Alexa

By striving to become the epitome of our existence, we erode our humanity.  With the application of aesthetic prosthetics in healthy bodies, the ethically acceptable limit for transformation comes into question.  Elevating the standards of our physical bodies alters the ideal model of a human — changing our human prototype to something too polished and perfected to be natural.

A constant concern about this plagues scientists and critics alike: how far can we take correcting our bodies before we’ve broken ethical boundaries of humanity?  Should we continue in our human search to improve ourselves?

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It’s generally accepted that prosthetics which therapeutically benefit a patient are positive medical contributions.  No one is going to question the operation to replace limbs lost by a soldier in battle.  However, other prosthetics may be more controversial.  The prosthetics in question are those implemented in a perfectly healthy body.  Such procedures to obtain these parts are often costly and time-consuming, and arguably, to the detriment of mankind.

Our culture can be narrow-minded.  I’m not saying that anyone is wrong for complying with the norms of current society, but rather, the norms are unhealthy.  We have one vision of perfection and we're not gentle or flexible with our expectations.  Rather than constantly nit-picking what we can change, working with what we have may prevent a multitude of procedures and not to mention save peace of mind.

Dentistry is an excellent example of what has happened in response to a mass-use of somewhat unnecessary prosthetics.  Now, it seems that every adult in the middle and upper classes have perfectly straight, shiny teeth.  Were they all born that way?  Of course not.  We all know the costs of orthodontics because so many of us buy into it—yes, I too am guilty.  The point is that ever since the 1970s, when braces became overwhelmingly popular, yet another thing came onto our critical radars to be self-conscious about—are my teeth straight?  Before this, were people as attentive to their teeth?  Just some food for thought.

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Elevating the standards of our physical bodies alters the ideal model of a human — changing our human prototype to something too polished and perfected to be natural.

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Are prosthetics therapeutically beneficial?  Perhaps a man feels he could better execute his job with straight teeth.  Maybe a woman feels her self-worth would be tampered without breast implants.  Without these prosthetics, they may argue that they're not living to their optimal potential or perhaps their psychological needs are not being met.  Instead of addressing the tangible problem they're soliciting to fix, they may consider digging deeper to develop true satisfaction with themselves rather than an artificial conformity to a prototype.

By making use of our technologies to approach the ‘ideal expectation’ for our physical appearance, we have moved on to perfect and form the new norm for human mental function.

New enhancements in the field of Neurology use the mechanism of implanting electrodes which allow for stimulation of the brain.  This mechanism can be therapeutically useful with cognitive diseases and memory disorders, but these therapies could easily be capitalized upon.  The question becomes, ‘how much can we alter our brain function before we are truly altering our ability to think?’ and ‘what are the limits of application within this field?’  The capacity to ‘think’ is often considered to be our distinguishing human characteristic and thus there is an obvious ethical concern for altering natural brain function.  Exploited enhancement technologies may undermine our dignity as humans.  (Jongh et al. 761)

While concerns persist, the medical field has created many beneficial applications, working to alleviate hardships of more than two million patients in the U.S.  Many experiencing paralysis could be eligible for CNP therapy.  CNP, a three-part system of electrodes, a decoding algorithm, and an external device controlled by the processed cognitive signal, may assist the execution of plan movements in the cortex (Anderson 170).  Another relatively new and quickly advancing therapeutic technology is prosthetic sight.  It began with Dr. Giles Brindley’s stimulating electrode implant which allowed his blind patient to identify simple patterns and letters.  His research became so popular that an international conference at the University of Chicago (1969) followed.  Between April 2002 and December 2004, Brindley’s artificial visual prosthetics were successfully implanted and utilized by sixteen blind patients in Lisbon, Portugal.  (Jong et al 762-763)

Prosthetic vision is only on the periphery of neurological advance.  Its brain connection is less intense than say, memories, emotions, trust, and intelligence.  In 2011, a research team at Berkeley amazingly reconstructed Hollywood film trailers from the brain activity of subjects watching the previews.  They eerily projected fuzzy versions of the trailers mimicking decoded algorithms.  Equally surreal is the work of Nobel laureate, Susumu Tonegawa, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: successfully implanting ‘false memories’ and removing specific memories from mice—his hopes are to implement this technology for treating PTSD by erasing painful memories.  (Norman 116)

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By making use of our technologies to approach the ‘ideal expectation’ for our physical appearance, we have moved on to perfect and form the new norm for human mental function.

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Miguel Nicolelis, the creator of what he calls a ‘brainet,’ created a system in which a healthy person’s brain interactively works with the brain of a patient by teaching healthy unconscious cognitive functions to a stroke-prone patient’s brain or relearning motor function for a paralyzed patient’s brain.  Dexterous and sensational prosthetic limbs, human mind reading via fMRI, mind-controlled robotic exoskeletons, insights to Parkinson’s, and depression/psychiatric disorder treatment are the fruits of the tedious work of neurological researchers.  These inventions all seem too good to be true until cynical realism twists the good will of scientists into haunting sci-fi-esque conspiracies (Requarth 55).

Ethicists warn of the real threat of weaponization.  The brain-scanning equipment used to diagnose Alzheimer’s and autism is capable of accessing and reading private thoughts, devices which allow paralyzed limbs to move may direct bionic soldiers, technology to slow and reverse deterioration of the mind may implant and delete memories, and the ‘brainnet’ can pool together the knowledge of specialists in ever field to create ‘the ultimate warrior.’  These sound like scenarios out of science fiction movies such as Inception (implanting memories), X-Men: Wolverine (an ultimate warrior), and even Divergent (bionic soldiers); however, these ideas have become all the more frightening once off the screen.  Both fascinating and terrifying is mind-control, and it is in our midst if we do not protect the boundaries of neurological research and implementation.  (Norman 115)

The United States is profoundly interested in neurotechnology advances, investing an estimated $4.5 billion on the BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies).  The U.S. is in good company: the European Union so far has allotted about $1.32 billion to its Human Brain Project, and Japan recently launched Brain/MINDS (Mapping by Integrated Neurotechnologies for Disease Studies) to also further research the mind.  Governmental-controlled societal bodies have long been feared; though fear-not—this does not seem to be a likely future!  With hopes that we have learned from the immorality of the past (Soviet scientists attempting to study the effects of disturbing neuron firing and the U.S. MKUltra manipulation subject brains, attempting psychotherapy thought influence), worries have shifted from mind-exploitation done by governmental bodies to that done by terrorists, hackers, or other criminals with neurotechnologies.  It's troubling that few laws govern neurotechnological advancement and few barriers confront this materialization.  Neuroweapons ‘are not biological.  [Are not] chemical.  [They are] electronic,’ clarifies Maric Chevrier, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University.  Her point is that the current laws which restrict mayhem concerning weapons does not include electronic devices, though she does go on to say that the laws governing biological weapons could be stretched to also include these neuroelectronic weapons.  (Requarth 53-57)

Beyond the technology we already have, many new findings are arising in neuroscience, especially important are drugs which make technologies easily and publically accessible.  New research on psych drugs consists of three main categories: cognitive (especially memory, executive function, and attention), mood, and pro-social behavioral effects (trust, ‘mind reading,’ social fear).  Many drugs developed as a means to help mental diseases are gaining dual purpose, causing skeptics to worry.  An example is Donepezil, a FDA-approved drug used to aid Alzheimer’s patients; it enhances episodic memory performance but could be easily exploited for selfish or military use. (Roduit 626)

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Our society already seems to overvalue competitiveness; enhancement could facilitate further disparity between the ‘have’s' and ‘have-not’s.'

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Oxytocin, Modafinil, NMDA, and Propanolol are all new-found drugs which have fascinating psychological effects.  Oxytocin is a drug which mediates pro-social behavior, causes subjects to be more trusting, and increases social cognition (‘mind reading’).  It's currently used to induce labor, its many other possible uses have not been properly approved, though one which is almost on the market is called Syntocinon, a nasal spray intended to help treat autism and schizophrenia.  Some patients have noticed less social anxiety and depression while taking Oxytocin, but it's under development for further use with social anxiety, depression, and even relationship counseling.  Unfortunately, it has the potential threat of abuse by confidence tricks and military applications.  The exact mechanism of Oxytocin needs further investigation.  (Hoffman et. al)

Modafinil, FDA-approved for narcolepsy, sleep apnea, excessive daytime sleepiness, is known to increase histamine release, but is unknown as to how.  Three different research groups argue over the mechanism which makes it alarming that the drug passed through all of the FDA requisites without understanding its function.  Modafinil also increases response speed, sustained attention, 'psychological anxiety,’ and aggressive mood.  (Hoffman et. al 130)

NMDA receptors have been created and tested to reduce fears in subjects, but have a tendency of inducing seizures and other neurotoxic effects.  AMPA, when administered to elderly subjects (60 years old), doubled recall capacity but delayed episodic memory recall.  It had little to no effect in younger subjects.  AMPA and NMDA are promising targets for future cognition enhancement agents.  Finally, Propranolol can disrupt emotional memories but does not affect memories with neutral passion.  This is a leading candidate to treat PTSD as it only affects the memories of extreme distress or pleasure; again, this drug has possibility for serious defilement.  (Hoffman et. al 126)

Amphetamines are a classic example of an overuse of psych drugs.  Methylphenidate, which enhances spatial working memory performance, was reported to be abused by 20% of college students.  This information was compiled by Kapner’s surveys in 2003.  Interestingly, he found that the highest abuse rates were among white males with lower GPAs at colleges with the most competitive admission standards.  The importance of this study lies in the fact that a drug’s intended use was stretched to encompass enhancement.  If enhancement becomes so to speak, ‘allowed,’ will its intended use/degree of enhancement be stretched too?  (Johgh et. al 764)

Although new research on brain function is exciting, a sobering inquiry of the definition of enhancement quiets the uproar.   The goal of enhancement is not exactly to become a normal human, but rather to become an ideal or even perfect one.  Of course, there are several views of what enhancement really means.  Two main ones are ‘type-perfection’ and ‘property-perfection.’  Type-perfection refers to the ideal of perfecting a body within the limits of its type (ex. perfecting the intelligence of a monkey but not exceeding the capacity of a monkey’s intelligence so as to preserve the type of living being); property-perfection refers to perfection which disregards type and uses all resources to perfect a function no matter the end state of the being (ex. perfecting the intelligence of a monkey, even if the final capacity exceeds that of a monkey and has become a post-monkey).  (Roduit 625)

These enhancements can easily apply to humans.  Ethically speaking, it makes the most sense to abide by the rules of type-perfection in an attempt to preserve humanness, though perfectionism is aimed in a different way when in the light of the ‘subjective approach’ which upholds that one should be, become, and stay true to oneself—allowing enhancement towards an ‘ideal,’ subjectively chosen, within the parameters of non-harm to others—though relativism and denial of rational discussion may follow.  According to the ‘objective approach,’ persons are able to enhance certain properties of their being which are outlined in an accepted list.

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Endorsing enhancement eventually will change the sketch of what an ideal human should look like.

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The main ethical problem with enhancement is that once it's a commonplace ritual, anyone who is not scrutinizing and perfecting themselves will become subject to discrimination for not being as ‘perfect’ as everyone else.  Enhancement threatens flourishing life and it is dangerous because it seeks mastery over nature.  Its supporters push the boundaries of human enhancement with their eyes filled with hopes of empowering the race to become its best.  Our society already seems to overvalue competitiveness; enhancement could facilitate further disparity between the ‘have’s' and ‘have-not’s.'  It could also foster a socially enforced prototype which is an inauthentic and normalized tangent from genuine, human character.  (Jongh et. al 772-773)

Beyond the ethics of the implementation of already existing technology yet to be mass applied lie the ethics of creating even more advanced neuro-prosthetics and devices.  As Nicoleis, the leader behind BMIs (which allow veterans to regain motility), paused and realized the impact and possible threat that his innovations pose to society by nefarious use, he withdrew from the deals DARPA offered, which makes him a part of the minority of scientists in his field.  He said, ‘I think some neuroscientists, at meetings, are foolish enough to brag about how much they got from DARPA to do research, without even thinking about what DARPA might want out of that.'   A new double-sided ethical concern arises: the problem of disguised intentions from funders like DARPA, and from scientists who are lured by the promise of funding.  (Requarth 59)

Endorsing enhancement eventually will change the sketch of what an ideal human should look like.  This requires us to ask what we hold as values of humanity.  Although it may seem like the best way to cure depression, addictive behavior, and social-cognitive disorders, perhaps there is something socially balancing and genuine about accepting each other and finding peace with ourselves without enhancing intelligence and pushing for this unrealistic model of humanity. 

Even with our advanced technology, the benefits of social acceptance outweigh those of superficial perfection.  Giordano, a neuro-ethicist at Georgetown University Medical Center says, ‘The brain is the next battle space.’  We must fight to hold onto our conscious minds when tested by the lures of superiority.  If researchers are not careful, he may very well be correct.  We must think twice before we trip down the rabbit hole of not thinking at all.

Hofmann, Sefan: Neuroenhancement of Exposure Therapy in Anxiety Disorders (2015)
De Hongh, Reinoud: Botox for the Brain (2008)
Normann, Claus: Neuroenhancement Strategies for Psychiatric Disorders (2012)
Requarth, Tim: Mind Field (2015)
Roduit, Johann: Ideas of Perfection and the Ethics of Human Enhancement (2015)

 

Alexa is a full-time student at USC studying Chemistry and Graphic Design.  When her nose isn't glued to her books, she's playing classical piano (you could say that Chopin is her man), painting (she's an acrylic girl), or doing yoga.

 

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