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The Hybrid Age
The Hybrid Age
by Dr. Thomas R. Horn
In recent years, astonishing technological developments have pushed the frontiers of humanity toward far-reaching morphological transformation that promises in the very near future to redefine what it means to be human. What science has already done with genetically modifying plants and animals will soon apply to Homo sapiens. An international, intellectual, and fast-growing cultural movement known as transhumanism supports this vision, as does a flourishing list of U.S. military advisors, bioethicists, law professors, and academics, which intend the use of genetics, robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and synthetic biology (Grins technologies) as tools that will radically redesign our minds, our memories, our physiology, our offspring, and even perhaps—as Joel Garreau, in his bestselling book Radical Evolution, claims—our very souls.
I have personally debated leading transhumanist, Dr. James Hughes, concerning this inevitable posthuman future on his weekly syndicated talk show, Changesurfer Radio. Hughes is executive director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and teaches at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author of Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future, a sort of bible for transhumanist values. Dr. Hughes joins a growing body of academics, bioethicists, and sociologists who support:
Large-scale genetic and neurological engineering of ourselves…[a] new chapter in evolution [as] the result of accelerating developments in the fields of genomics, stem-cell research, genetic enhancement, germ-line engineering, neuro-pharmacology, artificial intelligence, robotics, pattern recognition technologies, and nanotechnology…at the intersection of science and religion [which has begun to question] what it means to be human.1
Though the transformation of man to this posthuman condition is in its fledgling state, complete integration of the technology necessary to replace existing Homo sapiens as the dominant life-form on earth is approaching an exponential curve with many experts predicting the first substantive steps in Grins human-enhancement starting any time after the year 2012.
National Geographic magazine concurred in 2007, speculating that within ten years, the first “human non-humans” would walk the earth, and retired San Diego State University professor and computer scientist Vernor Vinge (who delivered the now-famous lecture, “The Coming Technological Singularity,” at Vision-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute in 1993), agreed recently that we are entering that period in history when questions like “What is the meaning of life?” will be nothing more than an engineering question.
Most readers may be surprised to learn that in preparation of this posthuman revolution, the United States government, through the National Institute of Health, recently granted Case Law School in Cleveland $773,000 of taxpayers’ money to begin developing the actual guidelines that will be used for setting government policy regarding the next step in human evolution—“genetic enhancement.” Maxwell Mehlman, Arthur E. Petersilge Professor of Law, director of the Law-Medicine Center at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law and professor of bioethics in the Case School of Medicine, led the team of law professors, physicians, and bioethicists over the two-year project “to develop standards for tests on human subjects in research that involves the use of genetic technologies to enhance ‘normal’ individuals.”2
Following the initial study, Mehlman began traveling the United States and offering two university lectures: “Directed Evolution: Public Policy and Human Enhancement” and “Transhumanism and the Future of Democracy,” addressing the need for society to comprehend how emerging fields of science will, in approaching years, alter what it means to be human, and what this means to democracy, individual rights, free will, eugenics, and equality. At the Brookings Institute—the #1 think tank in the world and the #1 policy think tank in the United States—a new series titled “The Future of the Constitution” is likewise examining how the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights will need to be amended to insure rights and privileges for new forms of humans including genetically engineered homosexual entities.3 Law schools, including Stanford and Oxford, are hosting annual “Human Enhancement and Technology” conferences to consider the ramifications as well, where transhumanists, futurists, bioethicists, and legal scholars are busying themselves with the ethical, legal, and inevitable ramifications of posthumanity.
COMES THE ÜBERMENSCHEN
As the director of the Future of Humanity Institute and a professor of philosophy at Oxford University, Nick Bostrom (www.NickBostrom.com) is a leading advocate of transhumanism who, as a young man, was heavily influenced by the works of Friedrich Nietzsche (from whom the phrase “God is dead” derives) and Goethe, the author of Faust. Nietzsche was the originator of the übermensch or “Overman” that Adolf Hitler dreamed of engineering, and the “entity” that man—who is nothing more than a rope “tied between beast and Overman, a rope over an abyss”—according to Nietzsche, will eventually evolve into.
Bostrom envisions giving life to Nietzsche’s Overman (posthumans) by remanufacturing men with animals, plants, and other synthetic life-forms through the use of modern sciences including recombinant dna technology, germ-line engineering, and transgenics (in which the genetic structure of one species is altered by the transfer of genes from another). The former chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, Dr. Leon Kass provided a status report on how real and how imminent the dangers of such Grins technologies could be in the hands of transhumanists.
In the introduction to his book, Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenges of Bioethics, Kass warned:
Human nature itself lies on the operating table, ready for alteration, for eugenic and psychic “enhancement,” for wholesale redesign. In leading laboratories, academic and industrial, new creators are confidently amassing their powers and quietly honing their skills, while on the street their evangelists [transhumanists] are zealously prophesying a posthuman future. For anyone who cares about preserving our humanity, the time has come for paying attention.4
Notwithstanding such warnings, the problem could be unavoidable, as Prof. Gregory Stock, in his well-researched and convincing book, Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future, argues that stopping what we have already started (genetic enhancement of plants, animals and humans) is impossible. “We simply cannot find the brakes.”5 Verner Vinge agrees, adding:
Even if all the governments of the world were to understand the “threat” and be in deadly fear of it, progress toward the goal would continue. In fact, the competitive advantage—economic, military, even artistic—of every advance in automation is so compelling that passing laws, or having customs, that forbid such things merely assures that someone else will get them first.6
Academic scientists and technical consultants to the U.S. Pentagon have advised the agency that the principal argument by Vinge is correct. As such, the United States could be forced into large-scale species-altering output, including human enhancement for military purposes. This is based on solid military intelligence, which suggests that America’s competitors (and potential enemies) are privately seeking to develop the same this century and use it to dominate the U.S. if they can.
This worrisome “government think tank” scenario is even shared by the Jasons—the celebrated scientists on the Pentagon’s most prestigious scientific advisory panel who now perceive “Mankind 2.0” as the next arms race. Just as the old Soviet Union and the United States with their respective allies competed for supremacy in nuclear arms following the Second World War through the 1980s (what is now commonly known as “the nuclear arms race during the cold war”), the Jasons “are worried about adversaries’ ability to exploit advances in Human Performance Modification, and thus create a threat to national security,” wrote military analyst Noah Shachtman in “Top Pentagon Scientists Fear Brain-Modified Foes.” This special for Wired magazine was based on a leaked military report in which the Jasons admitted concern over “neuro-pharmaceutical performance enhancement and brain-computer interfaces” technology being developed by other countries ahead of the United States.
The Jasons are recommending that the American military push ahead with its own performance-enhancement research—and monitor foreign studies—to make sure that the U.S.’ enemies don’t suddenly become smarter, faster, or better able to endure the harsh realities of war than American troops…They are particularly concerned about [new technologies] that promote “brain plasticity”—rewiring the mind, essentially, by helping to “permanently establish new neural pathways, and thus new cognitive capabilities.” 7
Though it might be tempting to disregard the conclusions by the Jasons as a rush to judgment on the emerging threat of techno-sapiens, it would be a serious mistake to do so. As Grins technologies continue to race toward an exponential curve, parallel to these advances will be the increasingly sophisticated argument that societies must take control of human biological limitations and move the species—or at least some of its members—into new forms of existence. Prof. Nigel M. de S. Cameron, director for the Council for Biotechnology Policy in Washington dc, documents this move, concluding that the genie is out of the bottle and that “the federal government’s National Nanotechnology Initiative’s web site already gives evidence of this kind of future vision, in which human dignity is undermined by [being transformed into posthumans].”8 Dr. C. Christopher Hook, a member of the government committee on human genetics who has given testimony before the U.S. Congress, offered similar insight on the state of the situation:
[The goal of posthumanism] is most evident in the degree to which the U.S. government has formally embraced transhumanist ideals and is actively supporting the development of transhumanist technologies. The U.S. National Science Foundation, together with the U.S. Department of Commerce, has initiated a major program (nbic) for converging several technologies (including those from which the acronym is derived—nanotechnology, biotechnologies, information technologies and cognitive technologies; e.g., cybernetics and neurotechnologies) for the express purpose of enhancing human performance. The nbic program director, Mihail Roco, declared at the second public meeting of the project…that the expenditure of financial and human capital to pursue the needs of reengineering humanity by the U.S. government will be second in equivalent value only to the moon landing program.9
The presentation by Mihail Roco to which Dr. Hook refers is contained in the 482-page report, “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance,” commissioned by the U.S. National Science Foundation and Department of Commerce. Among other things, the report discusses planned applications of human enhancement technologies in the military (and in rationalization of the human-machine interface in industrial settings) wherein Darpa is devising “Nano, Bio, Info, and Cogno” scenarios “focused on enhancing human performance.” The plan echoes a Mephistophelian bargain (a deal with the devil) in which “a golden age” merges technological and human cognition into “a single, distributed and interconnected brain.”10
The “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance” document mentioned above was published nearly a decade ago and predicted the time frame around 2012 as the date after which a new form of humanity would begin emerging as a result of Grins alteration. Numerous other national and public reports have likewise focused on 2012 as an event horizon. Is there a spirit behind this effort to create a new form of man, a modern Nephilim following 2012? Is it the same influence that caused so many ancient occult societies—the Maya, Aztec, Hindu, Cherokee, the Cumaean Sibyl (not to mention prophecies in the Zohar and elsewhere)—to predict the end of their calendars during 2012 followed by the emergence of a new form of man? If so, are we witnessing the fulfillment of Matthew 24:37—“But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be”?
**FOR A MORE IN-DEPTH STUDY**
The Hybrid Age -In recent years, astonishing technological developments have pushed the frontiers of humanity toward a far-reaching transformation that promises in the very near future to redefine what it means to be human. This article was originally published in the
February 2012 Personal Update NewsJournal.
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**NOTES**1. Jerome C. Glenn, “The State of the Future” (7/14/10) www.kurzweilai.net/the-state-ofthe-future, emphasis added.
2. Case Western Reserve University,“Case Law SchoolReceives $773,000 NIH Grant to Develop Guidelines for Genetic Enhancement
Research: Pro fes s o r Max Mehlman to Lead Team of Law Professors, Physicians, and Bioethicists in Two-Year Project (April 28, 2006).
3. http://www.brookings.edu/governance/Future-ofthe-Constitution.aspx
4. Leon R. Kass, Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics (New York:Encounter, 10/25/02).
5. As quoted by Margaret McLean , PHD., “Redesigning Humans: The Final Frontier,” http://www.elca.org /What-We-Believe/Social-Issues/Journal-of-Lutheran-Ethics/Book-Reviews/Redesigning-Humans-by-Gregory-Stock/Redesigning-Humans-The-Final-Frontier.aspx.
6. “The Coming Technological Singularity,” presented at the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research
Center and the Ohio AerospaceInsti tute (3/30–31/93).
7. Noah Shachtman,“Top Pentagon ScientistsFear Brain-Modified Foes ,” Wired (6/9/08)http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/06/jason-warns-of/.
8. Nigel M. de S. Cameron, Human Dignity in the BiotechCentury (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity,2004) 75.
9. Ibid., 87, emphasis added.
10. Mihail Roco, Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance (U.S. National Science Foundation and Department of Commerce, 2002)
Edible Microchips, Biometric Identity Systems And Mind Reading Computers
As technology continues to advance at an exponential rate, will we someday find ourselves living in a “scientific dictatorship” where virtually everything that we do, say and think is monitored and controlled by technology?
To many of you that may sound like a wild assertion, but just keep reading. Our world is changing faster than ever before, and scientists have some absolutely wild things planned for our future. As you read this, they are feverishly developing edible microchips, cutting edge biometric identity systems, and mind reading computers.
Many futurists envision a world where someday nearly all humans are embedded with microchips and have thousands of tiny nanobots living inside of them. The idea is that we can “take control of our own evolution” and use technology to “improve” humanity. But very few of those futurists address the potential downsides.
The truth is that all of this technology could one day be used by a totalitarian government to establish a dystopian nightmare where nobody has any liberties and freedoms whatsoever.
The world of tomorrow is not going to be anything like the world of today, and most people have no idea how dramatically the world is changing.
For instance, many people have never even heard of “edible microchips”.
Unfortunately, they are not some wild idea that some wacky scientists are hoping to develop in the future.
They are already here, and they are about to be marketed to the public in the UK.
The idea is that these edible microchips will help doctors monitor your health conditions and the medicines that you are taking. The following comes from a recent article in the Daily Mail….
The sensor, which contains no battery, antenna or radio, creates a unique digital signature that is picked up and recorded by a patch attached to the patient’s shoulder.
The patch, which also monitors bodily functions such as heart rate and temperature, sends this encrypted information to blue-tooth enabled smartphones or computers owned by the patient and their doctors and carers.
In this way, both patients and their doctors can work out exactly which pills have been taken. Medics can also interpret whether the patient is sleeping well, or taking enough exercise using the information transmitted from the patch.
But could such edible microchips be used for more nefarious purposes in the future?
Of course.
And scientists are developing many other new ways for you to be tracked by technology as well.
For example, do you remember in the movie “Minority Report” how Tom Cruise had to cover his eyes because he was being tracked by them wherever he went?
Well, it won’t be too long before that becomes a reality in our world.
IBM is aggressively developing new biometric identity systems that could significantly change the way that we live our lives. The following is from a recent IBM press release….
You will no longer need to create, track or remember multiple passwords for various log-ins. Imagine you will be able to walk up to an ATM machine to securely withdraw money by simply speaking your name or looking into a tiny sensor that can recognize the unique patterns in the retina of your eye. Or by doing the same, you can check your account balance on your mobile phone or tablet.
Each person has a unique biological identity and behind all that is data. Biometric data – facial definitions, retinal scans and voice files – will be composited through software to build your DNA unique online password.
Referred to as multi-factor biometrics, smarter systems will be able to use this information in real-time to make sure whenever someone is attempting to access your information, it matches your unique biometric profile and the attempt is authorized.
When biometric identity systems become widespread enough, authorities will pretty much know where you are and what you are doing at all times.
But even more frightening is something else that IBM is developing right now. IBM scientists are actually working really hard to develop mind reading computers. The idea is that someday we will all be able to control various electronic devices simply by using our thoughts….
IBM scientists are among those researching how to link your brain to your devices, such as a computer or a smartphone. If you just need to think about calling someone, it happens. Or you can control the cursor on a computer screen just by thinking about where you want to move it.
Scientists in the field of bioinformatics have designed headsets with advanced sensors to read electrical brain activity that can recognize facial expressions, excitement and concentration levels, and thoughts of a person without them physically taking any actions.
But IBM is not the only one working on mind reading technology.
Several video game makers have been attempting to develop games that you control not with a joystick or a gamepad but rather with your brain waves.
This all sound fascinating, but could such technology someday be adapted for other purposes?
Instead of us controlling the electronic devices that we connect our brains to, could they instead be used to control us someday?
Being more “connected” is not necessarily a good thing.
People have been looking for ways to stay more “connected” to the Internet for a long time, and many futurists are now suggesting that we should find a way to directly connect our brains to the Internet. An article on the website of the Science Channel put it this way….
What if it were possible to connect your brain to the Internet, either wirelessly or through a cable, download digital information at high speed, and then translate it automatically into a chemical form that could be stored by your brain cells as memory?
The same article explained what some of the benefits from such a connection might be….
If you could pump data directly into your gray matter at, say, 50 mbps — the top speed offered by one major U.S. internet service provider — you’d be able to read a 500-page book in just under two-tenths of a second.
But wouldn’t this be potentially dangerous?
If we found a way to connect our brains to the Internet 100% of the time, couldn’t someone potentially “download” damaging programs or “viruses” directly into our heads?
That is something to think about.
A British researcher named Mark Gasson infected an RFID chip in his hand with a computer virus and found that the virus-infected chip implanted in his hand was able to contaminate external systems.
So wouldn’t the danger be far greater if we connected our brains directly to the Internet?
I don’t know about you, but I don’t plan on ever connecting my brain directly to the Internet and I don’t plan on ever letting anyone put an RFID chip inside of me either.
Unfortunately, the use of implantable RFID chips in humans and animals is rapidly spreading. A lot of employers now require that their employees take them for identification purposes. Some cities in the U.S. are actually making it mandatory to put microchips into your pets.
Increasingly, RFID implants are being injected into thousands of elderly Americans living with Alzheimer’s disease who are at risk of wandering off and getting lost. In addition, RFID chips are being implanted into many people who are chronically ill so that doctors can access their medical information quickly in an emergency.
And many companies are working hard to make it even easier to implant RFID chips into humans and animals.
In fact, one company called Somark has developed a stunning breakthrough in chipless RFID ink. Their “RFID tattoos” are applied using a geometric array of micro-needles and a reusable applicator.
Somark says that it is incredibly easy to apply one of these RFID tattoos. They say that it only takes about 5 to 10 seconds to tattoo an animal or a human. Once the tattoo has been applied, an RFID reader can read it from up to four feet away.
Frightening stuff.
But some say that there might be an even easier way than that to keep track of everybody in the future.
IBM is actually working on a “bar code reader” that can read your DNA. The following is from a Fox News article about this project….
The DNA Transistor is a project from IBM Research that aims to advance personalized medicine, by making it simpler (and much cheaper) to read an individual’s unique DNA sequence — the special combination of proteins that makes you unlike anyone else.
The technology isn’t finished yet, but its potential is tantalizin enough that IBM wanted to share it with the world. And the company claims researchers are making progress.
Essentially a bar code reader for genes, the DNA Transistor is part technique and part device. It consists of a 3-nanometer wide hole, known as a nanopore, in a silicon microchip. A sensor in the pore can read DNA and determine its unique makeup.
Our world is changing at a mind blowing pace right now.
The decisions that are made now are going to have a dramatic affect on how the future plays out.
That is why so many of us are speaking out about how the government is watching us and about how our liberties and our freedoms are being taken away.
If we don’t stand up for freedom and liberty right now, our children may one day wake up in a world where they are so controlled by technology that they are unable to do so.
Right now we are not too far away from the kind of world that authors such as George Orwell once warned about. This article will conclude with a quote from his famous work 1984….
“It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself–anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face…; was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime…”
- Prophecy News Watch
Will Biometrics Go Mainstream In 2012?
As a kid, I marveled at movies featuring retina or hand scanners, or instant DNA analysis to authenticate the bad guy to his vault. As an adult, I figured these devices would mean the end of passwords and spoofing and would bring the collision of sci-fi future and real-world security.
Sadly, I still don’t have a retina scanner at my desk. What I do have are so many passwords that I need a password manager to keep them straight.
I don’t blame companies for hesitating to invest–biometrics systems still have problems, despite IBM’s prediction of advances. A prime example is how some fingerprint readers fell victim to the highly advanced gummy bear attack, in which a user acquires a gummy bear, applies it to the reader, and presses down. The sensor reads the fingerprint from the last user, which has now transferred to the gummy bear.
The reader is defeated, the gummy-wielding attacker is authenticated as the previous user, and the system has become worthless. Organizations have been forced to replace hardware and software in light of this attack and revert to legacy methods, such as passwords, that are not vulnerable to rubbery candy.
More secure, it’s hoped, are the digital images the government is embedding in the newest version of the U.S. passport for use with facial-recognition software, to reduce the likelihood of someone successfully using a fake passport to enter the country illegally. Since 2004, the US-VISIT–for United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology–program has been collecting digital fingerprint and facial images of international visitors to be used for identification; this data is shared with a number of government agencies.
The enrollment and validation of these attributes is fast and accurate enough for use in everyday, large-scale deployments, and the Department of Homeland Security just announced it will pay Accenture Federal Services $71 million over 13 months to further improve the system.
Though they should, most users never question the privacy, storage, handling, and sharing of their biometric data. What happens if people are enrolled in a system and their biometric data is compromised, sold, shared, or mined in some way? This topic came to the fore in 2009 when a company offering faster airport security checks closed its doors and didn’t immediately state where the biometric data it had collected would end up.
In return for allowing Clear (which has since been reopened) to keep biometric data on file, frequent fliers could move through airport security faster. It was great for those who fly often and don’t want to waste time. It would also be great for those who want to steal this data to impersonate a frequent flier, for either malicious airport activity or use elsewhere. If a credit card is stolen, it’s easy enough to close the account and get a new card. Not so much for a new fingerprint.
While some people will always like to think they’re targets of a vast international conspiracy looking to frame them for a failed government takeover, in reality, I don’t see biometric data being targeted in such a way. On the other hand, this data could be sold to and mined by companies with the ability to analyze our physical traits, compare that to other data sets, store in-depth information about us, and perhaps disclose it all in some way that would harm us.
The fact that these concerns are mainstream shows that biometrics has evolved to a point where enrollment, usage, cost, and user fears are no longer hindering adoption. I can see a future in which governments push for inclusion of digital photos to be used with facial recognition, require fingerprints for traveling, and eventually embed DNA attributes in identification documents to address everything from fraud to immigration control.
As a user, it seems great not to worry about someone impersonating me and not having to carry an access token or know a password. At the same time, though, it’s scary to think my fingerprint, DNA attributes, and digital image will be shared across governments, vendors, and employers. Those futuristic movies never addressed the security and privacy aspects of our personal biometric data and what happens if it’s compromised, altered, or goes missing. That’s up to us.
- Prophecy News Watch
The Newest Beasts of the Earth
At the end of Planet of The Apes (1968), Charlton Heston and Linda Harrison trot down the beach, where they famously see the charred remains of the Statue of Liberty and realize that the planet the apes are ruling is actually Earth. In the 2011 reboot, biotech researchers have produced a genetically engineered virus that increases the intelligence of both humans and apes. A stronger version of the virus is lethal to humans, however, and has the potential to wipe out the world’s human population – answering the question of how future astronaut Charlton Heston eventually finds a post-apocalyptic Earth run by apes.
Is there a virus capable of truly deleting the majority of humanity on the planet? Does a microscopic bug exist with the perfect combination of immune-system defiance, easy transmission, and a just-long enough incubation period for those infected to unwittingly pass it on before it kills them dead? Guaranteed, there are folks hunting for such a monster, and if they can’t find it in nature, they hope to build it.
H5H1
The bird flu strain that killed a 39-year-old Chinese bus driver on New Year’s Eve was not spread from human to human, according to a statement from China’s Shenzhen Disease Control Center. The recent infection, like ones that caused other human deaths by bird flu, came from contact with diseased poultry. “Though it is highly pathogenic to human beings, the virus can not spread among people,” said the statement. “There is no need for Shenzhen citizens to panic.”
Researchers in Wisconsin and The Netherlands, however, have tweaked the genetic code of the H5H1 virus to make it airborne. Infected ferrets have spread the modified virus to each other, raising the uncomfortable possibility that it could be quickly transmitted between humans as well. The U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) stated on December 20 that the H5H1 researchers were free to publish the results of their study, but were not permitted to release a description of the process by which they produced the virulent new strain, except to a very trusted list of researchers.
Should bioterrorists learn how to manufacture this deadly bug and release it into a targeted human audience, it is expected it would be wildly difficult to stop the ensuing pandemic. The H5H1 has a death rate of about 50 percent, 20 percent higher than that of smallpox fifty years ago.
What would possess researchers to purposely develop an airborne version of a deadly disease?
Flu viruses are notorious for their quick-mutating ways, which is why our immune systems have to adapt to the newest versions every year. The scientists at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been seeking to get a step up on this potentially vicious virus so that they can find ways to conquer it before it does show up naturally in the general population. Virologist Ron Fouchier at the Rotterdam lab was amazed to see how few genetic changes it took to develop the airborne version of H5H1. From Fouchier’s point of view, his work has helped the world appreciate how dangerous this virus truly is, encouraging countries with high rates of infection to take urgent steps to eradicate it.
In fact, there are a number of scientists who resent the government’s effort to restrict access to this information. Knowing the steps the flu virus can take to reach airborne transmissibility could give those monitoring the bird flu the ability to recognize when it gets close to a pandemic form. It would give other labs the opportunity to further experiment and find ways to treat and prevent the spread of this potentially lethal virus. On the other hand, the more bird flu floating around, the greater the possibility it could get out.
Bioterrorism:
Bioterrorists do not need an airborne version of the bird flu to kill large numbers of people. There are plenty of easier, less expensive ways to do it. The ricin toxin or anthrax can be made in one’s shed and don’t require a sophisticated lab. Top of the line facilities are needed for purity and to avoid contamination. Bioterrorists, though, do not necessarily care whether their particular biological agent is contaminated. They’re not trying to get FDA approval, after all.
The mechanisms of genetic engineering are no longer a big mystery, and even sophomores in high school biology can run experiments in which they add genes to bacteria. There’s plenty of potential for somebody out there to come up with a dangerous bug. What’s more, after the Soviet Union fell, those who were experts in biotechnology needed jobs, available to be hired by those who had the money and interest.
Would-be bioterrorists do face a major hurdle if they want to infect the human population with a particularly destructive super bug; they need a working space where they themselves can be safe from whatever it is they are cooking up. An airborne virus is a dangerous pathogen to those who work in the lab where it is being developed, and enjoying biosafety of that caliber can get expensive and requires equipment that raises the sorts of red flags that the FBI and Homeland Security and Interpol like to look for.
If a bioterrorist’s goal is to cause panic and gain attention, then the terrorist just needs to mail envelopes with white powder that could be anthrax… or… chalk dust. If the purpose is to harm an enemy, then an airborne virus is a poor weapon, since it can spread across borders to other countries not intended for abuse, including the terrorist’s home country.
If, however, the bioterrorists’ goal is to cull the human population as a whole, then it would be ideal to use an easily transmitted and deadly virus like that offered in an airborne version of H5H1. If humanity itself is the terrorist’s enemy, then it doesn’t matter which international borders a pathogen crosses, or which tribes and nations are affected.
Our Safety:
In Revelation, we find the pale [chloros, green] horse as one of the four horsemen:
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. -Revelation 6:8
We usually infer that the “beasts of the earth” are of the four-footed kind; we rarely include in our perspective the possibility that they might be microbial. There are many passages that may take on a different complexion when viewed from the vantage point of the current technological revolution in genetics, and the potential Bibilical implications are provocative.
In these uncertain times, more than ever we need to put all our trust and comfort and faith in the person of Jesus Christ and the love of a God who has all of our hairs numbered. Our job is not to fear, but to trust wholly in Him. Whether dealing with deadly diseases or simply crossing the street, He is our true source of safety.
Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. (Psalm 91:5-10)
Related Links:
• Variola Virus (Smallpox) – UPMC Biosecurity
• China: Bird Flu Death Not From Human-Human Spread – AP
• A Public Policy Expert Looks at the Bird Flu Threat – The New York Times
• Debate Persists on Deadly Flu Made Airborne – The New York Times
• Call To Censor Flu Studies Draws Fire – Nature
Endosymbiosis, Mutation, and Lynn Margulis
Lynn Margulis passed away this weekend – on the same day that C.S. Lewis and John F. Kennedy died in 1963, but with much less fanfare. Margulis, the once wife of Carl Sagan, made popular the importance of symbiosis in a bit of mutiny against the by-tooth-and-claw survival of the fittest of Neo-Darwinism. She saw that the earth and creatures in their environments exist in a whole-world symbiotic relationship, and was considered a rebel by the scientists of her time. Yet, her work has been valued by those who appreciate her lack of satisfaction with standard biological explanations.
Dr. Margulis was best known for promoting the endosymbiotic theory, a now popular answer to the evolutionist’s dilemma of how prokaryotes first became eukaryotes. Prokaryotes, namely bacteria, are distinctive in that they have no nucleus to hold their DNA. Eukaryotes like us have a nucleus in our cells, along with a host of organelles that do all the work that goes on inside a cell. Margulis argued that mitochondria in animals and chloroplasts in plants were once free-living bacteria that were swallowed up by other prokaryotic cells. Rather than being digested, the proto-mitochondria and chloroplasts became part of the cell, contributing their DNA to the newly developing cell nucleus.
There are a few facts that microbiologists use to support this theory. Both mitochondria and plastids divide by binary fission and have their own DNA, which is organized as a circular chromosome like that of bacteria. The organelles also have a cell wall composed of peptidoglycan, typical of bacteria. Mitochondria and bacteria have some similar enzymes and transport systems, and mitochondria and plastids and bacteria are all about the same size. Many microbiologists now believe that early mitochondria are related to rickettsia bacteria, obligate intracellular parasites, and that chloroplasts are closely related to the single-celled photosynthetic cyanobacteria (blue-green algae).
The endosymbiotic theory appears on the outside to be reasonable, but it does raise a great many questions. For instance, both mitochondria and chloroplasts need a variety of proteins to function; when and how were the protein transport pathways built? There are at least five pathways that bring proteins into mitochondria, which would need to be in place in order to maintain these little organelles inside the cell, else they would stop functioning after they had transferred their DNA to the nucleus as the theory describes. What series of mutations could have produced those pathways, or could have matured the proto-mitochondrion into its current productive purpose? Are there any intermediates that show how the proto-mitochondria or chloroplasts might have survived in the meanwhile? Is there any evidence for eukaryotes that have existed without mitochondria?
Tim Martin Embley and William Martin stated in Nature in March 2006, “The idea that some eukaryotes primitively lacked mitochondria and were true intermediates in the prokaryote-to-eukaryote transition was an exciting prospect… But the evolutionary gap between prokaryotes and eukaryotes is now deeper, and the nature of the host that acquired the mitochondrion more obscure, than ever before.”
Our purpose here is not to pick on Dr. Margulis. She was an honest scientist who made a heroic effort to answer one of the more profound questions that evolutionary biologists face. It’s proved to be an exceptionally difficult question to answer, of course, but Dr. Margulis offered an idea that has gained wide acceptance in biological circles.
Dr. Margulis herself, however, had a serious problem with the idea that natural selection acting on mutations could create anything new. She didn’t apply it to the problem of the protein pathways in the cell, but she did recognize the lack of evidence of beneficial mutations. In her 2003 book co-written with Dorion Sagan, Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of the Species, Dr. Margulis notes:
Although random mutations influenced the course of evolution, their influence was mainly by loss, alteration, and refinement. One mutation confers resistance to malaria but also makes happy blood cells into the deficient oxygen carriers of sickle cell anemics. Another converts a gorgeous newborn into a cystic fibrosis patient or a victim of early onset diabetes. One mutation causes a flighty red-eyed fruit fly to fail to take wing. Never, however, did that one mutation make a wing, a fruit, a woody stem, or a claw appear. Mutations, in summary, tend to induce sickness, death, or deficiencies. No evidence in the vast literature of heredity changes shows unambigious evidence that random mutation itself, even with geographical isolation of populations, leads to speciation. Then how do new species come into being?
Her honesty earned her the criticism of eminent materialists like Richard Dawkins, even though Margulis herself was a materialist and a supporter of microbes-to-man evolution. She simply recognized that the mechanisms scientists were offering were terribly insufficient to explain the evolution of the earth’s species. She did an excellent job of pointing out the subjectivity of the phylogenic tree models as well as the shortcomings of natural selection.
She told Discover magazine earlier this year, “This is the issue I have with neo-Darwinists…Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn’t create.” She went on, “…[T]he laws of genetics showed stasis, not change. Mendel showed that the grandparent flowers and the offspring flowers could be identical to each other. There was no change through time.”
Mutation and natural selection were insufficient to explain how anything new was made, Dr. Margulis said. Her answer was symbiogenesis – that new structures that were built from the cooperation of several organisms. She saw symbiosis taking place everywhere in nature. “Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking,” she said in 1986.
In many ways, she was right. The plant and animal worlds do work together in a million ways to maintain life and health. She has the same problem as the Neo-Darwinists in the long run, because she doesn’t answer where the functioning cooperative pieces came from in the first place. What formed the proto-mitochondria or cyanobacteria that she believed invaded the cell for good? Still, Margulis recognized that the nature of the world is one in which harmony wants to dominate, even in the death that cuts through it.
According to Moses, in the beginning, God made everything “good.” The entrance of sin and death marred what started as excellent, yet the longing for perfection remains in all of us. The Apostle Paul described the conflict in Romans, saying:
“Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. “ – Romans 8:21-23
We appreciate scientists like Lynn Margulis for their independent thinking, and we look forward to the day when the “good” that God created is once again realized, with no more destructive mutation and no more death – all creation living in harmony with Him.
Related Links:
• R.I.P. Lynn Margulis, Biological Rebel – Scientific American
• Lynn Margulis – Discover
• Eukaryotic Evolution, Changes And Challenges – Nature
• Lynn Margulis, Acclaimed Biologist and Critic of Neo-Darwinism, RIP – Evolution News and Views
• ‘Rebel’ Biologist And Neo-Darwinian Skeptic Lynn Margulis Dies – The Register
• ‘Non-Evolution’ Of the Appearance Of Mitochondria… – Answers In Genesis
• The Serial Endosymbiosis Theory of Eukaryotic Evolution – PBWorks
Will we all be tweaking our own genetic code?
You have to wonder what’s going on in the DNA of Harvard genetics professor George Church.
What extra bit of code does he have that the rest of us don’t? If genes tell the story of a person’s life, then some altered sequence of ‘A’s, ‘C’s, ‘G’s and ‘T’s must be at play, because his brain works like almost no one else’s.
About 30 years ago, Prof Church was one of a handful of people who dreamed up the idea of sequencing the entire human genome – every letter in the code that separates us from fruit flies as well as our parents. His lab was the first to come up with a machine to break that code, and he’s been working to improve it ever since.
Once the first genome was sequenced, he pushed the idea that it wasn’t enough to have one sequence, we needed everyone’s. When people pointed to the nearly $3bn price tag for that first one, he built another machine.
Now, the cost is down to below $5,000 per genome, and Prof Church says we’re quickly heading toward another 10- or 20-fold decrease in price – to roughly the cost of a blood test.
Genes: read, write, edit
To Prof Church, routine whole-genome sequencing will herald the beginning of a new era as transformative and full of possibilities as the Internet Age. But this is not just about insurance companies wanting to have every customer’s entire genome in their files.
For Prof Church sees this only as a beginning of the project, rather than the culmination of three decades of work.
He envisions a day when a device implanted in your body will be able to identify the first mutations of a potential tumour, or the genes of an invading bacteria. You’ll be able to pop an antibiotic targeted at the invader, or a cancer pill aimed at those few renegade cells.
Another device will monitor your outside environment, warning you away from sites that pose a health risk.
A range of genetic disorders will be identified at birth, or even conception, and tiny, preprogrammed viruses will be sent into the body to penetrate compromised cells and correct the damage. Changing the adult body at the first signs of illness will be just as easy, he predicts.
There’s no reason, Prof Church says, why people won’t be able to live to be 120, and then 150.
“There used to be this attitude: here’s your genetic destiny, get used to it,” Prof Church says. “Now the attitude is: genetics is really about the environmental changes you can make to change your destiny.”
Democratic science
Standing at 1.93m, with a bushy reddish-grey beard, George Church is hard not to notice. The 57-year-old is both imposing and unassuming. There’s an awkwardness to Church, like an 8th grade boy after a summer growth spurt, and an openness that makes him easy to like. His manner is the same with a Harvard faculty colleague as with the technician operating a machine he helped design.
This democratic instinct comes through in his science. Church advises 20 of the 30-or-so advanced genomics companies in the United States, but his heart is clearly in academia, doing basic science that helps everyone.
As he pushes for the mapping of more and more complete genomes, he also pushes to make those genomes public, so researchers can learn about medical conditions by comparing them. He’s put 11 up on the web already, including his own, and is aiming for 100,000 more.
Once thousands of people with diverse backgrounds have made their genomes and health status public, researchers will be able to delve into a wide range of diseases and disorders, from schizophrenia to heart disease, diabetes to learning disabilities, looking for patterns.
“You bring down the price and many blossoms bloom,” he says.
Prof Church doesn’t want to make these discoveries himself. The pace of that kind of science is too slow for him, and not driven by technology.
There’s a climate-controlled room in the middle of Church’s generous lab space, where a small tray shakes back and forth, jostling pellets of E. coli DNA.
In a four-hour production process, researchers can turn on or off a single base pair of that DNA, or whole regions of genes to see what happens. The goal is to find a way to improve production of industrial chemicals or medications, or to test viral resistance.
“You could think of this as driving evolution to very rapid rates,” Church said. “Sort of evolution on steroids.”
The machine is a second-generation Multiplex Automated Genome Engineering (MAGE) machine, built with help from industry; the first one, which sits across the street not far from Church’s corner office was a doctoral student’s PhD thesis. Another thesis project sits just on the other side of the wall from new MAGE. Called the Polonator, this open-source genome-sequencing machine can read and write a billion base pairs at a time.
These two machines put Church’s lab at the forefront of synthetic biology, a burgeoning new field that aims to make things Mother Nature never thought of, like high efficiency, non-polluting fuels, and viruses that can carry cancer drugs safely to a tumour.
With these machines, Prof Church is doing to synthetic biology what he’s already done to personalised genomics: making it cheaper, faster and available to everyone.
Take a snip of DNA here, insert a snip of DNA there Ethical concerns
“He’s beginning to transform synthetic biology to a larger scale,” says James J. Collins, a professor at Boston University and Prof Church’s colleague at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.
Prof Collins acknowledges that some people will have ethical concerns about scientists writing genetic codes. But, he said, the reality of synthetic biology is nowhere near as scary as the hype. No one is creating doomsday species or humanoids. They’re just barely able to create a single new cell, says Prof Collins.
“I think we as a community have a need and a role and responsibility to educate the public as well as to take precautionary safeguards to make sure we’re not introducing something that’s problematic,” says James Collins, who builds his cells with programmable kill switches, so they self-destruct before reproducing or mutating.
George Annas, chairman of the department of health law, bioethics and human rights at Boston University, agrees that it’s too early to be troubled by the ethics of synthetic biology. “At this point, we don’t know how synthetic biology will turn out or even if it will work at all,” he says.
Of the possible fears about new life forms: “I think we’re in the realm of science fiction right now,” Mr Annas says.
Reality check
Prof Church’s optimism about the power of reading and writing DNA is contagious, but not irresistible.
“You need George’s imagination and his vision if you’re going to do make any progress at all. But you’ve got to be foolish to think you’re going to make as much progress as he [imagines],” Mr Annas says.
American medical care is going broke as it is, he said. Adding more personalised treatment is only going to drive up the cost. And medicine may be able to add years to someone’s life, but the quality of those years is unlikely to be good, warns Mr Annas.
Chad Nussbaum agrees.
“There’s a statistical chance of being hit by a truck that’s going to make it hard to live to 150 no matter how healthy you are,” says Mr Nussbaum, co-director of the genome sequencing and analysis program at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, a genetics research institute, where Church is an associate member.
Extreme aging isn’t all about genetics, Mr Nussbaum says, it’s basic engineering: parts just wear out over time. “It’s wonderfully naive to think all we have to do is learn all the genetics and we’ll live to be 150.”
But Chad Nussbaum says he still admires Prof Church’s vision and his “genius.”
“It’s a great thing to think big and try to do crazy things,” says Mr Nussbaum. “If you don’t try to do things that are impossible, we’ll never accomplish the things that are nearly impossible.”
- Prophecy News Watch
Bioengineering Methuselah – Human beings living to be 150?
Reflecting on the Paris exposition of 1900, Henry Adams admitted to being overwhelmed by the new technologies on display. He was awed in particular by the electricity-generating dynamo. One wonders what he would make of the technologies described by Sonia Arrison in her new book “100 Plus.”
“We are at the cusp of a revolution in medicine and biotechnology,” Ms. Arrison announces, “that will radically increase not just our life spans but also, and more importantly, our health spans.” This revolution will “change everything, from careers and relationships to family and faith.”
Consider tissue engineering, in which human organs, grown from scratch or rebuilt in a laboratory, are transplanted into sick humans. It sounds like science fiction, but Ms. Arrison describes the experience of Claudia Castillo, a 30-year-old mother of two children whose windpipe was badly damaged from tuberculosis where it joined her left lung. She had difficulty breathing, and her quality of life was deteriorating rapidly.
Conventional treatment would have required a risky operation to remove Ms. Castillo’s lung. But tissue engineers were able to take a donated trachea and remove the donor’s tissue from the windpipe’s “extracellular matrix,” a kind of biological scaffold. Using stem cells from Ms. Castillo, the scientists grew tissue on top of the windpipe structure, generating a new trachea. It was then transplanted into Ms. Castillo. Since the trachea was engineered with her own tissue, her body did not reject it. With the diseased trachea removed, she was cured of a potentially fatal infection.
Scientists across the world, Ms. Arrison says, are working on engineering close to two dozen different human organs in the lab, including bladders, lungs and hearts. Progress is slow, and it might be decades before bioengineered organs are commonplace, but the trend-line is clear. A force behind the movement is the U.S. military, an eager funder of restorative and regenerative engineering. Dr. Robert Vandre, chairman of the Armed Services Biomedical Research Evaluation and Management Committee, thinks that “ultimately, we will be able to grow limbs” for wounded soldiers.
Such a development would be a cause for joy, of course, but it’s worthwhile to keep in mind the ecstatic predictions a few years ago of the breakthroughs that would be made possible by human-genome sequencing—and the modest gains that have so far resulted. Gene therapy, too, was promoted as a likely source of astonishing medical progress but has recently run into obstacles and setbacks. Predictions are easy; science is hard.
Ms. Arrison is in the hopeful camp. She recounts advances in stem-cell research, pharmaceuticals and synthetic biology. And the tinkering with genes still goes on. We learn about Dr. Cynthia Kenyon at the University of California in San Francisco, who discovered that the life span of the tiny worm Caenorhabditis elegans could be doubled by partially disabling a single gene. Further improvements on the technique resulted in worms living six times longer than normal. “In human terms,” Ms. Arrison says, “they be the equivalent of healthy, active five-hundred-year-olds.” That may be a bit much to expect, but Ms. Arrison says she is confident that “human life expectancy will one day reach 150 years.”
The quest for longevity is an old one, of course, from Ponce de León’s Floridian adventures to Benjamin Franklin’s wondering whether he should have his body preserved in a cask of Madeira wine to “be recalled to life at any period, however distant.” Ms. Arrison entertainingly chronicles efforts to conquer aging and death from antiquity to today. Food, sex, exercise and alchemy have all been employed to keep the grim reaper at bay. But technology offers the most plausible route, she says, noting that biology and computing are drawing ever closer together with the sequencing of the human genome.
What is more, technology heavyweights are paying attention, including Bill Gates (if he were a teenager today, Mr. Gates once said, he’d be “hacking biology”) and Jeff Bezos (“atom by atom we’ll assemble small machines that will enter cell walls and make repairs”). Larry Ellison, of Oracle, started a foundation more than a decade ago to support anti-aging research; the institution donates about $42 million a year.
And if humans do begin living to 150, then what? If Medicare and Social Security are in trouble now, what happens when they must support multiple generations of retirees? In Ms. Arrison’s mind, we’ll be living healthy, productive working lives until very near the end. The more pressing concerns, for her, have to do with the strain on natural resources and the added pollution of a swelling world population.
Noting that similar worries have been raised whenever technology alters social conditions, Ms. Arrison argues that apocalyptic prophecies are unlikely to be realized. Increasing wealth and mankind’s adaptability and ingenuity mean that as new problems emerge, new solutions will be forthcoming. “In looking at the trends of history,” she says, “we can see that even when there are downsides to a particular wealth- or health-enhancing technology, the problem is often fixed once the population reaches a point where it feels secure in spending the resources to do so.”
Ms. Arrison’s sunny outlook is infectious, and surely mankind does have remarkable powers of problem-solving and adaptation. But one can’t help wishing, a bit ahead of time, for some wise counsel from one of those 150-year-olds she envisions, who might be able to tell us whether all the effort and all the dreaming were worth it.
- Prophecy News Watch
The Rise of Transhumanism
Is mankind’s quest for knowledge, power and longer life about to backfire and wipe human beings off the face of the Earth?
Secret experiments now underway in the U.S. and elsewhere are sparking fears of a potential extinction-level event hastening the 2nd Coming of Jesus.
For decades now, there have been science-fiction stories portraying a future filled with spectacular abilities for people, where the definition of what makes someone a human being is blurred by blending high technology and even animal traits into the human body.
In the 1970s, TV’s “Six Million Dollar Man” featured Lee Majors as a critically injured astronaut rebuilt by the government to “make him better than he was – better, stronger, faster.”
In 1982′s classic film “Blade Runner,” Harrison Ford portrayed a futuristic cop who falls in love with a genetically engineered female “Replicant” while he looked to kill renegade androids seeking immortality.
Since then, there’s been no shortage of tales with similar themes, from “Dollhouse” and “The Terminator” to “Spider-Man,” “Splice” and “The Matrix.”
And with major advances in technology in recent years, science fiction of the past could become science fact of our immediate future, with human minds connected wirelessly to computers and bionic bodies outperforming top athletes by leaps and bounds. That prospect has some sounding alarm bells about the fulfillment of End-times Bible prophecy and the possible vanishing of mankind through global warfare, disease, starvation or even – as strange as it sounds – replacement by other entities.
At the center of the debate is what is known as “transhumanism,” a term often used synonymously with “human enhancement.”
Basically, it’s a sort of regenesis, altering human bodies – genetically, mechanically or both – to make them better than they’ve been for thousands of years, affording them Superman-style abilities in both brains and brawn.
It’s sometimes described by futurists as being “posthuman,” what they believe is the next step in the evolutionary process.
Nick Bostrom, an Oxford University philosophy professor and director of the Future of Humanity Institute, says many transhumanists wish to follow life paths which would, sooner or later, require growing into posthuman persons who have a form of eternal life.
“They yearn to reach intellectual heights as far above any current human genius as humans are above other primates,” says Bostrom on a frequently-asked-questions page.
He says transhumanists want “to be resistant to disease and impervious to aging; to have unlimited youth and vigor; to exercise control over their own desires, moods, and mental states; to be able to avoid feeling tired, hateful, or irritated about petty things; to have an increased capacity for pleasure, love, artistic appreciation, and serenity; to experience novel states of consciousness that current human brains cannot access. It seems likely that the simple fact of living an indefinitely long, healthy, active life would take anyone to posthumanity if they went on accumulating memories, skills, and intelligence.”
High on technology
With that in mind, scientific breakthroughs seen as beneficial to mankind are often trumpted with great fanfare in the media.
Just this month, for instance, a tiny, high-tech, electronic body monitor resembling a temporary skin tattoo was a top story on news sites worldwide including the popular Drudge Report.
Resembling a skin tattoo, the Epidermal Electronic System (EES) consists of circuits which could contain electrodes to measure brain, heart and muscle activity, transmitting data wirelessly.
“What we are trying to do here is to really reshape and redefine electronics to look a lot more like the human body, in this case the surface layers of the skin,” said John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “The goal is really to blur the distinction between electronics and biological tissue.”
Meanwhile, IBM just unveiled an experimental computer chip it says mimics the human brain in that it perceives, acts and even thinks.
Additionally, researchers at Cambridge University created the first-ever animal with artificial information in its genetic code.
“The technique, they say, could give biologists ‘atom-by-atom control’ over the molecules in living organisms,” the BBC reported. “What makes the newly created animals different is that their genetic code has been extended to create biological molecules not known in the natural world.”
And 14-year-old British car-racing fan Matthew James made heartwarming headlines when he was given a state-of-the-art, cyborg-style hand and forearm at no charge in exchange for advertising.
“It is just amazing,” James told the Daily Mail. “My old artificial hand had a pretty basic open-close mechanism similar to a clamp. But with this one I can do everything. It also looks really cool – the outer-shell is see-through so you can actually see the mechanics working.”
Research and destroy
But behind closed doors, there is more sinister genetic tinkering taking place, and that has some voicing grave concern.
Among them is author and researcher Tom Horn, who stars in “Trans-Humanism: Destroying the Barriers,” an hourlong DVD exploring the radical transformation of humanity.
He suggests people, as we now know them, are in the process of a man-made redesign in order to make them superbeings or even non-human entities.
“In terms of what transhumanists are aspiring to do through the use of these new sciences – biotechnology, nanotechnology, neuropharmacology,” Horn says, “what they may do is lead us literally into the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.”
Horn cites concerns by the likes of Stanford political scientist and author Francis Fukuyama, who reviewed emerging fields of science and the philosophy of transhumanism.
“He wrote a white paper in which he considered the combination of those two to probably be the most dangerous science and technologcial and philosophical concepts in the history of mankind which he believes could very quickly lead to an extinction-level event,” Horn says.
Horn claims the effort to transform humans into a different style of being is now being fast-tracked with billions of dollars.
“One of the first things that President Obama did at the executive level as soon as he became president,” he says in “Trans-Humanism,” “is he overturned restrictions that had been put in place by President [George W.] Bush which would have prohibited federal dollars, American taxpayer money, flowing in to pay for experiments to be done on human-animal chimeras (combinations) and other forms of science such as stem-cell sciences – which is also important to the transhumanist movement.
“But what most of the public doesn’t realize is when we’re talking about stem-cell sciences, we’re almost always talking about the creation of a human-animal chimera from which those stem cells are being derived. But now, tax dollars in the United States from the federal level are flowing into thousands of laboratories.”
In 2006, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services even provided $773,000 to Case Law School in Cleveland for a two-year project to develop legal standards for tests on human subjects in research involving genetic technologies to enhance “normal” individuals – to make them smarter, stronger or better-looking.
“It’s obvious that many of the genetic-based techniques used for diagnosis and treatment can also be used for enhancements,” Prof. Max Mehlman said at the time. Strangely, says Horn, no public statements on the school’s conclusions have been forthcoming.
Worthy of appaws?
As researchers have focused on blending animal attributes with human characteristics, the Reuters news agency published a report in 2009 in which scientists admitted their comfort with a “50/50 mix.”
“The public mostly is still under the impression that this is being done at the embryonic level, and that the amount of human DNA in a transgenic animal is so minute as to be excusable,” says Horn.
“But where they want the debate to go now is, ‘Can we raise these to full maturity in the public’s knowledge and experiment on part-humans, part-animals that are fully grown?’ And by admitting that that’s now where they want the public to be comfortable with this research, they also said that they knew that there are some rogue scientists out there that are not operating with federal dollars, and they’re getting ahead of them in this technology and it could even become a new kind of a weapon of mass destruction. It could, at a minimum, become a molecular biological nightmare.”
But why is there such a strong push for animal traits?
It might be desirable for some, says Horn, because, “Animals can also see into areas of the light spectrum that we cannot see into, and that is viewed in transhumanism as a future benefit and even one of the causal reasons we would want to merge ourselves with the animal kingdom so that we can open these new modes of perceptions into realities that right now we are blinded to.”
Such abilities could provide a huge military advantage, and Horn says for more than a decade, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has been pouring billions into research for what it calls “the extended performance warfighter,” also known as “supersoldier” technology.
“The interesting parts about the extended performance warfighter is that it even includes literally altering the DNA of soldiers,” he says.
DARPA calls its project “BioDesign,” and in its 2011 budget, the agency explains it “eliminates the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement primarily by advanced genetic engineering and molecular biology technologies to produce the intended biological effect.”
Horn says the real purpose has to do with immortalism.
“DARPA has an interest in figuring out how to get around the decaying process of cellular life, and they use the term creating an immortal organism,” he explains. “But it’s more than just an organism. They consider it to be potentially a lethal force that can be used in military application.
“Wired Magazine actually referred to it as a living, breathing creature. And DARPA admits that the force of this living creature, this immortal organism, could be so potent that it ought to also have what they call a ‘kill switch’ introduced into its organism so that in case it gets out of hand, we could throw the switch and stop it, or if it became available to our enemies, we could throw the switch and stop it.”
Horn says top minds at the Pentagon are marching humanity in this direction, even if it’s meant for self-defense.
“They were talking about this kind of technology in the hands of our enemies, and what they were saying was, ‘We have to get at the forefront of this technology,’” he explains. “See, this is how we’re going to be forced into this. It’s not a matter of whether we should or whether it’s ethical. We have to do it, because if we don’t, our enemies will, and then they’re going to subjugate us to their will.”
In the summer of 2008, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., chaired a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee focusing on the diplomatic and security implications of the spread of “genetics and other human-modification technologies.”
Journalist Mark Stencel covered the hearing for Congressional Quarterly (now known as Roll Call), and seemed surprised at the topics discussed, as he reported:
In some ways, the testimony sounded more like a Hollywood pitch for a sci-fi thriller than a sober discussion of scientific reality and diplomatic policy – with talk of biotech’s potential for creating supersoldiers, superintelligence and superanimals, as the chairman put it. Witnesses mused about the convergence of nanotech, biotech, computers and cognitive science, with one warning that new applications could “put agents of unprecedented lethal force in the hands of both state and non-state actors.”
There were discussions of genetic discrimination, eugenics and the civil rights of humans and animals whose intelligence might be enhanced or whose genes might be altered or integrated to the point that definitions become tricky. And witnesses warned of a genetic divide, in which enhancements would go only to the most privileged societies or individuals.
And if all this weren’t enough to dazzle you, Horn says some transhumanists have a keen spiritual interest, and studies are already underway to determine if human beings can now or eventually communicate with occupants of the unseen world.
“The Sophia Project” at the University of Arizona, for instance, declares it is investigating “the experiences of people who claim to channel or communicate with deceased people, spirit guides, angels, other-worldly entities / extraterrestrials, and/or a universal intelligence / God.”
In that light, Horn says some transhumanists desire animal traits since they suspect some creatures are aware of dimensions presently invisible to human eyes. He cites the Old Testament account of Balaam striking his donkey which refused his guidance because the animal saw the angel of the Lord, though Balaam couldn’t see the angel until his eyes were supernaturally opened.
Eat, drink and be wary
Horn points out just one the dangers of combining human and animal DNA is the potentially toxic effect it could have on our food supply.
“Very quickly we could have a human form of Mad Cow Disease,” he says. “If you’re sitting in a restaurant eating goat cheese that contains human DNA, we don’t know what the impact of that is going to be on a human. We certainly know what it did to cows and the kinds of brain diseases it created in them when they were eating their own DNA.”
From the early 1990s through the end of 2010, more than 184,500 cases of Mad Cow Disease had been confirmed in the United Kingdom alone in more than 35,000 herds, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
Controversy over genetically altering the food we consume has made major news in recent years.
A world-renowned scientist, Hungarian-born Arpad Pusztai, caused a firestorm in 1998 when his research reportedly showed eating genetically modified potatoes can stunt the growth of laboratory rats, harm brain development and damage the immune system. Though not a campaigner on either side of the so-called “Frankenfood” debate, he indicated if given the choice, he would not eat the modified potatoes.
“I find it’s very unfair to use our fellow citizens as guinea pigs,” said Pusztai, who spent 36 years at the prestigious Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health, part of Scotland’s University of Aberdeen.
Though his remarks prompted his forced retirement, Pusztai in 2008 told Britain’s Guardian newspaper he felt it was his duty to speak out “just to inject some caution into this business.”
“Make no mistake, this is an irreversible technology,” Pusztai said. “It is no good 50 years later to say: ‘We should have known.’”
This is the End?
The possibility of humans eradicating their own existence through technological advancement has some Christians cracking open their Bibles to see what Scripture has to say on the matter.
The 24th chapter of the Book of Matthew is often cited, as Jesus talked specifically about the end of the current human age, saying, “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.” (Matthew 24:21–22)
Britt Gillette, the Virginia-based Christian publisher of End Times Bible Prophecy, has been studying transhumanism in the light of Scripture, and says:
Taken in its original context, Jesus did not necessarily say that unless those days are shortened, “humanity will not survive.” Instead, he said unless those days are shortened, “no flesh will survive.”
If the transhumanist movement suceeds in transforming the human race into a race of “posthumans” who no longer need flesh covered bones to survive, then these words of Jesus take on an entirely different meaning.
And it doesn’t take an illogical leap of faith to draw this conclusion.
After all, it seems reasonable to assume that humanity will have to undergo some sort of radical transformation in order to plot a war against God Almighty. The arrogant impulse already exists. All that remains is the need for an exponential increase in human power which deludes humanity into believing it can overcome the Lord of lords.
And make no mistake about it, the Bible is clear that this is where humanity is ultimately headed – physical conflict with God:
“Then I saw the beast gathering the kings of the earth and their armies in order to fight against the one sitting on the horse and his army.” (Revelation 19:19, NLT)
That point of an actual war between mankind – even if somewhat altered – and the Creator is echoed by author Steve Quayle, who warned of the dangers of transhumanism in an April 2010 radio interview with Horn.
“It’s the destruction of humanity and the introduction of ‘its’ and ‘things’ that will make war against God, believing they can prevail,” said Quayle. “But they won’t.”
The Bible says Jesus, who is called “the Lamb,” will intervene in human affairs and be victorious over the kings of the Earth and the so-called “beast” power: “Together they will go to war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will defeat them because he is Lord of all lords and King of all kings.” (Revelation 17:14, NLT)
During the discussion with Quayle, Horn sounded ominous as he talked of “that future moment … that gives birth overnight to some version of the artillects (artificial intellects) who suddenly come online as conscious, living, synthetic superminds that are immensely more powerful than humans.”
“It appears, at least in my belief system,” he continued, “to be the billion-pound elephant standing in the middle of prophecy circles right now that the lion’s share of critical Christian thinkers don’t seem to be recognizing, or very few of them are waking up to it.”
“This is coming whether people want it to or not. It is so close to being unveiled. I’m not talking cosmologically close. I mean it is very close now. It could happen literally at any moment, and I think it carries magnificent prophetic themes around it. We’re literally talking about large-scale genetic, neurological re-engineering of humanity. … Anybody who thinks this is wishful thinking on the part of the transhumanists, just pick up your newspaper, get your newest science magazine and start reading.”
- Prophecy News Watch
Transhumanism and the Enhancement of Man – More Than Human
Transhumanism and the Enhancement of Man
More Than Human
by Dr. Martin Erdmann
In his 1922 science fiction novel, The Chess Men of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs describes a Mars whose inhabitants are so advanced that they prize contemplation above all and exist simply as heads. They have no need for oxygen or food and move using the bodies of headless creatures.
Burroughs’s popularity demonstrates that people enjoy imagining such fantastic characters and societies. Many scientists, doctors, and philosophers today, however, say such ideas have ceased to be fantasy and are now realistic prospects for the next several decades.
The Mind Uploading Home Page, for example, “is dedicated to the putative future process of copying one’s mind from the natural substrate of the brain into an artificial one,” and speculates that “…[if mind uploading were developed], body manufacturing, sales, and rental would be a large industry.”1
Human-machine integration is not simply a dream of the scientific and academic elite. In recent years, the concepts of intelligent machines and computers manipulating a person’s mind have become popular through movies such as Short Circuit, The Matrix, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The 2002 Star Trek film Star Trek Nemesis proclaims that to be human is to seek self-enhancement.
In a world where hugely popular fantasy movies hold audiences captivated with their entertaining capacities, a realm of posthuman thought is thriving and fast expanding in both followers and research.
Widely noticed publications, such as the NSF/DOC-sponsored report “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance”2 and the final report of the President’s Council on Bioethics, “Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness,”3 have given close attention to human enhancement through technology.
From Repair to Enhancement
Cardiology is a strong adopter of implants, some “dumb” like stents, some “intelligent” like implantable defibrillators, some powerful like artificial hearts. How-ever, cardiologists currently use implants exclusively for repair of failing organs.
But medicine is no longer restricted to healing. Bio-technology’s popular uses constitute a long list, among them weight loss, hair growth, birth control, teeth straightening, and sex selection of children.4
Transhumanism takes human enhancement even further, by morphing the vision of a perfect man into a human-machine complex properly called “posthuman.” This is an effort to break every human limitation and redefine personhood. Nick Bostrom, Oxford philosophy professor and co-founder of the World Transhumanism Association, writes that posthumans will realize eternal youth and health, gain complete control over their minds and emotions, and “experience novel states of conscious-ness” that present human minds cannot imagine.5
Posthumans may even choose to discard their bodies in favor of life as “information patterns on vast su-per-fast computer networks.”6
Though this sounds bizarre, many scientists, doc-tors, and philosophers call it attainable within decades. As the President’s Council on Bioethics wrote in their final report, “Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness,” bioethics demands a current and public discussion of “what it means to be a human being and to be active as a human being.”7
Asked whether transhumanism tampers with nature, Nick Bostrom replied: “Absolutely, and it is nothing to be ashamed of. It is often right to tamper with nature.”8 According to Bostrom, the attempt to retain “humanness” would be bad. Instead, all a posthuman would need to do is to act humanely.9
Transhumanists distinguish the value of human life from biology and creation, and instead place its value in human ideals and experiences. This is because values “come from minds.”10 Since a man’s values are but the ones he chooses, opting for a new ethical paradigm would allow him to redefine all aspects of life.11
In its “Transhumanist Declaration,” the World Trans-humanism Association affirms “the feasibility of redesigning the human condition” in areas including “aging, limitations on human and artificial intellects, unchosen psychology, suffering, and our confinement to the planet earth.”12
Converging Technologies
These scenarios and many more could all become reality in this century with the proper investments in technology, according to a report issued by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Commerce of the United States government.
Titled “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, In-formation Technology, and Cognitive Science,” the 405-page report could one day be remembered as a seminal road map to the future.
It calls for more research into the intersection of these fields. The payoff, the authors claim, isn’t just better bodies and more effective minds. Progress in these areas of technology could also play a key role in preventing a societal “catastrophe.” The answer to human brutality and new forms of lethal weapons, it suggests, is a kind of technology-triggered unity: “Techno-logical convergence could become the framework for human convergence.”
The report, edited by Mihail Roco, senior adviser for nanotechnology at the National Science Foundation, and William Sims Bainbridge, acting director of the Foundation’s Division of Information and Intelligent Systems, includes papers submitted by various participants as well as an overview by Roco and Bainbridge.
In the overview, the editors argue that a host of advances can be achieved in the next 20 years alone. Among these are wearable sensors that send health alerts, much more useful robots, invulnerable data networks, and direct broadband interfaces between our minds and machines.
The report thinks big when it comes to peering beyond the next two decades to the rest of the 21st century. Taking visionaries such as Ray Kurzweil—“The Transcendent Man”13—seriously, it imagines robots so advanced they may deserve political rights, building surfaces that automatically change shape and color to adjust to the weather, and the prospect of personality uploads that make death itself ambiguous.
Merging human consciousness with machines is tied to another nearly incredible concept: brain-to-brain connections. The report discusses the possibility of “local groups of linked enhanced individuals” as well as “a global collective intelligence.”
Transhumanism and Christianity
A large contingent of contemporary evangelicals has embraced some aspects of the technocratic ideals of Transhumanism and is drawn by its motivations. They embrace the belief that Christians are Christ’s “on-going incarnation in the world.”
Their new focus is on an earthly inheritance for the church. In concrete terms this means that Christians are called upon to usher humanity into a new stage of its existence. Through individual Christians’ labor, all the evils in society will slowly be conquered until they are no more. Only after the Kingdom of God has been established on earth by human effort, they believe, will the Second Coming of Christ occur.
The evangelicals who pursue these and similar goals are called Dominionists. They belong to a diverse conglomerate of movements, covering the entire theological spectrum of evangelicalism from the charismatic Manifested Sons of God to the neo-Puritan Reconstructionists.
What is missing in their thinking is the critical realization that while transhumanism aims at posthuman perfection through technology, it misses the true nature of moral “perfection” (progressive sanctification).
The transformation Christians should be seeking is not the physical or psychological enhancement found in science, reason, or technology, but rather the trans-forming work found only in God’s supernatural work through His Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18). Romans 12:2 says:
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
Romans 12:2This is the ultimate transformation and the only kind that can be truly attained with God’s help in this world. The goal is the post-judgment attainment of perfect humanity in heaven, not the attainment of full technological perfection on earth, as a quasi-divine being (Philippians 3:20-21).
Christians need to be aware of Transhumanism and its various forms, but they need not concern them-selves with seeking something they cannot and should not attain—autonomous perfection in a utopian world society. Man’s salvation is found only in the perfect and complete atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ and his promise of eternal life, as a free gift, to those who believe in him (Romans 3:23-26; Ephesians 2:8-9).
**FOR A MORE IN-DEPTH STUDY**
More Than Human -Transhumanism is an international intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of science and technology to improve human mental and physical characteristics and capacities. This article was originally published in the
August 2011 Personal Update NewsJournal.
For a FREE 1-Year Subscription, click here.
**NOTES**1. Joe Strout, “Business and Travel”, The Mind Uploading
Home Page. http://www.ibiblio.org/jstrout/uploading.
2. Mihail C. Roco & William Sims Bainbridge,eds., Converging Technologies for Improving
Human Per formance Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science,
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003, 423 pp.
3. President’s Council on Bioethics,“Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness”, Washington,D.C., October 2003, http://www. bioethics.gov.
4. President’s Council on Bioethics, Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness, chapter one, footnote three (October 2003); http:// w w w. b i o e t h i c s .
gov/.
5. Nick Bostrom, “The Tra n s h u m a n i s m FAQ,” #1.2, World Transhumanism Association,http://www.transhumanism.org/.
6. Ibid.
7. President’s Council on Bioethics, Beyond Therapy, chapter one, section two.
8. Nick Bostrom, “The Tra n s h u m a n i s m FAQ,” #4.2.
9. Ibid., #4.3.
10. N i c k B o s t r o m , “ Transhumanism and the True Nature of Mind: Creation
and Discovery!” World Transhumanism Association, http://www.transhumanism.org/.
11. Nick Bostrom, “The Tra n s h u m a n i s m FAQ,” #1.1.
12. World Transhumanism Association, “The Transhumanist Declaration,” http://transhumanism.org/.
13. http://transcendentman.com/
Science Friction: Hybrid Embryos stir Controversy
From Koinonia House Archives May 2008
SCIENCE FRICTION: HYBRID EMBRYOS STIR CONTROVERSY -
Rapid advances in the field of biology have prompted lawmakers to consider creating guidelines to regulate experiments involving animal-human hybrids. As politicians debate the ethical and moral issues, scientists continue to explore uncharted territory, with each step forward prompting the question: how far is too far?Animal-human hybrids were once purely the stuff of science fiction, however fiction has become reality. Scientists have created sheep that possess human hearts and livers, pigs that have been born with human blood, and a variety of other creatures whose genetic makeup has been tampered with. Biologists call these hybrid animals chimeras. They are named after a mythical Greek creature that was said to possess a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail.
In recent years cross-species experimentation has become more widespread. Scientists at Newcastle University recently created Britain’s first ever human-animal hybrid embryos. Researchers inserted human DNA from a skin cell into cow eggs from which the genetic information had been removed. The human-cow hybrid embryos will be used for stem cell research.
The Yuck Factor
The frightening reality is that there are not currently any federal guidelines to regulate chimeric experiments. Researchers have been left alone to regulate themselves, but there seems to be no consensus within the scientific community over what is and is not considered ethical.
Moral objections to chimeric research are often dismissed by proponents as simply knee-jerk reactions based on instinctual, rather than logical, thinking. These misgivings are sometime referred to by scientists as the “yuck factor.” Unfortunately, many researchers describe the “yuck factor” as though it were an obstacle to scientific discovery, instead of evidence of a troubled conscience.
Exploring these new frontiers of science and medicine without the guidance of a strong moral compass will lead us into an ethical quagmire with dangerous repercussions. Without some kind of clear guidelines, we risk adopting a form of logic that would leave us tempted, not only to ponder, but also to do the unthinkable.
We are embarking upon an enterprise unlike anything undertaken before. The avalanche of advances in the current biotech revolution is both exciting and frightening. The promise of new remedies and cures in many diverse fields of medicine has given new hope to those who suffer from diseases like diabetes and Parkinson’s. Meanwhile science continues to outrun lawmakers. The biotech revolution has produced a host of ethical questions that have yet to be answered. These questions strike at the very heart of what it means to be human. To learn more about this topic, click on the links below.
Related Links:
• First British Human-Animal Hybrid Embryos Created – Guardian
• Bill to Ban Human-Animal Hybrids Introduced in Congress – Life Site
• Genetically Modified Human Embryo Stirs Criticism – AP
• Strategic Trends: Biotech – Koinonia House
• BioTech: The Sorcerer’s New Apprentice? – MP3 Download
- From: Koinonia House News Letter
