In case you missed it, here's the podcast of my recent appearance on FastForward Radio where I reviewed the recent Humanity+ Summit at Harvard.

After six years of ground-breaking and influential blogging, the Women's Bioethics Project has come to an end. Kathryn Hinsch made the announcement on June 11.

For years, the WBP provided a crucial channel for female bioethicists to voice their concerns and support for key biotechnologies at the dawn of the transhuman era. Virtually no topic was off limits, whether it be voluntary euthanasia or the potential for exosomatic wombs. The WBP perspective was a breath of fresh air in a sea littered with bioconservatives, anti-technological feminists and religious conservatives. Not to mention overzealous male techno-optimists.

But it wasn't always this way. Back in 2003 I spoke at Yale about how feminists seemed to be forsaking the future, unwilling to engage in bioethical and biotechnological discourse. It seemed absurd to me at the time that the only people talking about such topics as human trait selection, reproductive technologies, genomics, and stem cell research were geeky white males (myself included). All feminists, it seemed to me at the time, were anti-technological ideologues who were unwilling to discuss the possibilities and what it might mean for women. Donna Haraway's legacy, I thought, had been all but abandoned.

It was with great relief, then, that the Women's Bioethics Project was launched a year later, featuring such writers as Linda MacDonald Glenn, Kristi Scott, Kelly Hills and many others. Indeed, as the blog header proclaimed, "This is not your typical blog. We have recruited scholars and public policy analysts from around the world to provide daily news and commentary on the implications of bioethical issues for women." And as Hinsch noted in her farewell post, "we developed innovative programs, policy recommendations and research on ethical issues pertaining to women’s health, reproductive technologies, and neuroethics. We made a difference: our work brought these important issues to new audiences and encouraged women to participate in policy development around bioethics questions."

And that they did. Their work will be missed, but thankfully many of the WBP alumni will continue to contribute to the IEET.

Well done, WBP!

Just added this to my ever growing must-read list: Choosing Tomorrow's Children: The Ethics of Selective Reproduction by Stephen Wilkinson. Here's an excerpt from Iain Brassington's excellent review:

In Choosing Tomorrow's Children, Stephen Wilkinson looks at the ethics of selection, concentrating mainly on 'same number' decisions that we may make. A 'same number' decision is one in which we have chosen to bring a child to birth, but have not decided which. (A 'different number' decision, by contrast, would be one in which we have to choose whether to reproduce at all.) Put another way, he is concerned with choosing between different possible future people (p5). Within this range, though, there's a number of different situations that may give us cause to want to choose: we might be making decisions about choosing an embryo to act as a 'saviour sibling', choosing an embryo to avoid a certain disability, choosing in favour of a (prima facie) disability - as in the case of Candace McCullough and Sharon Duchesneau, who sought specifically to have a deaf child - or choosing one gender over another. Wilkinson spends time considering all these variations on the 'choosing children' theme, and is guided by a presumption of permissibility - a presumption that everything is permitted unless and until it is forbidden, and that the onus is on the person doing the forbidding to make the case for impermissibility.

As far as Wilkinson is concerned, many (if not most) of the arguments that one might mount to establish the impermissibility of choosing children fail. This principle applies even in relation to controversial decisions such as McCullough and Duchesneau's. For in their case, the strongest argument that they would have to face would in all likelihood have to do with the welfare of the child created thereby: that deafness is welfare-reducing, and that it is wrong deliberately to created a child with lower welfare than it might otherwise have enjoyed. Yet, says Wilkinson, even this claim is weak. Partly this has to do with a scepticism about whether choosing for a disability is necessarily the same as choosing for a lower quality of life; partly it has to do with a claim that, even if disabled, people overwhelmingly have a life worth living, and that since this is the only life they could possibly have lived, there is no sense in which they could be said to suffer from a wrongful life; partly it is because the impersonal 'Same Number Quality Claim' - the idea that we ought to select for a higher quality of life whenever possible - does not reliably tell us that all examples of selecting for disability are wrong, and so, even at its strongest, will not tell us that this particular instance of choosing disability is de facto wrong.

I will be on Skeptically Speaking this coming Friday June 25 at 8:00PM EST. I will be having a conversation/debate about transhumanism with World of Weird Things blogger Greg Fish. More specifically, we will "explore the predictions and the problems in the quest to “enhance” human beings."

While the show will be broadcast live over the air on CJSR 88.5 in Edmonton, it will also be made available live over the internet (and eventually distributed to over 22 radio stations across North America). It's also a call-in show, so feel free to call me during the broadcast.

Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer provides his take on the recent synthetic life breakthrough:

Patenting life was taken a step further in 1984, when Harvard University successfully applied for a patent on its "oncomouse", a laboratory mouse specifically designed to get cancer easily, so that it would be more useful as a research tool. There are good grounds for objecting to turning a sentient being into a patented laboratory tool, but it is not so easy to see why patent law should not cover newly designed bacteria or algae, which can feel nothing and may be as useful as any other invention.

Indeed, Synthia's very existence challenges the distinction between living and artificial that underlies much of the opposition to "patenting life" – though pointing this out is not to approve the granting of sweeping patents that prevent other scientists from making their own discoveries in this important new field.

As for the likely usefulness of synthetic bacteria, the fact that Synthia's birth had to compete for headlines with news of the world's worst-ever oil spill made the point more effectively than any public-relations effort could have done. One day, we may be able to design bacteria that can quickly, safely, and effectively clean up oil spills. And, according to Venter, if his team's new technology had been available last year, it would have been possible to produce a vaccine to protect ourselves against H1N1 influenza in 24 hours, rather than several weeks.

Hmmm, now who else recently said we shouldn't patent sentient life and use it as a laboratory tool? Oh, yeah—that was me at the Humanity+ Summit at Harvard last week.

Kyle Munkittrick has penned a nice little retraction to Mark Gubrud's suggestion that transhumanism won’t work because mind uploading is impossible:

Only in the past decade have we started to realize that transhumanism won’t realize its dreams through mechanization and computerization. Though seminal authors on transhumanism, like Kurzweil, Moravec, Drexler, and More focus on nanotechnology and cybernetics, those technologies haven’t seen real progress since the 70’s.

But genetics and biotech has. Starting in the 1950’s with the Pill, vaccines, and antibiotics, our knowledge of medicine and biology radically improved throughout the second half of the twentieth century with assisted reproduction technologies like IVF, not to mention genomic sequencing, stem cell research, organ transplantation, and neural mapping, advances in biology and medicine are what are driving the transhumanist revolution. When someone like Mark Gubrud starts arguing transhumanism won’t work because we can’t upload our minds into robot bodies, one has to gawk for a moment in awe at the irrelevance of the argument. It’s like arguing we can’t ever cure cancer because cold fusion is impossible.

Transhumanism is the idea of guiding and improving human evolution with intention through the use of technologies and culture. If those technologies are not robotic and cybernetic but, instead, genetic and organic, then so be it. And that seems to be the way things are going.

Totally agree. I've also argued that uploading may not be possible, but that it's not a deal-breaker in our quest to live 'outside' our bodies.

Kris Notaro of the IEET ponders a postgendered future:

Traditional values of looking at gender in binary fashion grow less and less important as scientists show that gender identity is diverse in nature and is caused by many biological and social conditions. If one were to look at the pure science of gender identity, it not only appears that a postgender society is possible but it seems we are already living in one.

More on postgenderism.

IEET Chair Nick Bostrom discusses the Great Silence with Robert Lawrence Kuhn on Closer to the Truth. Nick and I are totally on the same wavelength here, including our agreement over the suggestion that the discovery of life in the solar system would be bad news.

As if we didn't already have enough to worry about, NASA is now warning of space storms that could spawn devastating solar flares. The Telegraph UK reports:

Scientists believe it could damage everything from emergency services’ systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to “everyday” items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs.

Due to humans’ heavy reliance on electronic devices, which are sensitive to magnetic energy, the storm could leave a multi-billion pound damage bill and “potentially devastating” problems for governments.

“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa's Heliophysics division, said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.

“It will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigations, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic. It will cause major problems for the world.

“Large areas will be without electricity power and to repair that damage will be hard as that takes time.”

Dr Fisher added: “Systems will just not work. The flares change the magnetic field on the earth that is rapid and like a lightning bolt. That is the solar affect.”

MIT's Technology Review wonders if a drug can extend good health and postpone the effects of aging. Early results are not promising:

In 2003, Sinclair made headlines around the world when he announced that the red-wine component resveratrol, which had previously been linked to a reduction in heart disease, extended life span in yeast. He argued that the compound activated one of the sirtuins and proposed that it mimicked the effects of caloric restriction. Sinclair and Westphal launched Sirtris in 2004 with the aim of developing molecules that could stimulate the enzyme much more potently. The company is developing treatments not for aging itself--which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn't consider an illness--but for diseases of aging, such as diabetes, Alzheimer's, and cancer.

As Stipp recounts, hopes for antiaging drugs captured media attention and investors' imaginations. But a different conversation has played out in the academic community. Some scientists doubted whether resveratrol truly targeted the sirtuins. Researchers at drug maker Pfizer also published a study in January questioning whether one of Sirtris's newer compounds targets the enzyme. The study failed to confirm the health benefits seen in earlier trials. To make matters worse, safety concerns have arisen over one of Sirtris's resveratrol compounds. In May, Glaxo announced that it would not expand a clinical trial for multiple-myeloma patients until it better understood why some participants developed a dangerous kidney ailment.

The field of antiaging research is littered with failures, and the controversy over Sirtris's compounds highlights just how difficult it has been to transform exciting scientific discoveries about the aging process into useful drugs. As Stipp illustrates, many candidates with promising antiaging benefits later failed to work in mammals or showed conflicting results.

I recently co-authored an open commentary with bioethicist Linda MacDonald Glenn that has been published in the latest issue of the American Journal of Bioethics (Volume 10 Issue 7 2010).

The article, "Dignity and Agential Realism: Human, Posthuman, and Nonhuman," was in response to Fabrice Jotterand's critique of transhumanism, "Human Dignity and Transhumanism: Do Anthro-technological Devices Have Moral Status?"

I can't republish our entire article at this time, but here's a taste:

The notion that beings exist as individuals with inherent attributes (such as dignity) anterior to their representation, is a metaphysical presupposition that underlies the belief in political, linguistic, and epistemological forms of representationalism (Barad, 2003). Within the framework of representionalism, dignity is most certainly tied into capacity; it is fair, within that framework, to suggest that the diminishment or deliberate withholding of certain attributes results in the lessening of one's dignity (That being said, one should not confuse dignity with the ways in which all human persons deserve equal status in the eyes of the law). Consequently, the inverse also holds true, whether it be the alleviation of a debilitating syndrome or the augmentation of a physical or cognitive characteristic. As far as the agent in question is concerned, human or otherwise, these interventions are dignifying. Representationalism, on the other hand, separates the world into the ontologically disjointed domains of words and things. (Barad, 2003)

A performative understanding, in contrast, contests this metaphysical assumption that dignity is an inherent attribute, as if dignity existed in a vacuum, independently of an individual’s actions or interactions with other beings. A performative understanding shifts the focus from description and questions of correspondence to matters of practice, doings and/or actions; the active participation, phenomena and “intra-actions” (Barad 2003, 2007) are what help create agreed upon meaning. The phrase made popular by M. Scott Peck, “Love is as love does” is an illustration of this shift in understanding; so is Forrest Gump's “Stupid is as stupid does.”

So a performative understanding of dignity includes recognition that the dignity of a person is contingent on the ways in which they are treated by others (including institutions) and the ways in which they are capable of interacting with their external environment. What should not be tied into notions of dignity is the value of persons or the questioning of a person's degree of equality under the law. Nor should dignity tied into the Kassian notion of embodied human life—an inherently speciesist notion that carries with it unjustifiable conditions for exclusionism. Dignity is not status; rather, it is a measurement (or assessment) of the quality in which persons are treated, the depth of their interactions, and the degree to which they are capable of engaging in life. Consequently, a performative understanding of dignity recognizes it as more an issue of treatment and social justice than abstract and confusing notions about equality, value and status.

I love this: The contact lens mouse:

Via Yanko Design:

This one’s kinda hard to swallow so take a deep breath, open your minds, and pretend it’s 2100. I CONTACT is essentially a mouse fitted to your eyeball. The lens is inserted like any other normal contact lens except it’s laced with sensors to track eye movement, relaying that position to a receiver connected to your computer. Theoretically that should give you full control over a mouse cursor. I’d imagine holding a blink correlates to mouse clicks.

The idea was originally created for people with disabilities but anyone could use it. Those of us too lazy to use a mouse now have a free hand to do whatever it is people do when they sit at the computer for endless hours. I love the idea but there is a caveat. How is the lens powered? Perhaps in the future, electrical power can be harnessed from the human body, just not in a Matrix creepy-like way.

Noting the tenth anniversary of the reading of the human genome, The Economist issues a call to action, but not without warning:

Humanity’s foibles will be laid bare. The species’s history, from its tentative beginning in north-east Africa to its current imperial dominion, has already been revealed, just through being able to read the genome. It is now possible, too, to compare Homo sapiens with his closest relative—not the living chimpanzee, with whom he parted company perhaps 5m years ago, but the extinct Neanderthal, a true human. That will do what philosophers have dreamed of, but none has yet accomplished: show just what it is that makes Homo sapiens unique. The genome will answer, too, the age-old question of original sin. By showing what is nature, it will reveal what is nurture—and thus just how flexible and perfectible the human animal really is.
...
Genomics may reveal that humans really are brothers and sisters under the skin. The species is young, so there has been little time for differences to evolve. Politically, that would be good news. It may turn out, however, that some differences both between and within groups are quite marked. If those differences are in sensitive traits like personality or intelligence, real trouble could ensue.

People must be prepared for this possibility, and ready to resist the excesses of racialism, nationalism and eugenics that some are bound to propose in response. That will not be easy. The liberal answer is to respect people as individuals, regardless of the genetic hand that they have been dealt. Genetic knowledge, however awkward, does not change that.

Advice for college students and graduating high-shoolers. Reflecting on his son's graduation from high school, Science Fiction author David Brin offers inspiration and advice for students going on to college. Broaden your perspectives and take full advantage of the wealth of educational experiences awaiting you during the next four years. The key is curiosity. Among several tricks offered: explore what is happening in those buildings on campus. Once a month, pick a building and randomly knock on doors! What’s the worst that can happen?  What’s the best?

This one has gone viral, with 5,000 hits in the first day! (Hint: you folks could also spread the word.)  Great (and highly unusual) advice for that bright young college-bound grad.

= OTHER NEWS... then controversy... and science! =

Back in 1985 I was the very first author in Bantam's (Randomhouse) science fiction line SPECTRA. Now this famed, accomplished publishing line is celebrating its 25th anniversary. Time flies and the future rushes upon us.  Congratulations Spectra!

I’ve been on more than thirty television shows. I’ve had one novel filmed and others scripted. But now comes my first appearance on the big screen! “The People vs. George Lucas” premieres June 23 at the Los Angeles Film Festival. I was interviewed for this provocative documentary -- along with many passionate fans and foes of the popular Lucasian universe. I’ve already stated my opinion, as editor and ‘prosecutor’ in the book Star Wars on Trial, which offers every pro/con perspective in more detail - a real treat for fans of intellectual dissections of po-culture!   But for a lighter-fun scan, the movie is coming soon to a theater not too far away…

And yet-more podcasts! Especially for TedX Munich, I performed a 10 minute video talk entitled: “Ambitious Problem-solving for the Future” It's too easy to lapse into negativity/pessimism about the problems we face: war, political instability, economic trouble, global warming.  Indeed, vast inequalities of wealth exist across the globe. To keep things in perspective, we should recall that things were nearly always worse in the past. We must develop innovative problem-solving skills to face the complex world of the future – and to raise standards of living across the world. For the first time, the entire world community is able to communicate -- across borders and nationalities -- to share strategies and seek solutions. My favorite aphorism: Criticism is the only known antidote to error.  Identifying errors is the first step toward seeking solutions. But we must keep in mind the goal – to improve our civilization. Technology must be part of the solution.

And now exciting news that I predicted... Andrew Wade, an avid player in the two-dimensional, mathematical universe known as the Game of Life,  posted his self-replicating mathematical organism on a Life community website on 18 May. It sparked a wave of excitement.  And might I note that I foresaw this would happen, in my novel GLORY SEASON?  Someone log in and congratulate him, on my behalf?

 I think it is very important to have a clear, fact-based view of the state of the world.  It may seem superficially to be less caring, when I say that 95% of human beings have it better than their ancestors.  But the opposite is true. We can only attack the huge remaining injustices in the world if we first admit that past efforts have done some good.On the up-side, refuting the stylish cynicism that infuses everything from Tea Parties to “Avatar,” dig the facts: Professor Steven Pinker on the myth of violence: he charts the decline of violence from biblical times to the present. 

= A Transparency Issue in the News =

On the other hand, I’ve long been a champion of openness, e.g. in my nonfiction book, The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?   In fact, I’ve long held that some millionaire could do more to save freedom and civilization than any other person on the planet, by funding an entirely new approach to encouraging whistle-blowers. (It really is a cool idea!) Indeed, I was generally approving of the endeavor known as WikiLeaks... an attempt to create a clearinghouse online for people to expose what they perceive as wrongdoing.  

Alas, the core person at Wiki-Leaks appears to be on the run from authorities who want to nail a member of the military who disseminated a large number of of classified documents from his post in Iraq. In fact, the matter is more complicated than it seems, at surface.  (I will opine further on this - informally - under "comments" below.)

= And Now Lighthearted (intellectually satisfying) Fun! =

Go read some of ther terrific “fanfic” or fan-generated fiction out there. Here’s a great example: futurist/scholar Eliezer Yudkowsky’s ongoing series/novel that is both a tribute to - and deconstruction of - J.K. Rowling’s fantasy universe.  HARRY POTTER AND THE METHODS OF RATIONALITY poses an alternate world in which Harry is a genius, not only at magic but also the muggle wizardries of math and science. Oh, and his step-parents, instead of being cartoony/silly villains, were wise, decent and smart.  (In other words, Dumbledore did not commit a horrific crime, but put him with the best muggles he could find, duh?)  The result is a fiercely bright, logical and infuriatingly immature 11-year old prodigy who is loyal to science and progress and the Enlightenment, unleashed on poor Hogwarts School, vowing to up-end the corrupt, horrific and insular society that is Magical Britain.

It’s a terrific series, subtle and dramatic and stimulating.  I liked especially hearing the vocal rhythms of Maggie Smith in dialogue with Professor McGonnagle. And I (naturally) I loved the dissing of Yoda! Yudkowsky gets it, and lots else. Smart guy, good writer. Poses hugely terrific questions that I, too, had thought of... and a number that I hadn't.  Enjoyed all references to the enlightenment. 

I wish all Potter fans would go here, and try on a bigger, bolder and more challenging tale.

= And see Comments for more... =

I'm back home after several intense and wonderful days at Harvard University attending the Humanity+ Summit. Spare time is not an ally of mine right now, but I hope to blog about the conference over the course of the next few days and weeks. So much to talk about -- from my one-on-one conversation with Stephen Wolfram through to visiting the Center for Brain Science Neuroimaging.

In the meantime you can hear my conference wrap up on FastForward Radio.

Check out my slideshow (minus the cool transitions and actions):

When the Turing Test is not enough: Towards a functionalist determination of personhood and the advent of an authentic machine ethics

Empirical research that works to identify those characteristics requisite for the identification of nonhuman persons are proving increasingly insufficient, particularly as neuroscientists further refine functionalist models of cognition. To say that an agent "appears" to have awareness or intelligence is inadequate. Rather, what is required is the discovery and understanding of those processes in the brain that are responsible for capacities such as self-awareness, empathy and emotion. Subsequently, the shift to a neurobiological basis for personhood will have implications for those hoping to develop self-aware artificial intelligence and brain emulations. The Turing Test alone cannot identify machine consciousness; instead, computer scientists will need to work off the functionalist model and be mindful of those processes that produce awareness. Because the potential to do harm is significant, an effective and accountable machine ethics needs to be considered. Ultimately, it is our responsibility as citizen-scientists to develop a rigorous understanding of personhood so that we can identify and work with machine minds in the most compassionate and considerate manner possible.

Neurodiversity: Differences among brains are as enriching and essential as differences among plants and animals. In other words, 'disabilities' or cognitive differences are essential to the human ecosystem.

Thomas Armstrong has come up with a list of eight 'principles of neurodiversity':

1. The human brain works more like an ecosystem than a machine
2. Human beings and human brains exist along continuums of competence
3. Human competence is defined by the values of the culture to which you belong
4. Whether you are regarded as disabled or gifted depends largely upon when and where you live
5. Success in life is based upon adapting one’s brain to the needs of the surrounding environment
6. Success in life depends upon modifying your surrounding environment to fit the needs of your unique brain
7. Niche construction includes career and lifestyle choices and assistive technologies tailored to the needs of a neurodiverse individual
8. Positive niche construction directly modifies the brain, which in turn enhances its ability to adapt to the environment

Entire article.

WolframAlpha is now crunching health indicators, including data from the WHO.

Specifically, WA recently added data on health indicators for more than 200 countries and territories. They now have World Health Organization data on health care workers, immunizations, water and sanitation, preventive care, tobacco use, weight, and more.

Example: Underweight children in Africa.

Data is also now available on specific types of health care personnel, such as physicians, nurses, and dentists, and Wolfram|Alpha can also compute per capita figures for each type of health professional. Other interesting indicators include figures on hospital beds, drinking water and sanitation, tobacco use, weight and obesity, and reproduction and contraception.

Peter Singer wonders how we can promote the need for improved animal welfare when battling ancient religious views.

The chief minister's [Mohamad Ali Rustam of Malacca] comment is yet another illustration of the generally regressive influence that religion has on ethical issues – whether they are concerned with the status of women, with sexuality, with end-of-life decisions in medicine, with the environment, or with animals. Although religions do change, they change slowly, and tend to preserve attitudes that have become obsolete and often are positively harmful.

"Go forth and multiply" was a reasonable idea when the world had a few million humans in it. Now, unrestricted multiplication of our species has become a grave risk to the environment of our planet, and a significant cause of infant mortality and poverty. Yet some religious leaders continue to condemn not only abortion, but also contraception, and their condemnation of homosexuality also has the same roots in the non-reproductive nature of same-sex relationships.

In the same way, there has been great progress, worldwide, in attitudes to animals over the past century, but some religious believers, such as Mohamad Ali Rustam, remain stuck with attitudes that were formed many centuries ago.

Independently of the problems of reactionary religious belief, the trend to establish animal testing facilities in countries with weak or no regulations is an extremely worrying one. As regulations improve in Europe, North America, Australia and other countries, it seems that unscrupulous entrepreneurs are engaged in a race to the bottom.

If we are concerned about the exploitation of human workers in countries with low standards of worker protection, we should also be concerned about the treatment of even more defenceless non-human animals. At present, the only hope of reversing this trend seems to be pressure on companies not to test their products in countries without good animal welfare regulations, and pressure on research institutions not to have links with such countries. But to unravel the connections and make them clear to consumers is, unfortunately, going to be a difficult task.

Australian prof Roger Clarke says that cyborg rights need to be debated now; Cyborgs are alive and well today and asserting their rights, presenting society with a challenge that needs to be met head on:

Dr Clarke says as cyborgisation is increasingly used in the medical arena, people may expect they have the right to have technology that keeps them alive.

"They may also want the right to have the technology removed when they want to die", he said.

In summary, says Dr Clarke, cyborgisation of humans is leading to a plethora of questions about human rights.

"People who are using prostheses to recover lost capabilities will seek to protect their existing rights. People who have lost capabilities but have not yet got the relevant prostheses will seek the right to have them," Dr Clark said.

"Enhanced humans will seek additional rights to go with the additional capabilities that they have."

Dr Clarke says engineers and others who develop these new technologies have an obligation to brief political, social and economic institutions on their implications.

"They have to date signally failed to do so, and urgent action is needed," Dr Clarke said.

"The need for policymakers to wake up to themselves and get debating things is becoming more acute."