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Transhumanism aims to enhance human characteristics through medical technology and scientific innovations, creating posthumans capable of achieving feats beyond our imagination. They seek to eliminate disease, weakness, and aging through gene therapy, selective breeding, and advanced technology. Critics question the potential dangers and ethical implications of creating a superior species that controls non-enhanced humans. The World Transhumanist Association debates these issues and seeks to enable individuals to reach their fullest potential through science and technology.
Transhumanism seeks to enhance characteristics, such as youth, creativity and intelligence, by using medical technology to develop or eliminate certain genes and other scientific innovations, such as robotics, to enable an improved human race. Transhumanists believe in altering the human genome to eliminate disease, weakness and aging, thus sculpting subsequent generations. These advanced humans, or posthumans, will be capable of achievements we can only dream of.
The philosophy of transhumanism employs the technology we have developed for other means to improve people’s health, abilities, life span, memory, happiness and intelligence, using artificial techniques. They conceive a category of transhumans along the path to becoming posthuman. A posthuman coexists peacefully with other humans, but reaps benefits ranging from altered DNA, selective breeding, prosthetic limbs, nanorobotics, synthetic organs, sensory augmentation, anti-aging regimens, portable telecommunications devices, and drug therapy. In its most extreme conception, the posthuman exists as a set of information in a memory bank.
A model of a posthuman might take weekly injections of an anti-aging serum that replenishes cells. The posthuman might also have a sophisticated telecommunications system that allows him to quickly send text, voice, video, and large files to any location. Its eye may be equipped with an artificial oculus that measures not only color and depth, but also heat and distance, and identifies objects and people. His DNA has been altered with gene therapy, so he is protected from developing heart disease. His emotions are regulated by receptors implanted in his brain to relieve him of stress, paranoia or depression.
In 1998, different branches of transhumanism united in the World Transhumanist Association to discuss their goals and debate their means. They welcome questions about ethics, eugenics, personal risk, threats to the wider ecosystem, dystopian scenarios, and resource strains. They want to enable individuals to reach their fullest potential by accessing all that science has to offer. Technology can improve their productivity, quality of life and possibly lift them to further levels of consciousness.
Critics of transhumanism question both the potentially dangerous technology and the associated value judgments. Nanorobots and gene therapy could pose a danger to humans, plants and animals. Some traits will be labeled as desirable and others as undesirable in a way that might privilege ethnicity and wealth. Most people agree that some conditions, such as diabetes, are undesirable. But should all disabilities ideally be eliminated? Other criticisms include the potential for the creation of a biologically superior, powerful species that controls non-enhanced humans.
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