brain repair and the near future of death

1 11/2/2005 Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies

Brain Repair and the Near Future of Death

James J. Hughes Ph.D.Author Citizen Cyborg

Executive Director, World Transhumanist Association & Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies

Public Policy Studies, Trinity College, Hartford CT


Biopolitical Struggle

Radical life extension not just scientific progress

Also requires legal and cultural evolution

From bioconservatism to transhumanism

Human-racism vs. personhood

Who is a citizen with a right to life?: abortion, stem cells, great ape rights, chimeras, brain death

Brain Repair will be central


Biopolitical Values

Transhumanism Bioconservatism

Personhood Human-Racism (Deep Ecology)

Humanism, reason, individual liberty

Sacred taboos, “the natural”, yuck factor

Risks are manageable

Tech must be banned


From Human-racism…

Human-racism: Human embodiment is the basis of rights-bearing

Humans have souls or crypto-spiritual “human dignity”

Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (UN General Assembly, 1998) “The human genome underlies the fundamental unity of all

members of the human family, as well as the recognition of their inherent dignity and diversity.”

Annas/Andrews Treaty: human enhancement should be “a crime against humanity”

Embryonic citizens?


…to Personhood

Is hairlessness one of the genes necessary for citizenship?

Persons: “conscious beings, aware of themselves, with intents and purposes over time”

You can be human and not persons: fetus, PVS, braindead

You can be a person and not human: great apes, AI, posthumans

Legal personhood confers the “right to life” and personal continuity


Continuity of Personal Identity

Human-racism: identity = body

H+: identity = memory, personality

Thought Experiments Scoop out my dead brain and keep me on

life support

Scoop out my dead brain and replace it with someone else’s

Scoop out my dead brain, and grow a new one

Who would I be legally?


Alcor’s Definition of Death

Death: irreversible loss of the structural information which encodes memory and personality

Alcor Cryonics: Reaching for Tomorrow


Schiavo and Religious Right

Christian Right mobilizingAbortionAssisted dyingStem cellsSchiavo, living wills, PVSArtificial reproductionPope Benedict


New BioConservative Alliances

Religious Right

CS Lewis The Abolition of Man

Neoconservatives

Fukuyama Our Posthuman Future

Deep Ecologists, Romantic Luddites

Aldous Huxley Brave New World

Left-wing/Feminist Critics of Biotech Jeremy Rifkin Algeny

Gena Corea The Mother Machine

Pro-Disability Extremists Not Dead Yet


Trans-humanism (H+)

18th century rationalism and skepticism

Dignity and worth of humanity

Liberty, equality, democracy

Our capacity for self-realizationthrough reason, without supernatural assistance

Transhumanists are humanists who emphasize what we have the potential to become through reason.


H+ = Radical Human Rights

Liberal democracy = personhood not race, gender or species as base of citizenship

Citizens have right to self-ownership, self-determination: Control own bodies & brains

John Locke

1632-1704


Secular Bioethicists Moving To H+

Greg Pence, author Who is a

Afraid of Human Cloning?

Greg Stock, author of

Redesigning Humans

Religious Right (Schiavo) and Kassites polarizing, scaring bioethicists

Forced to defend autonomy & technology against religious thuggery and nonsense yuck factor arguments

Arthur Caplan: “…enhancing intelligence or changing personality or modifying our memory, maybe that should be available to everyone as a guarantee of equal opportunity.”


Tech Spurs Ethical Change

Technology Ethical Challenge

NICU/Artificial Womb Status of embryos, fetuses

Brain repair Status of brain damaged

Humanzees “Animal” personhood

Genetic enhancement Status of post-humans


Recent History of Death

1960s: respirators, organ transplantation

1968: Beecher paper in JAMA arguing for whole brain death definition

1981: President’s Commission drafts uniform model (whole brain) death law

Today: brain death the law in most states, most countries


Unstable Compromise

1970s and 1980s debate: Heart death vs. Whole brain vs. neocortical/personhood

death

Whole brain death a compromise because The whole brain dead would die in daysDeclaring the vegetative “dead”

politically impossible


Whole Brain Death Unravels

Diagnostic procedures inconsistent, incoherent

Electrical activity persists in most “brain dead”

Shewmon 1999: Whole brain death is “survivable” indefinitely

Maintaining Schiavos indefinitely untenable


Just Forget “Death”?

Fost, Youngner, et al.: forget “death” - when do we turn off respirator and take organs

Emanuel: choice in the dying zone between PVS and heart death: Self/family can choose euthanasia

after permanent unconsciousness

no cremation/burial until heart death

after heart death treatment must stop


Tech challenges permanence

The pronouncement of death is thus an arbitrary (if admittedly very practical) medical and legal construct, which amounts to a statement saying in effect: ‘Your affliction has exceeded our current level of medical skill and we are currently powerless to restore you to function; therefore we give up.



Emerging Brain Repair Tech

Tech that will be applied to brain repair Neuro-protective drugs Neuro-genesis drugs Neurogenic gene therapies Stem cells and

tissue engineering Neural stimulation Neural prostheses Nano-neural-bots

The accelerating convergence of all these


NBIC: Nanowiring the Brain

“Neuro-vascular central nervous recording/stimulating system: Using nanotechnology probes,” Rodolfo R. Llinás, Kerry D. Walton, Masayuki Nakao, et al.


DNR, NBHD & the Probably Dead

Do not resuscitate (DNR) orders

Potentially revivable, but allowed to remain dead in order to facilitate a dignified death

Non-Heart Beating Donor Protocol

Being declared dead depends not only on how unlikely it is you can be revived,

But also on people not wanting to bring you back

PVS is probabilistic diagnosis


Brain Damaged/Dead as Missing Person

Missing personsPotentially alive,

but legally dead timeevidence

If they reappearReimbursing those wrongly declared dead

preferred to leaving affairs in limbo


Search Parties for the Missing

If advance directives and prognosis permit, declaration of death will wait for trial of brain repair

Otherwise, they will be declared dead.

But what if brain repair recovers 20%?10% 1%

For biocons, success

For H+ers, failure


Testing for Continuity

Below threshold, different person

Advance directive could give body to future person

Advance directives and squatter’s rights


Information Loss

How much info can be lost before we, and the law, consider the reconstituted mind a new person?

Alcor on Information Loss

...even if today's patients do make it there, it is possible (and with sub-optimal suspension even likely) that they will wake with varying degrees of amnesia. In particularly bad cases, cell and tissue repair technology might only result in revival of a biological twin of the suspended patient.



HETHR Conference

Human Enhancement Technologies and Human RightsMay 26-28, 2006Stanford University Law School Rights of transhuman persons

uploads, cyborgs Rights to transhuman technology

Life extension


For more information on H+

World Transhumanist Associationtranshumanism.org

Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologiesieet.org

Betterhumans.com(online magazine & daily news feed)

Me: [email protected]

brain repair and the near future of death

Documents

humanracism humanracism

human genome

human embodimentis

human enhancement

human family

transhumanism humanracism

afraid of human cloning

dead brain