Icarus 2.0: A Historian's Perspective on Human Biological Enhancement

Some of the most important watersheds in human history have been associated with new applications of technology in everyday life: the shift from stone to metal tools, the transition from hunting and gathering to settled agriculture, the substitution of steam power for human and animal energy. Today we are in the early stages of an epochal shift that will prove as momentous as those other great transformations. This time around, however, the new techniques and technologies are not being applied to reinventing our tools, our methods of food production, our means of manufacturing. Rather, it is we ourselves who are being refashioned. We are applying our ingenuity to the challenge of redesigning our own physical and mental capabilities. Technologies of human enhancement are developing, ever more rapidly, along three major fronts: pharmaceuticals, prosthetics/informatics, and genetics. ¹ Though advances in each of these three domains are generally distinct from those in the other two, their collective impact on human bodies and minds has already begun to manifest itself, raising profound questions about what it means to be human. Over the coming decades, these technologies will reach into our lives with increasing force. It is likely that they will shake the ethical and social foundations on which contemporary civilization rests. ²

One fascinating feature of this phenomenon is how much it all sounds like science fiction. The bionic woman, the clone armies, the intelligent robot, the genetic mutant superhero: these images all form part of contemporary culture. And yet, this link with science fiction is potentially misleading. Precisely because we associate human enhancement with the often bizarre futuristic worlds of novels and movies, we tend to dismiss the evidence steadily accumulating around us. Technologies of human enhancement are incrementally becoming a reality in today's society, but we don't connect the dots. Each new breakthrough in genetics, robotics, prosthetics, neuroscience, nanotechnology, psychopharmacology, brain-machine interfaces, and similar fields is seen as an isolated, remarkable event occurring in an otherwise unaltered landscape. What we miss, with this fragmentary perspective, is the importance of all these developments, taken together.

The technological watersheds of the past came about gradually, building over centuries. People and social systems had time to adapt. Over time they developed new values, new norms and habits, to accommodate the transformed material conditions. This time around, however, the radical innovations are coming upon us suddenly, in a matter of decades. Contemporary society is unprepared for the dramatic and destabilizing changes it is about to experience, down this road on which it is already advancing at an accelerating pace. ³

Let me begin with two brief stories. ⁴ They are, in a sense, Promethean parables, tales of the human aspiration to rise above earthly limits. But they are also anti-Promethean, in that both begin with tragedy and end on a cautiously hopeful note.

In 1997, a fifty-three-year-old man named Johnny Ray had a massive stroke while talking on the telephone. When he woke up several weeks later, he found himself in a condition so awful that most of us would have a hard time imagining it. It is called "locked-in" syndrome: you are still you, but you have lost all motor control over your body. You can hear and understand what people say around you, but you cannot respond. You have thoughts and feelings but cannot express them. You cannot scream in frustration or despair; you can only lie there. The only way Johnny Ray could communicate was by blinking his eyelids.

In March 1998 two neurologists at Emory University and Georgia Tech inserted a wireless implant into the motor cortex of Ray's brain. The implant transmitted electrical impulses from Ray's neurons to a nearby computer, which interpreted the patterns of brain activity and translated them into cursor movements on a video display. After several weeks of training, Ray was able to think "up" and thereby will the cursor to move upward onscreen. After several more months, he was able to manipulate the cursor with sufficient dexterity to type messages. By that point...