Brain Repair and the Near Future of Death
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Transcript of Brain Repair and the Near Future of Death
1 11/2/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Brain Repair and the Near Future of Death
James J. Hughes Ph.D.Author Citizen Cyborg
Executive Director, World Transhumanist Association & Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Public Policy Studies, Trinity College, Hartford CT
2 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Biopolitical Struggle
Radical life extension not just scientific progress
Also requires legal and cultural evolution
From bioconservatism to transhumanism
Human-racism vs. personhood
Who is a citizen with a right to life?: abortion, stem cells, great ape rights, chimeras, brain death
Brain Repair will be central
3 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Biopolitical Values
Transhumanism Bioconservatism
Personhood Human-Racism (Deep Ecology)
Humanism, reason, individual liberty
Sacred taboos, “the natural”, yuck factor
Risks are manageable
Tech must be banned
4 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
From Human-racism…
Human-racism: Human embodiment is the basis of rights-bearing
Humans have souls or crypto-spiritual “human dignity”
Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (UN General Assembly, 1998) “The human genome underlies the fundamental unity of all
members of the human family, as well as the recognition of their inherent dignity and diversity.”
Annas/Andrews Treaty: human enhancement should be “a crime against humanity”
Embryonic citizens?
5 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
…to Personhood
Is hairlessness one of the genes necessary for citizenship?
Persons: “conscious beings, aware of themselves, with intents and purposes over time”
You can be human and not persons: fetus, PVS, braindead
You can be a person and not human: great apes, AI, posthumans
Legal personhood confers the “right to life” and personal continuity
6 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Continuity of Personal Identity
Human-racism: identity = body
H+: identity = memory, personality
Thought Experiments Scoop out my dead brain and keep me on
life support
Scoop out my dead brain and replace it with someone else’s
Scoop out my dead brain, and grow a new one
Who would I be legally?
7 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Alcor’s Definition of Death
Death: irreversible loss of the structural information which encodes memory and personality
Alcor Cryonics: Reaching for Tomorrow
8 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Schiavo and Religious Right
Christian Right mobilizingAbortionAssisted dyingStem cellsSchiavo, living wills, PVSArtificial reproductionPope Benedict
9 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
New BioConservative Alliances
Religious Right
CS Lewis The Abolition of Man
Neoconservatives
Fukuyama Our Posthuman Future
Deep Ecologists, Romantic Luddites
Aldous Huxley Brave New World
Left-wing/Feminist Critics of Biotech Jeremy Rifkin Algeny
Gena Corea The Mother Machine
Pro-Disability Extremists Not Dead Yet
10 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Trans-humanism (H+)
18th century rationalism and skepticism
Dignity and worth of humanity
Liberty, equality, democracy
Our capacity for self-realizationthrough reason, without supernatural assistance
Transhumanists are humanists who emphasize what we have the potential to become through reason.
11 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
H+ = Radical Human Rights
Liberal democracy = personhood not race, gender or species as base of citizenship
Citizens have right to self-ownership, self-determination: Control own bodies & brains
John Locke
1632-1704
12 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Secular Bioethicists Moving To H+
Greg Pence, author Who is a
Afraid of Human Cloning?
Greg Stock, author of
Redesigning Humans
Religious Right (Schiavo) and Kassites polarizing, scaring bioethicists
Forced to defend autonomy & technology against religious thuggery and nonsense yuck factor arguments
Arthur Caplan: “…enhancing intelligence or changing personality or modifying our memory, maybe that should be available to everyone as a guarantee of equal opportunity.”
13 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Tech Spurs Ethical Change
Technology Ethical Challenge
NICU/Artificial Womb Status of embryos, fetuses
Brain repair Status of brain damaged
Humanzees “Animal” personhood
Genetic enhancement Status of post-humans
14 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Recent History of Death
1960s: respirators, organ transplantation
1968: Beecher paper in JAMA arguing for whole brain death definition
1981: President’s Commission drafts uniform model (whole brain) death law
Today: brain death the law in most states, most countries
15 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Unstable Compromise
1970s and 1980s debate: Heart death vs. Whole brain vs. neocortical/personhood
death
Whole brain death a compromise because The whole brain dead would die in daysDeclaring the vegetative “dead”
politically impossible
16 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Whole Brain Death Unravels
Diagnostic procedures inconsistent, incoherent
Electrical activity persists in most “brain dead”
Shewmon 1999: Whole brain death is “survivable” indefinitely
Maintaining Schiavos indefinitely untenable
17 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Just Forget “Death”?
Fost, Youngner, et al.: forget “death” - when do we turn off respirator and take organs
Emanuel: choice in the dying zone between PVS and heart death: Self/family can choose euthanasia
after permanent unconsciousness
no cremation/burial until heart death
after heart death treatment must stop
18 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Tech challenges permanence
The pronouncement of death is thus an arbitrary (if admittedly very practical) medical and legal construct, which amounts to a statement saying in effect: ‘Your affliction has exceeded our current level of medical skill and we are currently powerless to restore you to function; therefore we give up.
Alcor Cryonics: Reaching for Tomorrow
19 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Emerging Brain Repair Tech
Tech that will be applied to brain repair Neuro-protective drugs Neuro-genesis drugs Neurogenic gene therapies Stem cells and
tissue engineering Neural stimulation Neural prostheses Nano-neural-bots
The accelerating convergence of all these
20 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
NBIC: Nanowiring the Brain
“Neuro-vascular central nervous recording/stimulating system: Using nanotechnology probes,” Rodolfo R. Llinás, Kerry D. Walton, Masayuki Nakao, et al.
21 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
DNR, NBHD & the Probably Dead
Do not resuscitate (DNR) orders
Potentially revivable, but allowed to remain dead in order to facilitate a dignified death
Non-Heart Beating Donor Protocol
Being declared dead depends not only on how unlikely it is you can be revived,
But also on people not wanting to bring you back
PVS is probabilistic diagnosis
22 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Brain Damaged/Dead as Missing Person
Missing personsPotentially alive,
but legally dead timeevidence
If they reappearReimbursing those wrongly declared dead
preferred to leaving affairs in limbo
23 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Search Parties for the Missing
If advance directives and prognosis permit, declaration of death will wait for trial of brain repair
Otherwise, they will be declared dead.
But what if brain repair recovers 20%?10% 1%
For biocons, success
For H+ers, failure
24 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Testing for Continuity
Below threshold, different person
Advance directive could give body to future person
Advance directives and squatter’s rights
25 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Information Loss
How much info can be lost before we, and the law, consider the reconstituted mind a new person?
Alcor on Information Loss
...even if today's patients do make it there, it is possible (and with sub-optimal suspension even likely) that they will wake with varying degrees of amnesia. In particularly bad cases, cell and tissue repair technology might only result in revival of a biological twin of the suspended patient.
Alcor Cryonics: Reaching for Tomorrow
26 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
HETHR Conference
Human Enhancement Technologies and Human RightsMay 26-28, 2006Stanford University Law School Rights of transhuman persons
uploads, cyborgs Rights to transhuman technology
Life extension
27 11/4/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
For more information on H+
World Transhumanist Associationtranshumanism.org
Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologiesieet.org
Betterhumans.com(online magazine & daily news feed)