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The Emerging Biopolitics of Human Enhancement Technologies
James J. Hughes Ph.D.
Executive Director, Institute for Ethics and Emerging TechnologiesLecturer, Public Policy Studies, Trinity College, Hartford CT
April 22, 2014 – Translational Bodies – Prato, Italy
HETs & Biopolitics
How are human enhancement technologies helping to catalyze elite and mass biopolitical ideological formations?
How do biopolitical ideologies articulate with pre-existing political and religious ideologies?
What is the relationship of bio-utopianism to religious and secular millennialism?
Ancient Aspirations
Abstract thought -> imagining radically improvement to human condition
Medicines and magical practices to improve health and grant wisdom
Myths of times and places without toil, conflict, or injustice, a more perfect world
Radically improved social and corporeal life possible in the immediate future
The Enlightenment
1. Autonomy of reason from faith and authority
2. Human perfectibility and social progress
3. Empirical optimism: sapere aude!
4. Legitimacy of government based on free association
5. Tolerance of diversity, freedom of thought
6. Ethical universalism – beyond nationalism, racism, sexism
Descartes, Locke, Pascal, Bayle, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Condorcet,
Rousseau
20th Century Politics
Progressives
Conservatives
Conservatives Progressives
Populists
Libertarians New Right
Social Democrats
Cultural Politics
Economic Politics
Populists
Libertarians New Right
Social Democrats
20th century politics shaped by the ongoing battles for/against Enlightenment values, or between various interpretations of Enlightenment values
Marquis de Condorcet 1744-1794
Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind
Reason liberates from church, authoritarianism, nature
Women’s suffrage Opposed to slavery Radical life extension Freedom from work
Marquis de Condorcet
Other Proto-Transhumanists
HG Wells and Olaf Stapledon– portrayed future evolution of humanity
JBS Haldane, 1923, "Daedalus: Science and the Future“ – in vitro fertilization, genetic engineering
JD Bernal, 1929, "The World, the Flesh and the Devil” – first projection of cybernetic implants JBS Haldane
Emerging Technologies
Tech that will radically change the human brain:PsychopharmacologyGenetic engineeringNanotechnologyArtificial intelligenceCognitive science
The accelerating convergence of all these“for improving human performance”
Human Enhancement
Curing disabilitiesHealthLongevity Intelligence Emotional controlHeightened sensesSpiritual experienceMoral sentiment and cognition
“Trans-humanism” and “Transhuman-ism”
Julian Huxley first director of UNESCO "Transhumanism“ "the human species can transcend itself."
“FM-2030” (FM Esfandiary) popularized term “transhuman” in the 1970s
Biopolitical Battlefronts
Who is a citizen with a right to life?: abortion, stem cells, great ape rights, brain death, chimeras
Control of Reproduction: contraception, abortion, fertility treatments, genetic testing, germline gene therapies, cloning
Fixing Disabilities to “Human Enhancement”: cochlear implants, prosthetics, eye and brain chips, gene therapies, cosmetic procedures
Extending Life: from treatments for aging-related diseases, to anti-aging drugs and therapies
Control of the Brain: Ritalin and Prozac, psychoactive drugs, brain chips
From Bioethics to Biopolitics
Public health and universal insurance
Access to contraception Rights to refuse treatment,
confinement Roe v. Wade,
fetal rights Stem cells Brain death, PVS
21st Century Politics
Economic Politics
Biopolitics
Progressive
Conservative
Progressive Conservative Cultural Politics
Bioconservatism
Transhumanism
90s: Libertarian H+ & Extropians
Extropy Institute http://extropy.org Extropian
Principles
Max More
Ron Bailey
2002-3: BioPolitical Landmark
Leon Kass appointed Chair of President’s Council on Bioethics
Fukuyama’s Our Posthuman Future (2002)
Greg Stock’s Redesigning Humans (2002)
Christian Right’s Manifesto on Biotechnology and Human
Dignity (2002)
Vatican’s "Human Persons Created in the Image of God“ (2002)
Bill McKibben Enough (2003)
PCB’s Beyond Therapy (2003)
Leon Kass
Chair, President’s
Council on
Bioethics
BioConservatives
Religious Right
Deep Ecologists,
Romantic Luddites
Left-wing/Feminist
Critics of Biotech
Human-Exceptionalists
Pro-Disability Extremists
Transhumanists BioConservativesPersonhood, cyborg citizenship
Human-Exceptionalism: Humanness more important than personhood
Humanism, reason, individual liberty, progress, limits are just status quo bias
Sacred taboos, obvious red lines, “the natural”, yuck factor, romanticism
Risks are manageable Risks are unknowable; Punishment for hubris inevitable; Tech should be banned
Central Biopolitical Disputes
Beyond Human-exceptionalism…
Humanness as basis of rights-bearing
Humans have souls or crypto-spiritual “human dignity”
Fetus to cremation
Embryonic citizens?
…to Personhood
Persons: “conscious beings, aware of themselves, with intents and purposes over time”
You can be human and not persons: fetus, braindead
You can be a person and not human: great apes, AI, posthumans
Boundaries of Humanness Mary Douglas and liminality aversion
Haidt’s purity, in-group preference
Uncanny valley
Animal-Human: Chimeras & “uplifted” animals
Perinatal: Totipotent cells and artificial wombs
Perideath: Brain repair
Machine-Human: cyborgs, neuro-prosthetics, AI
Human-Posthuman: ?
Race-Mixing Panic
Rights Based on Racial Identity?
Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (UNESCO, 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.” Sorry – no rights!
Is hairlessness one of the human traits necessary for citizenship?
“They” Want Your Jobs
Inevitability of Race War?
George Annas & Lori Andrews: make human enhancement “a crime against humanity”
"The posthuman will come to see us (the garden variety human) as an inferior subspecies without human rights to be enslaved or slaughtered preemptively. It is this potential for genocide based on genetic difference, that I have termed "genetic genocide," that makes species-altering genetic engineering a potential weapon of mass destruction." (Annas, 2001)
Agar: Humanity’s End
Human “local values” trump individual freedom claims to enhancement
“Those who want to become posthuman …want to create circumstance in which our interests, and the interests of our human children, are morally subordinated to their own or to their posthuman descendants. It seems to me that we are entitled to prevent them from doing this.”
Christian Right BioCon Network
Millions of dollars poured into “conservative bioethics”
Center for Bioethics and Culture (Jennifer Lahl, Nigel Cameron, Prison Ministries, etc.)
Trinity International University/Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity
Discovery Institute (Wesley J. Smith)
Ethics & Public Policy Center’s BAD (Eric Cohen, New Atlantis)
American Enterprise Institute (Leon Kass, J.Q. Wilson)
National Catholic Bioethics Center (John Haas)
Hudson Institute (Michael Fumento)
Leftist Opponents of H+
Leftist, feminist and anti-racist opponents of “technoeugenics”
Marcy Darnovsky, Michael Sandel, George Annas, Lori Andrews, Jurgen Habermas
Deep Ecologists and Luddites
Bill McKibben Enough (2003) Jeremy Rifkin’s FOET Andrew Kimbrell ETC Foundation on Deep Ecology Anti-GM food groups
Pro-Disability Extremists
E.g. Not Dead Yet
Opposed to:
Efforts to “cure” or “fix” disabilities
Parent’s right to terminate disabled fetuses
The right of sick and disabled to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment
Human enhancement medicine
Copyright Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies 2005
Left-Right Biocon Alliances
Progressive Pushback
New willingness to defend enhancement on autonomy grounds
Progressive Bioethics Network Art Caplan, Glenn McGee, Alta Charo, Hank Greely,
Peter Singer, Maxwell Mehlman, Allen Buchanan Women’s Bioethics Network Center for American Progress
European Bioliberals John Harris, Julian Savulescu, Jonathan Glover, Sarah
Chan, Ingmar Persson, Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Stefan Sorgner, Rebecca Roache
Growing H+ Movement
Formerly World Transhumanist Association
Members in more than 100 countries
Dozens of affiliated, albeit mostly ephemeral, chapters, groups, organizations, projects
H+ Politics
Left H+ outnumber libertarians 2 to 1
Conservatives only 2-4%
Which of these best describes your political views? 2003 2005 2007 Left 36% 39% 47%
Technoprogressive -- -- 16% Libertarian socialist 7% 7% 7% Progressive 6% 7% 4% Democratic socialist 4% 6% 5% Social democrat 5% 5% 4% Green 4% 4% 4% US-style liberal 4% 4% 3% Left anarchist 2% 3% 2% Radical 2% 1% <0.5% Communist 1% 1% 1%
Libertarian 22% 22% 20%
Libertarian 11% 10% 10% European Liberal 6% 7% 5% Anarcho-capitalist 4% 2% 2% Randian/Objectivist 1% 2% 1% Minarchist 1% 1% 1%
Other 17% 16% 14%
Upwinger/advocate of future political system
8% 10% 7%
Other 9% 7% 7%
Not political 15% 12% 11% Moderate 7% 8% 7% Conservative 4% 3% 2%
Christian Democrat 1% <0.5% <0.5% Conservative 2% 2% 1% Far right 1% <0.5% <0.5%
Technoprogressives
Precursors: Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, Norm Daniels, Dan Wikler’s 1999 From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice
Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies ieet.org
Technoprog! (French Transhumanist Association)
Themes Technology needs public investment, robust regulation and
universal access
Transnational governance to prevent global catastrophic risks
Basic income guarantee to redress structural unemployment
Rights for non-human persons
Opposition to IP overreach, e.g. gene patenting
Ensuring Safety, Universal Access
Majority of U.S. think life extension should be universal, even though pessimistic about safety, social/ecological effects and equal access
Dems more positive aboutradical life extension than Republicans
2008: Biopolitical Fragmentation
Economic crisis displaces nascent biopolitics
Progressive bioethics sidetracked by 2009 demonization, technocratic Obama bioethics
Re-assertion of libertopian hegemony within H+
Technological unemployment
Hegemony of Conservative H+
Singularity University Peter Diamandis Abundance Entrepreneurs’ summer camp
Peter Thiel Christian conservative Paypal, Facebook, Clarium Dominance in H+: SIAI, SENS,
Seasteading Ron Paul, Hoover
Gingrich’s ‘Futurism’ Glenn Harlan Reynolds Employment doublethink
The Singularity
Millenialist Kurzweil
Apocalyptic Hugo de Garis
Fatalist, Inevitabilist
Messianic Yudkowsky Purity of code,
danger of DNA
Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Growing Apocalypticism
Growth of radical militia/survivalist subculture
Sales of survivalist supplies and guns spiking
25% of Republicans say Obama may be AntiChrist
Millennialist/Apocalyptic turn among H+
H+ & Singularity feed apocalyptic narratives
Religious H+ & Singularitarians
One quarter of H+ are religious
Mormon Transhumanist Association largest H+ group in US
NeoReactionaries
“Dark enlightenment”
Rejection of democracy, libertarianism, egalitarianism
Advocacy of monarchy and aristocracy, city-state separatism
Defense of “traditional” racial, sexual differences and hierarchies
Massification of Biopolitics
Pew Surveys of U.S. 2013-4 H+ BioCon
Tech progress will improve most people’s lives 59% yes 30% no
Medical treatments that slow the aging process and allow the average person to live decades longer, to at least 120 years
38% want
41% good for society
56% don’t want
51% bad for society
Parents can alter DNA of prospective children to produce smarter, healthier, or more athletic offspring?
26% positive
66% negative
Would use a brain implant to improve memory or mental capacity
26% yes (37% of college graduates)
72% no
Human cloning 13% OK 83% Not OK
Biopolitical Polarization
H+ BioCons
A-TechnoprogressivesB-Libertarian transhumanistsE-NeoreactionariesF-Religious H+G-Singularitarians
Economic Politics
Biopolitics
Progressive
Conservative
C
A
Progressive Conservative
B E
D
Cultural Politics
Bioconservatism
Transhumanism
C-Left bioconservativesD-Right bioconservatives
F
G
Non-Western Biopolitics
India, Thailand, China, Japan
Abrahamic ideas of body vs. Hindu/Buddhist
Western individualism vs. Confucian communitarianism
Africans and enhancement
Enlightenment/modernity on steroids
Russian H+
Nikolai Fedorov (1829-1903)
Russian H+: Pro-Putin v. liberal reformists v. anarchists
Dmitry Itskov’s Global Future 2045
Biopolitical Crystallization
What issues and conflicts will further crystallize mass biopolitical ideological formation? Life extension therapies Gene therapies and germinal choice
To what extent do elite ideological formations translate or correspond to mass biopolitical ideological formation? i.e to what extent do public views on diverse bioethical issues correlate
in a priori “consistent” ways?
Conversely, do cultural and economic left-right polarizations overwhelm the relative autonomy of biopolitical ideas, collapsing biopolitics back into the two-dimensional matrix?
For more information
Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologiesieet.org