From: Philos Anthropy (anthropy@inwave.com)
Date: Mon Feb 23 1998 - 06:50:39 MST
As you said body cloning especially body transplantation as performed by
neurosurgeon Robert White, MD, Ph.D. (CWRU) [See
http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/9356/Webbio1.htm] is *VERY* likely
to be banned. As proposed by Paul Segall, Ph.D., one could generate
anencephalic clones that are "brain dead" due to telencephalon removal at 6
weeks gestation. (If abortion is legal, why shouldn't this be as well?) The
benefit of the Atlantis Project (See http://oceania.org/)
and maybe the Millennial Project (See http://www.millennial.org/ ) is a
separate nation-state or - city state like Singapore - is the libertarian
foundation that would be built into the Constitution of such a venture. Of
course, it is more practical to just go to a tropical/Carribean island that
wants American dollars and doesn't care where they come from for now but in
the long term a floating artificial city would be a great testament to human
ingenuity and achievement, a showcase of transhumanist ability to create and
posthumanist culture as well.
Damien R. Sullivan wrote:
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>
> On Feb 21, 9:38pm, Michael Lee Bowling wrote:
>
> > What we probably will need is a safe haven where we can perform
> > physical/mental enhancements etc. without state interference. How about
> > just a large biomedical facility dedicated to transhuman augmentations?
>
> What's the evidence that enhancements are likely to be suppressed? Many
> people seem to assume that anything useful but weird will be attacked
> and banned. They're probably right on the attack, but banned?
> Possibly, but can it be said to be certain.
>
> What enhancements are banned now? A problem seems to be that there
> aren't all that many genuine enhancements. There are a bunch of drugs
> which make the user happy; while I don't agree with the war on drugs,
> and want to see legalization, most of them are in fact addictive, AFAIK.
> The most useful seem to be caffeine, which is legal, and marijuana,
> which causes frothing insanity in prohibitionists. I posit that if MJ
> was legal now it would remain so, and that the pressure on it comes from
> it having become illegal in the past and a perception that if it is
> rescured other drugs might be as well. "No surrender, no retreat." How
> practically useful MJ is to people not suffering certain types of severe
> pain is scientifically unclear at the moment.
>
> The usefulness and dangers of LSD and peyote I'm not sure about.
> Certainly they don't seem useful in a normal economic sense. Even if
> they're safe, possibly the war on drugs is, as above, as much about
> protecting a current fief as about a generic desire to ban odd things.
>
> In vitro fertilization and surrogate pregnancy caused great horror and
> religious outcry, but are useful and legal. I suspect genetic testing
> will not be touched. Gene research has trouble in Germany but they live
> under the Nazi shadow. (An argument against Euro-unification, similar to
> Diamond's thesis of why Europe eventually surpassed China: multiple
> countries make it harder to stupidly ban something.) Genetic engineering
> may go under the ban, but at the moment I think any attempts to modify a
> human embryo would involve a good deal of risk to the resulting human;
> our knowledge is not that great. Whether parents should have the right
> to take such risks with their children is debatable. The growth of full
> clones seems likely to be made illegal, which I can't justify with any
> sophisty I take seriously; on the other hand, I can't get that excited
> over it either. The technical cloning of growing cell lines or new
> organs from an adult, which would be very useful, seems to have a fair
> chance of surviving, if it ever actually happens.
>
> Steroids are clearly useful and clearly risky, AFAIK. Their prohibition
> in sports is just part of the rules of the game. Their general
> prohibition is part of state maternalism; again, I don't like it, but
> they do have a point, and I'm not dying to take the things. My point,
> if it isn't clear by now, is that I see no reason to assume that
> economically useful and fairly safe enhancements will be banned.
> It violates sense, and has little precedent. New but useful
> technologies have survived; banned things are in the large genuinely
> dangerous, for all that I feel individuals should be allowed to take
> their own risks.
>
> Refutation?
>
> [AFAIK: As far as I know]
>
> -xx- ROU Bibliovore X-)
>
> "Undoutedly there is meanness in all the arts which ladies condescend to
> employ for captivation..."
> Miss Bingley was not so satisfied with this reply as to continue the
> subject.
> -- Jane Austen, _Pride and Prejudice_, Mr. Darcy
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