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

James.Hughes@trincoll.edu

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

Me: james.hughes@trincoll.edu

director@ieet.org