

British roboticist Kevin Warwick put it this way: "I was born human. But this was an accident of fate—a condition merely of time and place." This sounds startlingly reminiscent of what nihilist Frederick Nietzsche wrote in Thus Spake Zarathustra: "I teach you the overman. Man is something to be overcome."

Transhumanism is in some ways a new incarnation of Gnosticism. It sees the body as simply the first prosthesis we all learn to manipulate. As Christians, we have long rejected the Gnostic claims that the human body is evil. Embodiment is fundamental to our identity, designed by God, and sanctified by the Incarnation and bodily resurrection of our Lord. Unlike Gnostics, transhumanists reject the notion of the soul and substitute for it the idea of an information pattern.

Katherine Hayles, a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, says in How We Became Posthuman that "in the posthuman, there are no essential differences, or absolute demarcations, between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot technology and human goals." She concludes her book with a warning: "Humans can either go gently into that good night, joining the dinosaurs as a species that once ruled the earth but is now obsolete, or hang on for a while longer by becoming machines themselves. In either case…the age of the human is drawing to a close."

Are these ideas the musings of a small band of harmless techno geeks? Unfortunately not. Two summers ago, the National Science Foundation, the National Science and Technology Council, and the Department of Commerce published the proceedings of a December 2001 conference on "Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance." This seminal document is a manifesto for government sponsorship of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science/cybernetics to enhance human beings.

The report sporadically acknowledges that there may be ethical and social concerns with implementing these goals and technologies, yet nowhere does it specifically articulate them. It assumes that ethicists, when involved at all, will simply provide pragmatic justification for the plan, rather than actually raising substantive questions about the underlying philosophy behind the program. On December 2, 2003, President Bush signed into law the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act. The bill, as Small Times reported, gives nanotech "a permanent home in the federal government" and assigns nearly $3.7 billion over four years for nano research and development programs.

My hope is that those involved in this research will heed the wisdom of the report of the president's Council on Bioethics released last October, which examines the ethical and social meanings of using biotechnologies for purposes "beyond therapy." It is a statement appropriately skeptical of transhumanist and scientific utopianism.