As a science fiction fan and general nerd, I’ve always been fascinated by cyborgs. The idea of integrating technology into the body either to lessen the impact of some disability or even for outright performance improvement is pretty exciting but it also raises a lot of practical and ethical questions.
At the end of August, it was announced that South African ‘blade runner’ Oscar Pistorius would be allowed to compete against able-bodied athletes in the World Championships in South Korea. He ran the 400m and the 4x400m relay – in the latter contributing to his team’s silver medal, though Pistorius himself only ran in the heats and not the final. Previously, it had been suggested that Pistorius’s Cheetah Flex-Foot carbon fibre ‘blades’ offered him an advantage over other athletes. On appeal, however, it was demonstrated that in the blocks and on corners they are limited in ways that human legs are not, so no overall advantage can be proven.
Despite the ruling decision, this is far from a clear-cut case. There is no easy way to isolate the impact of his blades as distinct from his natural running ability, training and all the other factors involved. Unlike non-integrated technology such as new trainers or running kit, there’s no way to test Pistorius with and without his blades to ensure fairness.
Last week, the debate was furthered by Australian university professor, Dr Ian Yeoman, who predicts wide-scale use of highly advanced nanobots injected into the bloodstream to expedite the body’s natural processes of extracting waste and looking after important cells. By 2051, he believes, we will be watching such cyborgs play a rugby world cup… but then he is trying to sell a book.
It is hard to believe that even the introduction of cyborgs could make rugby interesting. But seriously, aside from questions of fairness – we must assume that all athletes competing are permitted to use the same performance-enhancing technologies – other ethical questions arise. Should we really be messing with the human body like this? If not, why not? Do we run the risk of encouraging or even forcing promising athletes to become cyborgs if they are to compete at the top level? For now, the questions relate to the realm of science fiction, but perhaps this won’t be the case for long.
Even if we decide that yes, we can create cyborgs to improve the performance of the human body, can we do the same thing to other creatures? Recent reports into micro-air vehicles (MAVs) that could be used for surveillance, for example, have suggested that scientists are moving away from building tiny insect-like creatures to modifying actual insects. Advances such as harnessing the insects’ movement to generate enough energy to keep the technology up and running, or using advanced neural technology to control where the insect flies, have proven cheaper and easier than constructing a replica with its own power source and control mechanism.
This is undeniably incredible technology and a big step for science but does anyone feel sorry for the insects? There might be some who feel a bit squeamish about sticking technology onto (or into) an unwitting bug and using it for their own ends. If not then how about if it was a cat or a dog instead? For some reason, that seems more ethically problematic.
Another recent cyborg story has resulted from the promotion of a new video game entitled Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The game’s creators commissioned a documentary around cyborg technology, filmed in part by self-proclaimed ‘Eyeborg’ Rob Spence, a man with a camera for an eye. Having lost his eye as a young man, Spence and his engineer partner Kosta Grammatis, have spent years crafting a camera and transmitter that could be controlled by Spence just as he would normally control his eye.
The results are truly amazing and a first for cyborg technology. Granted, it’s a fairly useless development in health terms – the camera transmits to a separate recording device and not to Spence’s brain, so it can’t restore sight to people who have lost both eyes. There is potential for government, military and commercial application, however, outside of Spence’s recreational use – 2051 could also bring us police officers, spies, soldiers and shopkeepers with inbuilt recording equipment. More useful cyborg implants have resulted from a silicon ship implant experiment at the University of Reading.
It’s clear that cyborg technology is benefitting from investments in nanotechnology and advancing at an incredible rate. What is less clear is how, as a society, we resolve some of the issues it throws up. As a marketing or PR person, these issues can be career-defining – occasionally pitching personal ethics against professional interest.
What do you think about integrating technology into human and animal bodies? Is there anything you would have done to ‘improve’ yourself?
Christian Barnard the surgeon who first transplanted a heart was publicly harangued as a heretic. People took deep moral exception to the first kidney transplants. However these objections evaporated pretty quickly once the utility of these procedures became clear. Nowadays bioengineering and even xeno-transplantation barely raise an eyebrow. Arguably surgical implantation is no longer an ethical tipping point. And there’s a powerful case that smart phones, though ex corpus, have already made cyborgs of us all. Not with a bang, but with a whimper …
I have recently read about an interesting development which helps people who are paralysed below the waist to stand, walk and even climb stairs. It’s similar to a suit you can put on therefore it’s probably less controversial than anything that requires surgery.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/08/25/us-technology-paralysis-idUSLP27939120080825?feedType=RSS&feedName=scienceNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FscienceNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Science%29
I suspect growth in cybernetic integration/will be inevitable and exponential because even outside if the evidently hyper competitive areas of sport and defence there is the human desire to gain the competitive edge.
What will be of interest is the popularity of visible augmentations and the impact of these choices on individuals inclined to more extreme body dysmorphia.