Healing The Healthy - A Very Ethical Problem
We are living in times in which many ailments which used to disable or even kill, have been brought under control with medical drugs and procedures. For instance in Victorian England, one of the most common killers came via infection caught from a rotten tooth.
That's right, before the dawn of antibiotics toothache, along with a whole host of other minor infections, was a major danger to your life.
Today we have a plethora of drugs that make things like tetanus, gangrene, and abscesses, minor inconveniences, rather than life threatening traumas.
However these benefits are not for all, for instance, if you are unfortunate enough to contract HIV, then your survival chances depend very much on your geographical location.
A Perfect Imbalance
If for instance you contract HIV in the UK, you are likely to live around 5-10 years less than you would have done had you not caught the disease.
So if your lifestyle choices and genetics meant that without accident, you would live to 80 years of age, then with proper treatment you can have HIV and live to about 70 or 75.
Of course you will have to take a cocktail of up to eighteen different pills everyday, and those pills will play havoc on your liver and bones. However you will be alive and have the chance to enjoy your life.
This is not the case if you live in say Nigeria, Nepal, or India. Unless you are wealthy enough to travel to a wealthier country, or import the drugs you need, you are looking at 1-5 years before you die.
This is the sad truth of the world we live in, miracle cures are often for sale at a price only some can afford.
A Cure For The Healthy
We are so lucky in the developed world, that now we are approaching a time whereby the healthy will be undergoing medical procedures. Not to cure them of any ailments, but rather to enhance an already privileged existence.
The dawn of transhumanism is upon us, the next two or so decades will see possibly millions of human beings augmenting their biology and possibly altering their DNA, all in the name of enhancement.
With the advent of quantum computing around the corner, it won't be long before we will be able to edit out risk of disease in our children's DNA, or enhance our ability to learn language, see in the dark, or even increase our general intelligence.
The possibilities for enhancements and augmentations will grow and grow. This growth will lead to a brand new ethical dilemma.
I'm Alright Jack
Of course it is easy for me to sit here and muse about a possible future whereby people I have never met are frozen out of a system that benefits me. However when it comes down to it, I, and nobody else who has the willing and the capital will turn down life-extending enhancements because of these ethical quagmires.
That doesn't mean that I embrace the inequality, or indeed am not sickened by it. It is just that human nature will mean that I want to protect the lives of me and my family, more than those of people I don't know.
So the ideal scenario is whereby I can enjoy the fruits of the medical profession's labour, guilt free; however I have to wonder if this will ever be possible.
Social Darwinism At Its Worst
Imagine a world whereby only the wealthy survive beyond a certain point, and their children are healthier than their poorer counterparts.
After a while, only they and their children would be left. Darwin showed us how in nature, only the fittest and most adaptable survive in a changing environment.
Perhaps now we are moving into the epoch of survival of the richest.
DO YOU SEE ANY ETHICAL DILEMMAS WHEN IT COMES TO BODY ENHANCEMENT AND AUGMENTATION? SHOULD THIS TECHNOLOGY BE FOR EVERYONE; OR SHOULD WE ACCEPT THAT IT MAY BE THE FEW WHO HAVE ACCESS? AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!
It's true times are changing!
Faster than we can imagine!
Cg
This subject is highly debatable and it caught my eye because I was employed in pharmaceutics not so long ago. I think that health care (and by that I mean advanced health care of more developed countries) should be given to everyone that needs them. I debated some people about the subject, and this maybe sounds utopian to you, but I vision a self-sustainable pharmaceutical and health industry. I know it is difficult to do this now, but in the future we could probably do it, and as I always say (it became almost like a mantra to me): people lack empathy! Have a nice day.
It is an interesting topic, and one that will grab more and more headlines in the next decade or so. I think your vision might one day be possible via blockchain economics. Here's hoping :-)
Cg
I thought of it too. I even written about it regarding the music industry. But time will show if we were right. One way or the other, this current situation is not sustainable.
Yes you raise the right point ONLY THE WEALTHY SURVIVES!...... going to reblog this..people need to know this.
Having studied the subject for a while, I think there are certain ethical dilemmas concerning body enhancements, and it can't be for everyone.
@cryptogee, you pose a really good question. Couple things I thought I'd mention. (A.) the test for HIV varies depending on where you are located. I find that very sketchy, and think the tests should be uniform. (B.) AZT, which is what they initially used to treat HIV was developed to be a cancer drug, but it was killing off cancer patients too quickly, so they tried it for people with AIDS as an off-label use.
Since these people were dying anyways, they probably thought it was no harm, no foul to market the poison to them. The end result, the people who were dying, managed to continue to die, possibly with even more pain caused by the AZT.
Just read the warning on that label and ask yourself what good that would do if you gave it to a healthy person, let alone a dying person? To this day they still pretend that AZT was a good idea by including it in some of their cocktails at a far smaller dose.
I personally think from everything that I've read, that if AZT were to be given to a healthy adult without HIV, at the doses it was given to people in the early 80's, that it would no-doubt cause them to acquire an immune deficiency. It's some creepy stuff when you look into it.
As far as suppressed technologies are concerned, I recently saw an interview that Joe Rogan conducted with Mel Gibson and a doctor who practices in a specific type of Stem Cell therapy. It was very interesting; in fact it almost seems like a panacea. You can check that out here, if you're interested.
Apparently Gibson's father was reaching what may have been the end of his life in 2011. So Mel took him to have this controversial therapy, and he's still alive and kicking today at 99 years old. It really sounds like an interesting type of treatment that could be beneficial for many reasons, even anti aging.
As far as the ethics are concerned, it would be nice if they would stop practicing harmful medicine, and start to unleash some of the good stuff. I don't care how it would disrupt the market just so long as it works, and works well. It would be refreshing for a change.
As far as enjoying the fruits of something guilt free. I don't think you should deprive yourself of anything beneficial or feel guilty just because you have access and someone else doesn't. That would be like, not drinking clean water, because someone in the third world doesn't have access to clean water. If someone’s conscience bothered them that much they could send money to some poor village so that they could build a well.
Or for example if someone like Mel Gibson felt guilty about having access to life changing tech like that stem cell therapy. He could use his star power to shine light on it, in order to harness the power of the people's demand that they have access to it. Even that alone is beneficial, and I think that's exactly what he was doing there.
Either that or pay for someone to get the treatment who otherwise couldn't afford it. Allot of celebrities do that kind of thing, they don't like to advertise it because, they can't help everyone, but yeah charity is good, and it's a far better path to alleviate guilt, than it is to deprive oneself of quality of life.
I enjoyed your post, it really made me think!
we can debate until the end of time but then if we do that then chances are we become the people who won't make it through, unfortunately progress comes at the expensive often of the thinkers and the pre woke! :) - i accept our robot overlords.
I not only accept them, I will become them! :-)
Cg
Times are changing indeed! Your reference to Nigeria as regards HIV contraction is patently true as there are no mechanisms on ground to help them. Nigeria is in a rotten state and only God will help.
There is nothing as good as healthy living. It begets wonderful lifestyle and serene frame of mind.
Yes it is a sad state of affairs, I don't think God can help, if he could, he would have done already... It will take the will of honest politicians and the people to change things. Perhaps the blockchain will prove to be a democratic solution.
Cg
I have the sense that other problems will arise if we begin editing DNA for the risk of diseases. The problem is that the human mind isn't as intelligent as the nature we are made of and we often think we are making brilliant changes but they often bring along different kinds of problems.
Yes sometimes we may not think about the future enough, however I think it's generally positive, I would have love to have been able to screen our DNA and edit out any potential life threatening, congenital ailments our daughter might contract in the future.
The problem at the moment is it takes an extremely long time to mimic and indeed work out how proteins fold, which is the key to working out DNA. I think once quantum computing kicks in, those problems will disappear.
I hear ya though about playing god :-)
Cg
The world has always been "unfair". Some people are more intelligent, ambitious, hardworking etc. than others, so of course their lives will turn out better. Some groups of people have figured out how to set up political systems that include checks and balances and reward entrepreneurial initiative. Others are too busy squabbling among themselves to create stable systems.
There is no need for Europeans, Americans and East Asians to feel guilty over their hardwon success.
As long as people in a given society are given a somewhat "fair" chance at the start (of course, we need to work out what "fair" really means), we cannot and should not guarantee equality of outcome.
When faced with tranhumanism, some of the basic questions we urgently need to address are:
"What does it mean to be human?"
"Do transhumans constitute a separate species?"
"Is it possible to prevent violent conflict between "us" and "them"?
[resteemed to promote further discussion]
Thank you for your reply, you raise some good points, and of course you are correct about fairness, however I think your last question is perhaps the most important, and links into that point.
Ultimately if the gap between rich and poor, or even marginally well off and the low paid, becomes more than just money, then resentment could possibly turn into violence. This for me is why it is important to make sure that these divides do not become yawning chasms.
As for your first two questions, for me, to be human, is to accept that we are in a unique position. Among all the other organisms on earth, we are the only ones who hold such sway over their own continuing evolution.
We are the ultimate adaptable creature, and if that adaptability means that in order to survive and thrive we have to become more than human, then so be it.
Whilst we may not become a separate species, I believe we will at least be considered as a meta-species. Plus you have to consider that the status and rights of human (and machine) made machines will also be soon up for debate.
I for one believe sentient machines should also be classed as humans, just non-organic ones. Perhaps, just like in the novels of Iain M. Banks, whereby the species; The Culture, was just a loose term for a group of pan-humans and sentient machines.
That's what I'd like to think anyway :-)
Thanks for the resteem and addition to the debate!
Cg