Transhumans?
May 18, 2005 – 8:50 amJohn Hawkes, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Wisconsin-Madison, has created a wonderful blog about paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution.
The content to noise ratio is low. His explanations can be understood by the lay person.
Why do I care about any of this stuff?
The science and technology worlds are abuzz right now. Discussions about genetic engineering, human evolution and regenerative medicine can be found all over the blogosphere.
Pundits and whack-jobs abound. What I have found almost exclusively true is that pundits and whack-jobs alike make sweeping references to how sex, among other things, will be changed by parents at birth - by manipulating genes - without discussing transsexuals (Cyborg Democracy is a notable exception). Some also claim that robotics will become part of human biology, without referencing how robotics are used by people with disabilities everyday (Cyborg Democracy is, not unexpectedly, remiss).
They live in the future without acknowledging the past or the present. Yes, parents may manipulate the genes of their child - changing an XY to an XX - but then what happens if the fetus is bathed in a sea of androgenizing hormones? Evidence suggests the parents may get a girl wanting to become a boy.
Why should any of us care about these issues?
Because we transsexuals have much to say about the coping systems thrown up by society around science and technology’s gift to us, hormones and advances in plastic surgery.
If science and technology is a bus, and ethics is the driver, then our society is not capable of controlling the bus. Our frameworks for making difficult, ambiguous ethical decisions lags far, far behind our scientific achievements. Abortion is one example. Our society fights over a definition of when life begins. Is it at the moment of conception? Three months? Nine months? Five years?
Transsexualism is another. What is gender? Genes? Hormones? The brain? Physical and mental impairments are a third. What is quality of life? How do we determine it? How do we define sanity?
Science has forced us to make arbitrary decisions. We continue to draw lines in the sand. The decisions and discussions that go into determining where to place the stick are ones we transsexuals, among others, must participate in and fight to be heard. (The appalling dismissal of activists with disabilities as non-experts in the Terry Schiavo case suggest we have our work cut out for us.)
Otherwise we are left with policymakers in Washington who make the following legal determinations about gender (in the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act of 2005):
WOMAN- The term `woman’ means a female human being who is capable of becoming pregnant, whether or not she has reached the age of majority.
I’m scared. Are you?
Fortunately people like John Hawkes provide a balanced approach to these complex questions. On the topic of transhumans or post-humans, Hawkes has much to say here.
He concludes with his own prediction for our collective human future.
A prediction for the future: our genomes increasingly confirm the maxim that every person is a work of art.
Indeed. Which is why we must begin these conversations, no matter how rudimentary our understanding of science, no matter how much we don’t get it, no matter how frightening the future of humans may seem.
We bring too much to the table to opt out.
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