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July 22, 2006
Answering Cathy Young
By Anders Sandberg
Criticism of human enhancement is often based on a bioconservative perspective. Libertarian criticisms such as Cathy Young's in The Boston Globe (Transhumanism: Yearning to transcend biology, July 10th 2006) are much rarer, and welcome.
But overenthusiastic promotors are a minor problem. There is no shortage of critics, the real shortage is in attempts to find out what will work and what the consequences will be. The risk of intrusive laws based on hypothetical problems is significant. Human enhancement poses many complex questions that are unanswereable without experimentation. We should not be reckless, but there is a value in having actual experiences when we are trying to find the real problems.
Transplantation surgery was at its inception highly controversial but experience has shown that the initial fears of eroding human identity were largely overstated, while finding more severe problem areas in organ procurement and the ethics of death. Similarly IVF (in-vitro fertilization) has proven safer and less controversial than initially expected. Had regulations been set up based on the initial fears, the technology would likely not have benefitted more than a few thus benefitting precisely the elitism Young fears.
Posted by Waldemar at July 22, 2006 06:05 PM