Bush Administration Fears Transhumanists
Bush Administration Fears Transhumanists: “
The Transhumanist right to be better than human (>H) is already under attack from those fearful of such potential. The Bush Administration’s bioethics council has come out against people who want to upgrade themselves. It’s one thing to become a cyborg if you’ve lost or were born without some core functionality, but to want to improve upon who we are as humans, is somehow unethical.
Transhumanism is being taken seriously by an increasing number of scholars. The fact that Stanford’s respected legal bioethics program hosted the 150 or so attendees from Europe, Asia, New Zealand and North America to discuss issues raised by human enhancement is testimony to how far transhumanism has come in from the fringe.
Even the government has taken a position — against — in the second report out of President Bush’s bioethics council. Titled ‘Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness,’ the 2003 report suggested the need for regulations to prevent the use of biotech to give people powers they did not have naturally.
It’s a shame that they wish to regulate what people do to themselves, but that’s in line with much of the conservative agenda, like gay marrage, right to die, etc. My only hope is that like most tech law, it will lag beyond the technology itself, so all the laws will be regulating, is the past.
[ Link via Transhumanist Tribe. Image from MSNBC. ]
(Via igargoyle.)
[tags]body, enhancement, cyborg, politics, transhumanism, censorship, law[/tags]
