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More Human Than Human
Jan. 30th, 2013 07:40 pmWe've reached day two of Romie is busy and cross-posts an e-mail instead of writing an entry. This is an excerpt from an exchange with my friend Robert Loeser, who recently attended a Director's Guild talk that was probably funded by one of the grants mentioned in my last entry, trying to get filmmakers to think about the storytelling potential of real advances in current science. We were batting back and forth a few of the hypotheticals they raised.
>> Will we see a brain implant controlling the legs of paralyzed soccer players in Brazil 2014?
The reason I think we won't any time soon has nothing to do with advances in prosthetics and implants, which are getting amazing. It's linked to the performance-enhancing drug scandals and related areas. A lot of things are getting labeled as cheating which to my mind dramatically narrow how we define what is human.
I look at the nastiness surrounding runners Caster Semenya (Olympic long-distance runner who competes as a woman, but who may be hermaphrodytic or have a chromosomal birth abnormality, who a lot of people want to block for not being a "real" woman and having "unfair" testosterone levels) and Oscar Pistorius (a runner who is a double leg amputee who is fast enough he could cross over from the Paralympics to the regular Olympics. Supporters say he has to work harder than other runners and would be even faster with his own legs, and the added muscle that comes with that; detractors say he has an artificially lengthened stride, which is cheating).
Broadening it out to the current scandals around Lance Armstrong and around A-Rod, I look at the drugs Lance was using - a little testosterone (which is normal for someone who had testicular cancer, and which is being looked into as a hormone replacement for older men in the same way some post-meopausal women take estrogen and progesterone), a drug that increases your red blood cell count (again normal for someone in cancer recovery), and "blood doping," which is being injected with transfusions of your own blood (again to raise your red blood cell count). With A-Rod, he's using human growth hormone (which mainly makes you feel younger) and testosterone. Maybe a low dose of steroids under medical supervision. All of it was legal.
I'm not saying that stuff isn't cheating - it's against the rules, they knew it was against the rules, and they lied about doing it. They're jerks. But it says something about the way we define cheating. Both of these guys didn't cheat to take it easy; they trained like hell.
I could look at Lance Armstrong and say, here is somebody who could have gotten most of the same results by living at a high altitude, who instead wanted to live in Austin. I can look at A-Rod and say: here is a guy who fought to keep the body of a 20-year-old when he was 40. There are real 20-year-olds. There are plenty of people who live on mountains. Are they cheating by being 20 or living on mountains? Is it cheating to be richer or taller or have better shoes? Is it cheating to have sponsorships that allow you to train full time without needing a full-time job to put food on your table? No? Why not? Why is it ok to use caffeine, but not HGH or your own blood?
I think we've gotten caught up in an idea that there is "natural" and "unnatural," but that's a shifting line that says a lot about how we define things like masculinity, femininity, and youth. It reminds me of the way people in cities tend to romanticize pastoral life, and how we tend to look at the pre-technological past as a time that was "pristine" and free from stress. This kind of thinking has a dangerous tendency to reinforce the status quo power structure.
I expect it will take at least a decade of debate to straighten this out, but there's no question the debate is coming, and court cases with it. On the pro-athlete drug-testing side, there's a battle on the horizon between anti-doping agencies and the ACLU. Why are these athletes forbidden from using legal drugs available to the general population? Is this a discriminatory violation of their civil rights? Or is it just fair play, disincentivizing off-label uses with potentially lethal or debilitating side effects? Do we think medical decisions should be between us and our doctors or not?
On the paralympic side, you have a lot of amputees and paralyzed vets coming back from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have personalities that make them want to train hard and compete at an elite level, and there's been a push by the VA medical community and DARPA to get them the best techonological help possible. At the same time, you have federal guidelines coming down as an expansion of Title 9, telling schools they have to make reasonable accomodations to allow disabled athletes to play at all levels, without discrimination. What is that going to mean? What is going to be fair?
My own feeling as a transhumanist and as a feminist is that biology should not be destiny, and we should be having different debates about "fairness" that revolve around huge wealth gaps. But I think we're hitting a wall that will force us to redefine what is a "human limit" and that's very exciting.
>> Will we see a brain implant controlling the legs of paralyzed soccer players in Brazil 2014?
The reason I think we won't any time soon has nothing to do with advances in prosthetics and implants, which are getting amazing. It's linked to the performance-enhancing drug scandals and related areas. A lot of things are getting labeled as cheating which to my mind dramatically narrow how we define what is human.
I look at the nastiness surrounding runners Caster Semenya (Olympic long-distance runner who competes as a woman, but who may be hermaphrodytic or have a chromosomal birth abnormality, who a lot of people want to block for not being a "real" woman and having "unfair" testosterone levels) and Oscar Pistorius (a runner who is a double leg amputee who is fast enough he could cross over from the Paralympics to the regular Olympics. Supporters say he has to work harder than other runners and would be even faster with his own legs, and the added muscle that comes with that; detractors say he has an artificially lengthened stride, which is cheating).
Broadening it out to the current scandals around Lance Armstrong and around A-Rod, I look at the drugs Lance was using - a little testosterone (which is normal for someone who had testicular cancer, and which is being looked into as a hormone replacement for older men in the same way some post-meopausal women take estrogen and progesterone), a drug that increases your red blood cell count (again normal for someone in cancer recovery), and "blood doping," which is being injected with transfusions of your own blood (again to raise your red blood cell count). With A-Rod, he's using human growth hormone (which mainly makes you feel younger) and testosterone. Maybe a low dose of steroids under medical supervision. All of it was legal.
I'm not saying that stuff isn't cheating - it's against the rules, they knew it was against the rules, and they lied about doing it. They're jerks. But it says something about the way we define cheating. Both of these guys didn't cheat to take it easy; they trained like hell.
I could look at Lance Armstrong and say, here is somebody who could have gotten most of the same results by living at a high altitude, who instead wanted to live in Austin. I can look at A-Rod and say: here is a guy who fought to keep the body of a 20-year-old when he was 40. There are real 20-year-olds. There are plenty of people who live on mountains. Are they cheating by being 20 or living on mountains? Is it cheating to be richer or taller or have better shoes? Is it cheating to have sponsorships that allow you to train full time without needing a full-time job to put food on your table? No? Why not? Why is it ok to use caffeine, but not HGH or your own blood?
I think we've gotten caught up in an idea that there is "natural" and "unnatural," but that's a shifting line that says a lot about how we define things like masculinity, femininity, and youth. It reminds me of the way people in cities tend to romanticize pastoral life, and how we tend to look at the pre-technological past as a time that was "pristine" and free from stress. This kind of thinking has a dangerous tendency to reinforce the status quo power structure.
I expect it will take at least a decade of debate to straighten this out, but there's no question the debate is coming, and court cases with it. On the pro-athlete drug-testing side, there's a battle on the horizon between anti-doping agencies and the ACLU. Why are these athletes forbidden from using legal drugs available to the general population? Is this a discriminatory violation of their civil rights? Or is it just fair play, disincentivizing off-label uses with potentially lethal or debilitating side effects? Do we think medical decisions should be between us and our doctors or not?
On the paralympic side, you have a lot of amputees and paralyzed vets coming back from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have personalities that make them want to train hard and compete at an elite level, and there's been a push by the VA medical community and DARPA to get them the best techonological help possible. At the same time, you have federal guidelines coming down as an expansion of Title 9, telling schools they have to make reasonable accomodations to allow disabled athletes to play at all levels, without discrimination. What is that going to mean? What is going to be fair?
My own feeling as a transhumanist and as a feminist is that biology should not be destiny, and we should be having different debates about "fairness" that revolve around huge wealth gaps. But I think we're hitting a wall that will force us to redefine what is a "human limit" and that's very exciting.
