Adrienne Asch and James Edward Block: "The Mechanization of Politics: Rethinking Human Transformation" [CFI conference on biomedical enhancement]

Adrienne Asch and James Edward Block are presenting: "The Mechanization of Politics: Rethinking Human Transformation."

{Adrienne presents first}

Enhancements are not value neutral; they will not improve society and will likely lead us in a negative direction. We may end up at a place that no one could have predicted.

Hyperparenting can happen outside the context of human enhancement -- but it will make the situation considerably worse.

The parent-child relationship will be altered when enhancement enters the picture because they will expect to see their child fulfill 'genetic' and other expectations. They will do what they can to get the result they aimed at. Asch and Block worry that parents won't love their children as unconditionally when enhancement is part of the equation.

Children need to feel that their achievements were the result of their efforts and individuality. This is jeopardized when kids know they've been enhanced. Children may feel that they've let down their parents if they haven't lived up to the expectations they set up through particular enhancements.

Choice and authenticity are weakened in a world with enhanced children. Genetics will predispose children to seek certain goals, bred for a certain role.

Enhancements endanger reasonable parent-child relationships.

Other values lost in the shuffle: cooperation, sharing, working well in groups. Exclusion and conformity, on the other hand, are the results of an enhanced future.

When it comes to enhanced traits, one thing we value one moment we may dis-value the next (e.g. perfect memory). And do we want a society of extroverts and speed demons? Shyness and constrain can also be seen as worthy traits. Could we fully get the message of a novel or poem if our personalities are constrained to a certain type? Society needs people with a list of many traits.

What is the problem the enhancers are trying to solve? They seem to want more of what we already have (life, physicality, etc.). But this will only work to increase disparities. Enhancement proponents do not see their agenda as part of a broader global social imperative to improve conditions for all people. It's too individualistic. How do we get from 'humans who don't need to sleep' to solving world problems?

Humans and posthumans will never be able to control all the variables of their lives. We will continue to find meaning without enhancement, and continue to help those truly in need without it.

In regards to moral enhancement, we are having difficultly coming to a consensus about what is moral behavior and how we could ever engineer that into human psychology. Moreover, empathy alone without the will to act on it is useless and potentially detrimental to the person. Social reform extends beyond mere empathy.

Don't see how James Hughes's democratic leftist transhumanism can be part of a progressive agenda when there are so many libertarian transhumanists. He hasn't made the case that a coherent and consistent transhumanism (or enhancement politics) is even possible.

{James Edward Block takes over the talk}

Asch and Block are concerned about the over-emphasis on meritocracy. In our quest for inner and outer mastery, we are losing out on relational experience. For example, our baby Einstein grows up to be an adult Einstein; where was the development and growth.

One loves others and the world by first learning to love and respect oneself. When we avoid the early stages we avoid the growth process. We become more vulnerable to falling into the traps of social compliance.

Culture of more is getting out of control, and now extending into the enhancement camp.

We are told that contemporary experience is the enemy of change. And is enhancement seen as a substitute for politics? It's a kind of magical thinking. Enhancement is a fall-back for 19th and 20th century social utopianism.

Our pursuit to control nature has stunted our ability to manage and refine social/political relations.

We are becoming excellent information processors, in tune with our technological environment; As a result we are dead emotionally and morally inside.

How are we so talented in our world, yet feel so inadequate? We need to find new skills and capacities within our existing social and physical bodies. Purpose, not functionality.

Rosemarie Tong: "Feminist Reflections on Looking Better and Living Longer" [CFI conference on biomedical enhancement]

Rosemarie Tong, Professor of Philosophy at UNC-Charlotte, discussing Feminist Reflections on Looking Better and Living Longer.

Betty Friedan's perspective: rejects the idea that to be old is to be spent. She instead presents an integrating process, an opportunity to live properly and make peace with oneself. No longer feeling the need to outdo others, to prove onself, "what does it really matter?"

Cosmetic anti-aging is big business and demand is through the roof.

But there are also biogerontologists. (1) They're working to prolong healthy lifespan; to extend quality of life until shortly before the moment of death, (2) They're looking to increase human lifespan significantly.

One practice is caloric restriction, but it's not likely to catch on. Another approach is in genetic manipulation.

A third group of biogerontologists are looking to halt the aging process altogether.

What do feminists have to say about this? But the problem of feminists is that they're are so many varieties. But for the most part they support the notion that we should improve and extend quality of life into old age. We should also work to ensure that the marginalized have access to these interventions, namely poor people, black people and aboriginals.

Any life-extension breakthrough that is not accompanied by attempts to improve socio-economic disparities is deficient. Also risk that women's caregiving responsibilities will only increase. Far fewer jobs for far fewer people. Perennial beauty trap.

Cosmetic surgery for women now has been so normalized that it's expected. Women are asked, "Why don't you want to look better?"

Tong makes the case that radical life extension may compel people to live indefinitely long lives for fear of what lies in the hereafter. [never heard that argument before]

Repudiation of the body is a repudiation of women. This especially holds true of women and childbirth. Thus, feminists are suspicious of transhumanism. They may "get lost in the translation."

Daniel Dillard: "Thoreau, Embodiment, and the Nineteenth-Century Transformation of Humanity" [CFI conference on biomedical enhancement]

Florida State graduate student Daniel Dillard now discussing his paper, "Thoreau, Embodiment, and the Nineteenth-Century Transformation of Humanity."

Dillard discusses the intellectual history of the perception of the human as an embodied creature. The posthuman requires a re-thinking of the human.

Thoreau quote: "What is man but a mass of thawing clay? The ball of the human finger is but a drop congealed. The fingers and toes flow to their extent from the thawing mass of the body. Who knows what the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven? Is not the hand a spreading palm leaf with its lobes and veins? The ear may be regarded, fancifully, as a lichen, umbilicaria, on the side of the head, with its lobe or drop. The lip -- labium, from labor (?) -- laps or lapses from the sides of the cavernous mouth. The nose is a manifest congealed drop or stalactite. The chin is a still larger drop, the confluent dripping of the face. The cheeks are a slide from the brows into the valley of the face, opposed and diffused by the cheek bones. Each rounded lobe of the vegetable leaf, too, is a thick and now loitering drop, larger or smaller; the lobes are the fingers of the leaf; and as many lobes as it has, in so many directions it tends to flow, and more heat or other genial influences would have caused it to flow yet farther."

Thoreau pre-conceived the idea of the posthuman and is thus a transitional figure: information is embodied; and that there is a connection between the body and environment (animate with inanimate). Collapse of subject and object; artificial vs. natural. Who and where are we? We are material nature. Moving past the transcendence model toward a material one.

Patrick Hopkins: "On the Variety of Future Bodies" [CFI conference on biomedical enhancement]

Patrick Hopkins is now discussing the variety of future bodies.

There are as of yet no posthumans. But these ideas are not new, nor are they exclusive to the realm of fantasy and sci-fi. We have long imagined ourselves transformed. Our visions and variations of a transformed humanity are voluminous and often informed by the environmental, social and physical conditions we find ourselves in. Thus, there will be differing and conflicting visions of what the human future can and should look like.

Hopkins presents four different visions of humanity's future: Transformations of the body:

• Barbie bodies: Cosmetic and aesthetic enhancements; attaining a sexual idea; often risky procedures; not to escape limitations of the body, but to create an ideal of the body; a superficial ideal of the transformed body; surface level, "about looks"; body seen as an object that one uses and whipped into shape to conform to the mind's ideal so that the person can feel a certain way about themselves; a shallow human approach; but they may also feel that they may succeed more given a certain type of physicality.
• (Francis) Bacon bodies: These transformations are about functionality; to do more human things more often and for a longer time; extends functionality of the body; mimicking what time and nature already do; function cleanly, clearly and effectively -- but not about appearance; a healthy and long-lived body. 
• Nietzsche bodies: A "super body" endowed with characteristics that "normal" humans do not have; man is something that needs to be surpassed; the body is transformed but not the mind; power to impose one's will on the world? Motivated by human emotions. The "super" human approach. 
• Plato bodies: Separation of 'soul' from the body; body seen as the source of all the trouble, something that chains our minds to the body; we want the mind to be free; we would live in a more noble condition if freed from the constraints and influence of the body; transhuman application is uploading or virtual reality; total disembodiment may not be possible, but something very close may be obtained; maybe a "transhuman" approach. 

Idea of transformation is not a unitary thing. 

James Giordano: "Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Strivings to Flourish" [CFI conference on biomedical enhancement]

James Giordano now talking about Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Strivings to Flourish.

One of his primary messages is that we need to be wary of anything with the prefix "neuro".

Neurotechnologic imperative: "...if you can build it, do so..."

Human flourishing prompts the questions:

1. What is it to flourish?
2. What is the "good"?
3. How is/should it be achieved? Means, ends, limits...

Contextualized to bio-psychosocial nature of our species. 

Flourishing:

• Maximizing function
• Does this mean maintaining or optimizing?
• Treatment or enhancement?
• Objectivity and/or subjectively?
• Consideration of gain vs. loss?
• Given bio-psychsocial nature, on what level(s)?

Janusian face of neuroscience: Utopian aspirations vs. dystopian anxieties

Pros and cons: A natural need to know and intervene inherent to human flourishing; inquiry and action is both right and good; partial knowledge in areas of profound impact effect broad and unforeseen consequences; there are intellectual and moral limits on inquiry. 

We should not retard progress, need to mitigate non-contemplative advancement. 

John Shook: "Philosophical Challenges for a Neuroscience of Moral Enhancements" [CFI conference on biomedical enhancement]

John Shook of the Center for Inquiry is speaking about Philosophical Challenges for a Neuroscience of Moral Enhancements.

What would a moral enhancer do? May mean making a person more 'moral.' Or like a mood enhancer, changing one's inner sense of moral qualities. Or sensitivity to situations. Or wanting to do the right thing more often. But this doesn't necessarily imply a change to conduct. Other fears and desires can have similar effects on behavior.

Issue: Matching internal and external moral standards. Two different things: What I believe is moral, what someone else believes is moral.

Fine tuning of moral enhancers may be required, creating a "boutique" style of moral enhancers. May not represent genuine cases of moral enhancement. These are internal objective standards. We have to go outside to get better moral standards.

Objectivism is one path. Still people will pass their own judgement.

Should we adhere to the majority opinion? Where does culture agree on such things? Can we agree that certain conduct is impermissible? Cultural conventionalism as a way to inform morality.

But what about something like generosity? Do we really mean it?

So objectivism and cultural conventionalism are unsatisfactory.

Perhaps we need a combination of subjectivism and conventionalism.

But what items/subjects are worthy of moral consideration? Sports? Religion? Boutique modifications may not adhere to conventional opinions on what is morally acceptable.

Moral enhancement: How might it actually be done? Could be done in several ways.

1. get the right moral answer
2. enhance judgement of situations morally
3. enhance deliberation of doing the morally right thing
4. enhance the motivation choice to do what moral deliberation indicates
5. enhance volitional power to do the morally right thing
6. enhance the capacity of the act [external]

Problem, there may be no objective, definable moral judgments to begin with. Objective morality exists nowhere. And what are conscious intentions? Are they epiphenomenal? What mechanism in the brain executes the decision? Will and free will?

Brain science discovered will better inform and answer the objections. Outdated notions of decision and volition need to be discarded from the discussion.

Intentionality types; factors for free will:

1. Intentional causality (executive)
2. Deliberate intentionality
3. Thoughtful control (rational)

Do philosophers exaggerate the role that reason plays in decision making? Neuroscientific advances will improve our idea of this and what we mean to be moral agents.

Jonathan Moreno: "Enhancement and National Security" [CFI conference on biomedical enhancement]

Johathan Moreno, author of Mind Wars, 2006, presenting on Enhancement and National Security. I blogged about his book here. He's also co-author of "Slouching Toward Policy: Lazy Bioethics and the Perils of Science Fiction" which I blogged about here.

National Security, the Brain and Behavior: Post WW II-era:

• Hallucinogens
• Neuropsychiatry of stress
• Personality theory
• Parapsychology
• Performance enhancement

"Brainwashing" was an immediate concern after WWII. Work on hallucinogens took off soon thereafter, including extensive work by the CIA on LCD. Even ESP studies (by J. B. Rhine), coined the term "Psiops."

Quote from that time:

“The claimed phenomena and applications”…presented by several military officers, “range from the incredible to the outrageously incredible. The ‘anti-missile time warp,’ for example, is somehow supposed to deflect attack from nuclear warheads so that they will transcend time and explode among the ancient dinosaurs….One suggested application is a conception of the ‘First Earth Battalion,’ made up of ‘warrior monks’…including the use of ESP, leaving their bodies at will, levitating, psychic healing and walking through walls.”

"The Men Who Stare At Goats" [trailer]:



Today, some remarkable work is being done with fMRI's. Mapping and baseline readings currently being collected, can be used to understand and predict human behavior. Can show your thoughts 'on screen.' Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) induces changes in brain activation. Could be used to alter a person's social behavior or attitudes. Influences brain functions including physical movement, visual perception, memory, reaction time, speech and mood.

Optogenetics: Seems to provide more specific information and control over neurons and their transmission.

Check out Giving the Grunts an Upgrade graphic from Wired (2007). Much of these solider technologies are available now. Not to mentioning the networking capabilities now at hand.

Potential for augmented reality. Soldiers will have their realities augmented -- e.g. a building painted in red signifies dangerous activity. Network effects: Objects tagged based on intel.

The "Anti-Conscience" pill. Beta blockers can be used to treat stress, prevent PTSD. Suppress release of hormones like norepinephrine that help encode memory. Might also reduce guilt feelings.

The trust drug? Natural oxytocin production is associated with trust behavior. May be artificially administered in a spray to encourage cooperation. Use in interrogations?

National Research Council May 12, 2009 predictions:

Near term (within 5 years)

• Immersive virtual reality
• Heartbeat variability
• Galvanic skin response

Medium term (5-10 years)

• In-helmet EEG for brain-machine interface
• Head and torso impact protection
• Biomarkers for predicting soldier response to environmental stress

Far term (10-20 years)

• In-vehicle deployment of transcranial magnetic stimulation
• Brain scanning to assess physiology
• Ongoing (within 5 years with continued updating)
• Field-deployable biomarkers of neural state
• Biomarkers for sleep levels

In addition, advanced "lie detector" tests. Including portable lie-detector tests.

Q&A:

• 90% of what DARPA does is bunk
• There is no gene that is going to tell you who a terrorist is
• There is no scanning technology that is going to tell you the intention of a would-be terrorist
• No evidence that oxytocin was used in Guantanamo
• Oxytocin makes you more trusting, but not more gullible
• "Enablers" for soldiers, aka enhancements, may be detrimental to soldiers post-deployment: this is a potential problem. It is also a current problem ie PTSD; "it's a problem, but not necessary our problem" - DoD
• "Everybody who goes to war feels they've been experimented upon"

Maya Sabatello: "Controlled Parenthood" [CFI conference on biomedical enhancements]

Maya Sabatello is presenting on controlled parenthood and asks: Are the rights and interests of children being considered when using reproductive technologies?

Sabatello includes such repro-tech as PGD, IVF, gender selection, and so on. The influence on the family institution is "tremendous." It has led to a real change in demographic patterns on family structure. A real boon to those couples who would have normally been infertile. Can also help single mothers, older parents, same-sex couples, and so on.

Assistive repro-tech decisions become a collective effort, and extends beyond the prospective mother and father.

Impact on children include an introduction to a world with increased pluralism. Also, genetic commonality varies depending on the type of repro-tech used (e.g. a child can have three genetic parents). The demography is changing, lots of twins and multiple-births. Children can be born to have specific genetically compatible tissue. Cloning may introduce other options and demographic shifts in the future.

Access to assistive repro-tech is based in specific laws and charters around the world. But what are the limits of using these technologies? Are part and parcel of one's right to found a family. A part of human identification and realization.

Also part of other sociological realities -- e.g. the mother who holds of having children while she establishes a career.

Because parents would have to bear the emotional, financial, and other burdens of raising a disabled child, they deserve the right to access these sorts of these technologies.

But opposition to such broad-strokes of parental freedom exists, including ideas of gender equality, access to healthcare, etc. Some believe that the state has no business ensuring that their citizens have access to repro-tech.

Sabatello feels that some courts are ignoring the interests of children in all this. We need to examine this.

A child-centered approach: There is very little information, unfortunately. Not much to go by, but we have to start investigating.

One argument is that a child deserves a right to an open future. They have some rights in trust, and deserve adult protection until they're of age. This can have an impact on non-traditional arrangements, such as gay parenting.

What about deafness and dwarfism by choice? Is the child better or worse off? Bit of grey area here.

Do some rulings put parental needs in opposition to children's needs? What about thinking of group rights and thinking about the needs of the family as a whole? International rights don't really dwell in this area, but perhaps they should perceive the family as a unit.

We need to figure out how the child's voice can inform the process. Thus, a child-center approach.

Has to start from pre-considerations:

• They don't have the capacity for informed consent
• We also need to take their web of relations into consideration (what's the context?)
• We need to re-conceptualize the notion of autonomy - children's autonomy in relation with others, and can exercise rights in relation to others (as a matter of identity); only space in which a child can express their interests and rights

Is the selection of genetic characteristics medically justified? Can they lead to greater risk of side-effects and defects? We need to educate parents about disability and suffering; inform them about difference between suffering and a disability. These are often social constructs of a specific society.

Unlike adults, children do not view disabilities as abnormal. What matters is how they are treated and the attitudes that are expressed towards them. Some children attribute their 'disability' as a part of their social background more than, say, ethnicity. 

Protection of identity is crucial, and is protected by charter of rights. 

Connection between genetic characteristics and genetic identity. Can this someone impact negatively on a child? E.g. disabled identity? Gender identity? Savior sibling? Is there a less sense of worth? Living in the shadow of the other siblings? 

But too many biological factors are being considered here. What about sociological factors? How are they being socialized and treated by society? Take savior siblings, for example, in which those children are just as loved as any other. 

Stats: No differences in identity were found among children raised by hetero or gay couples. 

Children are born into a reality--the only one they really know.

The genetic tie to the family is weak, and does not matter as much as other factors like ethnicity. 

A greater appreciation of the child's voice should be increasingly considered.

Gavin Enck: "Cognitive Enhancers, Students, and Virtues" [CFI conference on biomedical enhancements]

Is using cognitive enhancers at school cheating? Gavin Enck argues that it's not cheating, but that it's unfair. He uses two primary arguments: 

1. Problem of moral luck
2. Intellectual or moral virtues

Is there any difference between cognitive enhancers and, say, laptops? Or coffee? The difference of degree is what's important. And the qualitative boost is lower relative to Adderall and Provigil. Similarly, the laptop does not impact on the 'person' to the degree that a neuropharmaceutical does. 

Enck analogizes the competitiveness in sports to competitiveness in academia. He asks, is there an intentional violation of the rules, fairness? He argues yes, that the student is deliberately seeking an unfair advantage, but is not explicitly cheating. 

[Enck has a very restrictive and strange definition of cognitive enhancement, one that greatly constrains (and even confuses) the scope of 'permissibility.'] 

He also argues that the student with socio-economic advantages will have greater accessibility to cognitive enhancers, which leads to greater unfairness. Same can be said for an academically-supportive network, but it would be ludicrous to say that the student has an unfair advantage. So again, the degree matters to Enck.

Enck talks about a virtues based approach. Some intellectual virtues are a moral good; seeking academic achievement is a moral good unto itself. In other words, we value (and reward) those who work hard at their academic goals. We value those efforts that seek true beliefs. 

[Enck fails to note that the student on cognitive enhancers (a) may be working as hard as the student not on enhances and (2) is any less dedicated to seeking true beliefs.]

Virtues are not the kinds of things that require chemical assistance. Seeking true beliefs does not require enhancement. 

Q&A

Why does chemical enhancement make a virtuous act less virtuous? Enck argues that it matters within the context of academia -- because it's a competitive environment. 

Allen Buchanan: "Breaking Evolution's Chains" [CFI conference on biomedical enhancements]

Bioethicist Allen Buchanan is today's first presenter. His talk is entitled, "Breaking Evolution's Chains." Buchanan is a co-author of the book, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice, which is a must-read in enhancement bioethics.

Buchanan is talking specifically about genetic modifications. His concern is the "ubiquity of suboptimal design in Unintentional Genetic Modifications (UGM)." Buchanan makes the distinction between UGM and IGM (Intended Genetic Modifications).

Darwin showed that we can explain evolution and diversity without design. Buchanan shows the audience a lengthy list of examples of poor human "design," including human inability to biosynthesize Vitamin C, our poor sinus, human birth canal, lower back, pharynx (dual function, ingestion/respiration--risk of death by choking), urinary tract in male mammals (passes through, not around prostate), etc.

Why is suboptimal design ubiquitous? Answers include insensitivity of natural selection to post-reproduction quality of life, hence cardiovascular degeneration, cancer, degeneration of muscles and joints, neural degenerations, and other aging related disorders.

In UGM, selection does not imply optimality -- it says nothing about the current relation to reproductive fitness. Purely backward looking. Optimality depends on fit between organism and environment (where the environment is constantly changing). So, optimality is fleeting, always changing.

What was optimal may now be fatal. Not a progressive kind of thing at all. What's optimal in evolution may not be aligned with human values. Also, under UGM, spread of desirable mutations may be too slow and too great a cost in human terms; little lateral gene transfer. Another problem of "evolution as usual" are "Pleistocene Hangovers" -- what was adaptive in the EEA may now be maladaptive (e.g. propensity to xenophobia, step-child abuse, attention deficit 'disorder'.

Master engineer? Fickle, morally blind, tightly-shakled tinkerer. Doesn't finish projects, discards much of value. Doesn't aim at human good, achieves it only by coincidence; methods have high moral costs.

Problems with the Master Engineer analogy: (a) making risky changes in the name of improvement and (b)
resting content with the status quo. But in UGM the status quo is constantly changing, precarious.

The existing human organism is not finely balanced, stable, completed product that will continue as is, absent deliberate intervention.

"We may have to enhance, in order to conserve the goods we have."

Possible examples:

• Enhanced reproduction to counteract drastic decline in fertility due to environmental toxins
• Enhancement of resistance to skin cancer if ozone layer depletes
• Cognitive and/or affective enhancements to deal with global scale problems

Bioconservatives: the individual organism is like a seamless web. Traditional social conservatives: Society is like a seamless web. Both imply fragility: Cut one thread and the whole thing may unravel. 

Evidence against seamlessness: modularity of design, redundancy of systems, canalization ("you can make the same dish using different recipes"), natural selection requires incrementalism--being able to change one trait without changing the others. 

The worry about unintended consequences: How can we take the worry seriously? And get beyond vague platitudes like "use caution", "take it slow", etc. We need something more substantive, heuristic based. Otherwise it's too vague. 

Strategy: Take the hardest case: Unintended bad consequences of IGM (germline enhancements). Think about scientifically informed responses. 

Think ontogeny. Has to be sensitive to the ontogenic process. That's the key.

Evolutionary precautionary heuristics for IGM (as opposed to the precautionary principle). 

• The IGM targets genes that lie "downstream" rather than "upstream" in the organism's developmental process
• If successful, would not produce an enhancement that exceeds the upper bound of the current normal range (e.g. boost in cognitive performance beyond anything any human has ever had)
• Effects are containable within the organism 
• Involves a highly modularized system of or subsystem of the organism (mistakes can be contained within that modular)
• Effects are reversible
• Intervention does not require major morphological changes
• If goal is to eliminate a trait, then the causal roles of the trait and of the genes targeted for elimination should be well understood

There is good reason to worry about unintended bad effects of BE in general and of IGM in particular. Reasonable precautions should be based on accurate understanding of evolution, not faulty metaphor of Master Engineer. 

A plurality of precautionary heuristics should change over time. 

The threat of loss of normal human capacities. Pseudogenization of genes needed for normal human capacities (e.g. loss of bitter taste receptors as a result of cooking food, loss of visual acuity, loss of ability to biosynthesize Vitamin C). If selective pressures are eased, mutations increase to the point of making a gene nonfunctional and the associated capacity is lost.

Q&A

Buchanan is essentially "paving the way" for more substantive enhancements; we have to start where we are and in a responsible way.

What's possible and what's sci-fi fantasy? Risky to make predictions. Not confident that we'll be able to conduct meaningful IGM for various reasons.

How can we ever test IGM and go about the ethics of experimentation? More animal testing; need to know more about genetics and implications of modifications; but we shouldn't be complacent about the status quo -- it may be more reasonable or ethical to tolerate a little bit of risk. 

Live blogging: Conference on biomedical enhancements

I'm at the University of Pennsylvania today attending a conference on biomedical enhancements. The event, titled "Transforming Humanity: Fantasy? Dream? Nightmare?" is sponsored by the Center for Inquiry, the Penn Center for Bioethics and the Penn Center for Neuroscience & Society.

I will be live blogging the event, so look for my updates throughout today and tomorrow.

Endurance exercise rejuvenates old muscles with stem cells

Dafna Benayahu of Tel Aviv University's Sackler School of Medicine has discovered how endurance exercise increases the number of muscle stem cells which enhances their ability to rejuvenate old muscles. She hopes that her finding will lead to a new drug to heal muscles faster. "With this advance, we can dream about creating a drug for humans that could increase muscle mass and ameliorate the negative effects of aging," she says.

More.

Senior athletes and the longevity link

Cool NYT article, "The Incredible Flying Nonagenarian," about the rise of senior athletes and accompanying efforts to study the factors for their success--studies which could have implications for longevity research and future therapies:

Scientifically, this is mostly virgin ground. The cohort of people 85 and older — the fastest-growing segment of the population, as it happens — is increasingly being studied for longevity clues. But so far the focus has mostly been on their lives: the foods they eat, the air they breathe, the social networks they maintain and, in a few recently published studies, their genomes. Data on the long-term effects of exercise is only just starting to trickle in, as the children of the fitness revolution of the ’70s grow old.

Though the world of masters track offers a compelling research pool, Taivassalo may seem like an unlikely scientist to be involved. Her area of expertise is mitochondrial research; she examines what happens to the body when mitochondria, the cell’s power plants, are faulty. Her subjects are typically young people who come into the lab with neuromuscular disorders that are only going to get worse. (Because muscle cells require so much energy, they’re hit hard when mitochondria go down.) Some researchers now see aging itself as a kind of mitochondrial disease. Defective mitochondria appear as we get older, and these researchers say that they rob us of endurance, strength and function. There’s evidence that for young patients with mitochondrial disease, exercise is a potent tool, slowing the symptoms. If that’s true, then exercise could also potentially be a kind of elixir of youth, combating the ravages of aging far more than we thought.

Be sure to read the entire article and learn about Olga Kotelko, a 91 year old athlete who can run the 100 meter dash in 23.95 seconds -- which is faster than what's currently being run in the 80 year old classifications. You go, girl.

Quoted in the American Spectator

Happy to see that someone has picked up on my recommended course of action following the failure of last year's climate change conference at Copenhagen: The American Spectator: "UN 'Permanent Emergency Session' Sought for Kyoto."

Early adopters through history

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Via Grinding.

Biosensor to detect fast-spreading viruses and bioterror agents

A new biosensor platform could enable rapid, point-of-care virus detection--and also pick up on bioterror agents:

Traditional virus diagnostic tools such as ELISA and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) remain strong diagnostic options, but they require significant infrastructure and sample preparation time. Now a team of researchers led by Boston University Assistant Professors Hatice Altug (ECE) and John Connor (Microbiology, BUSM) has introduced a novel biosensor that directly detects live viruses from biological media with little to no sample preparation.

Partly funded through the Boston University Photonics Center and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL), and working in collaboration with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, the team has demonstrated reliable detection of hemorrhagic fever virus surrogates (i.e. for the Ebola virus) and poxviruses (such as monkeypox or smallpox) in ordinary biological laboratory settings. The researchers report on this breakthrough in the November 5 online edition of Nano Letters.

“Our platform can be easily adapted for point-of-care diagnostics to detect a broad range of viral pathogens in resource-limited clinical settings at the far corners of the world, in defense and homeland security applications as well as in civilian settings such as airports,” said Altug. “By enabling ultra-portable and fast detection, our technology can directly impact the course of our reaction against bio-terrorism threats and dramatically improve our capability to confine viral outbreaks.”

More.

Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson on Radiolab

Be sure to check out the recent Radiolab podcast featuring Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson:

Are new ideas and new inventions inevitable? Are they driven by us or by a larger force of nature?

In this conversation recorded as part of the New York Public Library series LIVE from the NYPL, Steven Johnson (author of Where Good Ideas Come From) and Kevin Kelly (author of What Technology Wants) try to convince Robert that the things we make—from spoons to microwaves to computers—are an extension of the same evolutionary processes that made us. And we may need to adapt to the idea that our technology could someday truly have a mind of its own.

Center for Inquiry conference on biomedical enhancements

We are now less than two weeks away from the Center for Inquiry's conference on biomedical enhancements. With the title, "Transforming Humanity: Fantasy? Dream? Nightmare?", the event will bring together leading scholars to address technological, moral, and legal questions relating to biomedical enhancements:

Enhancements of human capacities, such as an increased lifespan or improved cognitive abilities, are a source of significant controversy. Some see them as a welcome development; others are much more skeptical. What is the realistic potential of enhancements? What are the ethical limits, if any, on enhancements? How should they be regulated?

Speakers include Art Caplan, Allen Buchanan and many others. The event, which will be held at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia from December 3-4, is also sponsored by the Penn Center for Bioethics and the Penn Center for Neuroscience & Society.

I will be there along with my colleagues from the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. We'll be sure to represent.

Enter the virtual celebrity

Some mild futureshock for you:


Didn't William Gibson predict this?

SETI's Seth Shostak opposed to radical life extension

How can the spokesperson for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence be as unimaginative and uninspiring as this?:

[O]ur society is made possible by the relatively short timescale of our lives. Extending our life spans a little is merely problematic. Extending them a lot demands a whole new paradigm. Otherwise, our future will be ugly and tedious, punctuated only by video games, dental appointments, and the occasional boorish lout.

Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer at SETI, applies two primary objections to radical life extension: (1) extreme risk aversion on account of indefinite lifespans and (2) the problem of boredom and ennui.

To the first point, one could make the case that, given the current fragility and tenuousness of our mortal lives, we will be no less risk averse in a future where death is dramatically less common. Moreover, death from accidents in the future will be significantly reduced on account other developments, such as self-driving cars and suspended animation surgeries.

To his second point, Mark Walker has answered the boredom and ennui complaint better than I ever could. But suffice to say that different people are going to respond differently to superlongevity, and that boredom and ennui will soon be treated as vestigial psychological states that will be self-regulated it if not eliminated altogether.

Makes me wonder what Seth Shostak imagines advanced extraterrestrials to be like. His must be a very small ET.