By Shivam Panda
Growing a human brain? Choosing traits in your child? Superhuman healing capabilities? Brain-computer interfaces? Are these all ideas hidden in 80’s science-fiction novels and illustrative comics, or are these all new and emergent scientific advancements part of the reality we live in? It's hard to imagine that what was once printed on the comics we grew up with are now part of our reality and will one day possibly become our everyday life.
Throughout recorded history, humans have always striven for self-enhancement, self-growth, and, simply put, being better than we currently are. The Greeks told stories about Prometheus, who stole fire from the Gods, about Daedalus the mastermind mechanic who built wings for him and his son to fly. The ancient Hebrew script, Genesis, talks of Adam and Eve gaining knowledge through the forbidden fruit.
All these examples may be fruitful (literally in the case of Adam and Eve) but also come with great losses, like Icarus flying too close to the sun and burning, or Adam and Eve being banished from paradise and thrown into a much harsher reality clouded with both, bad and good. In fact, in more recent times, Mary Shelly’s story of Dr Frankenstein tells of the death of a scientist in his attempt to destroy the monster he revolutionarily created.
Where exactly does science stand with all this?
In 1953, scientists John Watson and Francis Crick discovered what could be called the script of life- DNA. Today, the genome of a living organism can, quite literally, be ‘edited’. In theory, through the principle of genetic engineering, we could produce fetuses with stronger muscles, denser bones, faster minds, (and possibly humans with gills or wings, though it's quite far-fetched or rather advanced). The most recent advancement in this technology is called CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), a new cheap method of gene editing. Till date, it has been used only for therapeutic purposes, like strengthening cancer-fighting properties of the immune system, Alzheimer's and even Parkinson’s diseases. It increases our hope in our seemingly perpetual battle against both genetic and non-genetic disease.
However, editing the human genome for increased immunity, or decreased chance for a genetic deformity, opens up the door to editing the genome for enhancement purposes rather solely remedying purposes. The logic is fairly simple, at the 8-cell or 16-cell stage of fetus development, identify and edit the genome for the desired or undesired trait. Though this seems like an ‘awesome’ idea, what most people don’t realize is that the practice of breeding ‘designer children’ veers awfully close to Eugenics. This was a practice popular in the 19th-20th century that involved selective breeding to achieve an implied ‘racial purity’. Additionally, since frontier sciences like this are mostly trial and error based, a possible error or a lack of understanding during experimentation may cause unprecedented issues, the gravity of which could not be estimated.
Many transhumanist scientists are working on enhancing the organ that arguably sets us farthest apart from the rest of the animal kingdom- the brain. I think we can all agree that one of the coolest superpowers would be super-intelligence and/or enhanced mental capabilities. In October 2019, a synthesized brain organoid swept the papers when it reportedly showed brain waves. This meant that scientists managed to grow brain tissues from stem cells in such a way that it legitimately worked.
Ever since, the field of growing brain organoids has gained quite a bit of traction. A study from the Harvard school of medicine showed that an 8-month old brain organoid had specialization of cells with a crude cortex and even a few retinal cells. It produced brainwaves resembling those of a baby and was able to show basic response mechanisms to light. Another such study from Stalk Institute managed to implant a human organoid brain tissue into a rat and it connected to the test subjects blood supply and sprouted fresh connections.
These advancements allow scientists to probe living human brain tissue like never before. In the past year, the medical field has benefited massively from such studies. Now we know more about diseases like schizophrenia, autism, Zika virus, and even Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s than ever imaginable. Despite all these benefits, it is understood that this practice comes perilously close to crossing the ethical ‘line’.
“If there’s even a possibility of the organoid being sentient, we could be crossing that line,” said Elan Ohayon, the director of the Green Neuroscience Laboratory in San Diego, California. “We don’t want people doing research where there is potential for something to suffer.”- The Guardian.
As discussed, we know the potential benefits to be reaped from CRISPR gene editing but that is not where it stops. Imagine having synthetically produced blood if you are unable to produce blood. It would pretty cool, but why stop there? What if you would never need to look for a blood donor because you never find yourself in the situation where you have lost so much blood. How is that possible, you ask?
Well, consider this. Scientists have tried to edit blood cells to clot faster, essentially giving humans super-healing (all those hoping for metal claws out of their knuckles or wearing red spandex and sporting full-sized katanas, raise your hands).
Moreover, it has been hypothesized that one could simply have synthetic white blood cells programmed just like a virtual computer, to fight a new host of disease, essentially giving the immune system periodic ‘updates’. Regardless of how it’s made, we could have increased blood carrying capacity. This would imply lesser breaths, increased stamina, lesser heart attacks because your heart wouldn’t have to work as hard, and more oxygen to the brain so an increase in cognitive abilities, and consequentially being a lot less ‘tired’.
“In principle, the way our blood stores oxygen is very limited,” Adam Sandberg, Oxford University, says. “So we could dramatically enhance our physical selves if we could increase the carrying capacity of haemoglobin.”-PBS
Where exactly is the ‘line’ drawn?
Many-a times in science there comes along a dilemma. This dilemma is one of morality. As a scientist, it is up to you to further the extent of humanity’s knowledge, but should you, in fact, undertake such a task that opens you to supposedly unethical behaviour? To be put simply, at what point in finding answers does one cross the supposed line?
In 2015 a group of 500 scientists, theologists, ethicists and lawyers convened at the National Academy Of Sciences in Washington D.C. to decide upon the fate of this question.
Source: Global Lawyers and Physicians
The difficulty in answering such a question was put forth brilliantly by Boston University bioethicist George Annas- “While science answers ‘what is?’ ethics contemplate ‘what ought?’" The pursuit of knowledge never hurt anyone, but the pursuit has always been accompanied by traits like greed, ego, and power-hunger.
This contaminated ideal of science and the childishness of the human civilization as a whole is what makes everyone question, not whether we should, but rather "Are we ready to?"
The British government has banned experimentation on donated fetuses over 14 days old. According to the NAOS conference, invasive experimentation on sentient organisms is banned internationally. However, sentience is not quantifiable, and thus not measurable, so many frontier scientists try their best to operate in that murky, grey area where they are protected by the benefit of the doubt.
Whether the general code of morality is violated or not it is suspected to be another 50-odd years till ameliorative sciences that pose concern today actually becomes a reality. Furthermore, considering the growing sensitivity of the younger public, it is hard to imagine that such type of sciences will overcome the opposition of religion, morality, political contamination and unavoidable yet humane sins of greed and selfishness, it is highly doubtful that the reality we dread will, in fact, become a reality anytime soon.
Morality is not a natural concept, it is a concept introduced by humans in order to keep a general idea of right and wrong in the community so that our civilisation do not descend into anarchy.
While it is naïve to think that science will come unabated and pure, it is impertinent to remember that everything has a light and dark side, and maybe something as inspiring as science may not be as pious and good-natured as you think.
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