7. In Hacks We Trust? The Political and Religious Backlash Against the Future

Your baby has a debilitating genetic disorder that runs in your family. She will be born horribly impaired and will likely die in the first weeks of her life. Her doctors have detected it early, in utero. However, there might have been a technology available that could have corrected the issue. But your elected officials—supported by morally opposed religious clerics—took legislative steps that hamstrung the scientific process by making it illegal to pursue the research. It’s possible overseas, where there is no preventative legislation, but not at your local hospital.

Robotic technologies are poised to make all cars and trucks driverless. It eliminates once and for all drinking and driving accidents, reducing the number of alcohol-related deaths by more than 10,000 each year in the United States (2013 statistics). It could also eliminate more than $6 billion in speeding ticket revenue for local governments in the United States (data reported by StatisticsBrain.com for 2014). However, the local politicians, police unions and taxi and truck driver unions oppose the legislation that will allow the vehicles. Why? Millions of jobs lost and higher municipal taxes.

Where do you go to church, temple or mosque next week? Who do you vote for in the next election?

What about nanobots in your blood stream cleaning up your arteries? How about lab-grown organs that make transplants easy and major illness survivable? What if these things—as well as living forever thanks to new longevity technologies—were made illegal?

New technologies accelerating us into the future and letting us become the ultimate version of the Super You we’ve always wanted to be will likely be thwarted not by the limit of physics or chemistry or the nature of the universe, but by the moral majority, religious beliefs and political filibustering.

There’s a pretty big chance that it’s people—your family, your friends, your neighbors, your political representatives and your spiritual advisors—who want to prevent you from being so damned awesome.

Now let’s pause to include a little caveat. If you have detected that your authors are more pro-science than pro-religion, you’d be right—but we also are fair-minded people. We certainly respect the views of others, and enjoy a good friendly debate on these issues. There is certainly room for science and faith to coexist. No one camp has all the answers to the questions we are dealing with today on revolutionizing what it is to be human. We also believe that a little governmental regulation also is somewhat necessary for a society that works. It’s a matter of finding the balance, in a respectful way.

History is full of examples of scientific progress being thwarted by the powers-that-be, whether religious, political, societal or a combination of all three.

Once upon a time, the scientist Galileo Galilei spent a lot of time looking into the sky, and through meticulous observation confirmed Copernicus’s theory that—contrary to the prevailing wisdom of the time—the Earth actually revolved around the sun, not vice versa. This very much annoyed the Catholic Church, which held that the Earth was the center of the universe and everything else revolved around it. For his troubles, Galileo was put on trial and subsequently confined to his house for the rest of his life. The condemnation forced the famed astronomer and physicist to recant his discoveries as “abjured, cursed and detested.” This caused him enormous personal anguish; however, it saved him from being burned at the stake. Galileo died under house arrest at the age of 77.

If you don’t remember the big controversy it’s probably because it happened well before you were born, way back in 1633. (This disclaimer might not apply to those of you who are vampires or very large trees.)

The Church didn’t accept heliocentrism as fact until 1820 and didn’t acknowledge having treated Galileo poorly until Pope John Paul II apologized in 1992 and said the scientist was imprudently opposed.

Still, Galileo got off easy compared to Giordano Bruno, who was persecuted for such outlandish discoveries that the Earth spins around the sun, that there were multiple worlds and the fact that stars and planets were not actually fixed in the sky but moved through the ether. It was scandalous! In the year 1600, Bruno got burned at the stake for these views (among others with a similar heretical bent). Worse, he never received a proper posthumous apology from the Catholic Church for treating him like a campfire marshmallow. In the ninth century, some reports claim that Baghdadi medical expert Razi wrote an extremely large medical text that irritated a Muslim priest so thoroughly the priest beat him violently on the head—with Razi’s own book—causing Razi to go blind.

You’d think things might have improved by now, but some days it seems that the only difference is that people are getting beaten over the head with words instead of the large books that contain them. On the plus side, it’s probably easier to avoid being beaten into blindness.

Prefer an example with a Slavic twist? A whole generation of Russian scientists was subject to a doctrine that came to be known as Lysenkoism. That name came from Trofim Lysenko, who rose to a position in the agricultural department of Joseph Stalin’s government. During his time in government, Lysenko worked to suppress generally accepted information on plant genetics. Lysenko’s own dubious (and often falsified) theories were pushed, counter-evidence was destroyed, and scientists who didn’t toe the party line were persecuted, sent to labor camps or even executed. This lasted from the 1930s up until 1960.

Over the last century in the United States, persecution of science has been a little less bloodthirsty. But that’s not to say there hasn’t been any pushback for theories that didn’t suit the needs of the parties in power.

In a move that would have confounded the GOP of today, Republican President Richard Nixon founded the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970. Since then, the EPA has remained a target of scorn for business bigwigs, climate change deniers, and many Republican politicians who often came from one (or both) of the other two camps. According to NASA scientist James E. Hansen, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB)—working for Republican President George H. W. Bush—had Hansen’s Senate subcommittee testimony on humanity’s influence on climate change altered to include text that, he claims, negated the entire point of what he was trying to say. As he said to The New York Times, “It distresses me that they put words in my mouth. I should be allowed to say what is my scientific position; there is no rationale by which OMB should be censoring scientific opinion. I can understand changing policy, but not science.”

Hansen makes an excellent point. Most people are willing to accept that it’s possible for intelligent people to disagree in their positions, so long as they are willing to admit to the facts in front of their eyes. Otherwise, you haven’t learned the lesson of the clerics who condemned Galileo. And if you’re in a position of power, that can hurt everyone.

“The bad news: People also want to kill your dreams right here in the future.”

The bad news: People also want to kill your dreams right here in the future. Or, at the very least, they’d like to block them for awhile because they are contrary to personal agendas of people in power or long-held doctrine of powerful interest groups. Need some examples? We happen to have a few.

• Maybe it’s the George W. Bush administration’s attempts to derail stem cell research.

• Perhaps it’s (former) Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s campaign of muzzling scientists whose research disagrees with the official Canadian Conservative Party platform.

• Maybe it’s privacy advocates who worry that technology can be used to remove personal freedoms.

• It could be one of the world’s religions, working either through its own ministries or through one of the political parties, that adhere to its dogma.

Whichever combination it is, it’s clear that when science leads the way to the potential of a Utopian future, some people feel the need to act as roadblocks causing bureaucratic, legal and dogmatic obstacles to your right to a Super You.

Let’s take a look at some of the specifics.

On the surface, your choice to get a tattoo might seem to be strictly a cosmetic or lifestyle issue, but consider this: Several years ago, cell phone maker Nokia (whose mobile division is now owned by Microsoft) came up with technology that allowed a tattoo to vibrate when a nearby smartphone rang. More recently, Motorola has developed a throat tattoo that can connect via near-field communication with a phone, wearable computer or tablet.

It’s easy to imagine this could lead to tiny implants linked to create a complete functioning smart device ... all in the shape of, say, the Metallica logo, if you’re so inclined. If you were to add a few little scarification-style ridges with antennae embedded so you can connect wirelessly to the Internet, and then you have something that will potentially put you on the watch list of various haughty religious or political organizations.

Curiously, and perhaps thankfully, the major American political parties don’t really have much to say about these issues, to be honest. While you can bet your bippy that a lot of individual politicians don’t really care for folks with tattoos and self-administered scars, the official party lines don’t forbid it.

In fact, in 2014, Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul went so far as to say, “We need a party that looks like America. We need a more diverse party. People with tattoos, and without tattoos. With earrings, and without earrings.”

Granted, Rand Paul leans more toward the Republican Party’s libertarian side, which tends to believe in the supremacy of individual choice. Still, there are plenty of people out there with tattoos of Ronald Reagan, or of the Republican elephant. And there’s even one intellectually challenged individual who had Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign logo permanently inked onto his temple. Try explaining that one to your McDonald’s crew chief.

The Democratic side is no brighter. There are Democrats who have inked their arms with the Democratic donkey, Obama’s O logo, and one guy who permanently inked Jimmy Carter’s face onto his butt cheek. (Maybe that guy was not a supporter, come to think of it.)

The major political parties don’t really have a stake in this. The scriptures (for whichever religion you choose) are generally a bit less tolerant, and there’s probably a good reason for that. Body-modification techniques such as scarring and tattoos have a long history in tribal societies, as part of rituals and to mark achievements and milestones. Because these societies have been (in many cases improperly) regarded as uncivilized, it’s always been in the interest of the new, modern, super-shiny religions to avoid such barbaric rituals. The specifics, however, vary by religious affiliation.

On the other hand, it’s worth mentioning that this is just after He’s just dropped this one on our man Moses in Leviticus 19:27: “Ye shalt not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.” In other words, don’t cut your hair or trim your beard. Barbers be damned!

While that no-trim proclamation tends not to be strictly adhered to (apart from the Orthodox Jews), tattooing and scarification still tend to be looked down upon. Indeed, there has been much talk about the inability of Jews with tattoos (now there’s a band name for ya) to be interred in a Jewish cemetery, including a famous comedy bit in which Lenny Bruce riffs on how he came home from the Navy and his mother screamed about his arm tattoo worrying that he would never be able to be buried with his own kind. “OK. Maybe I will be buried in a Jewish cemetery. They can bury my arm in a Catholic cemetery,” he riffed.

Like so many things, however, that particular nugget is urban legend rather than an official position of Judaism.

Of course, there’s always room for disagreement, and naturally there’s some divergence here, in this case around the interpretation of Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh De’ah 180:2), “If it [the tattoo] was done in the flesh of another, the one to whom it was done is blameless.”

Some have interpreted this to mean that tattoos are only forbidden when self-administered, and that sitting in a chair while someone else wields the tattoo gun is generally quite godly. But Orthodox Jews think that that’s just taking advantage of a ruling that’s meant to provide forgiveness for those who have had tattoos forcibly applied, such as survivors of the Holocaust. In other words, it would be like saying it wasn’t your fault you got drunk, as long as someone else poured your favorite beer into your mouth.

On the other hand, male circumcision is not only acceptable by those of the Jewish faith, but it’s considered de rigeur, not only for cleanliness but to symbolize God’s covenant with mankind (Genesis 18:14). As part of the Abrahamic tradition, this exception has also become prominent in both Christianity and Islam, though it generally remains optional—and is elective by parents of boy children. The babies, of course, don’t get a vote.

It’s when we get into later books of the Old Testament—ones that fall outside of the scope of the Torah—that we get a few hints as to why some of these restrictions are in place. In 1.Kings 18:28, for example, we learn one rationale for the prohibition on cutting is to distinguish the individual from the follower of a forbidden religious group, such as the prophets of Baal: “And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.” In other words, we’re not savages and pagans like those bozos.

On the issue of tattoos, however, there’s slightly more confusion elsewhere in the Bible. For example, in Isaiah 49:16 we read “Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands,” which could literally be interpreted as having tattooed God’s name straight onto the hands. Or it could be a metaphor. Biblical interpretation is a slippery business.

The New Testament is a bit less rigid when it comes to issues of body modification. One of the oft-quoted sections of the Bible comes in 1. Corinthians 6:19–20: “What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.”

In other words, rather than tattoos and scars being considered mortal sins, humankind is asked to consider the reasons for making these modifications. Getting a tattoo because you want it? That’s not gonna buy you a ticket to Hell by itself. Getting a tattoo because you’re trying to annoy your parents? Maybe it’s time to don some asbestos underwear because the Hell Express is on the way and you’ve got a first class ticket (thanks to the Fifth Commandment, which requires children to honor their parents).

But not so fast. While this might seem pretty straightforward, there is some debate as to whether tattoos are halal (permissible) or haram (forbidden), and some of the debate comes down to ... water. While hardliners might not bend on tattoos (being a modification of God’s creation), others think it’s allowed because tattoo ink is subdermal (ink is injected under the skin) and thus there is nothing coming between water and a person’s skin, meaning proper cleansing is possible. Ergo, the tattoo is not a problem. It would appear that Shia Muslims generally seem to lean more toward allowing tattoos, while Sunni Muslims seem to lean more toward forbidding them.

As for circumcision, while Islam is part of the Abrahamic tradition, it is not considered mandatory. And while female circumcision tends to be more associated with Islam than other religions, it’s also not considered mandatory.

In fact, there’s quite a long history of Hinduism not only allowing tattoos, but in some cases actively encouraging them. While the red dot many Hindu women place on their forehead (known as the bindi) is often applied using a temporary powder, other women have had it tattooed on permanently. Hindu women have also been known to tattoo other dots around the eyes both for cosmetic reasons and as a method to “ward off evil.”

It’s not just women, however. Both men and women have long gotten “Aum” tattoos on their arms, again to ward off evil. And piercings, such as nose rings, are commonplace.

In short, Rand Paul’s statements should draw Hindus to the Republican Party.

As for body modification, India leads the way in skin whitening, with the country’s residents purchasing a stunning 258 tons of bleaching cream in 2012 alone. But this is, perhaps, unsurprising in a country haunted by a caste system where lighter-colored skin suggests power.

Ultimately, while Mendel’s research was largely ignored when released in 1865, his conceptualization of “discrete inheritable traits” became the basis of genetic study in the early 1900s. When you consider how much religious handwringing about genetics has arisen since then, Mendel’s calling as a friar seems somewhat ironic.

Although it took until 1953 for James Watson and Francis Crick to discover the structure of DNA—which contains the specific information necessary to determine traits of an individual—the idea of manipulating those specific traits entered the public consciousness well before then. In fact, in the 1931 novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley described a world where all reproduction took place outside the human body and babies were engineered to produce humans with specific traits and capabilities.

While Brave New World’s vision of engineering of the characteristics of all babies was perceived as a dystopian vision of the future, people have seemed more receptive to the idea of engineering their babies on a case-by-case basis: It’s a much different situation if you’re determining your own baby’s future than if the state is doing it for everyone, after all.

The arrival of CRISPR-Cas9 technology, which allows the editing of DNA—and the potential for potential parents to “edit” the DNA of their unborn children—is causing ripples of discontent. The concerns are not just about potentially breeding a generation of genetic monsters. There are concerns that only people who can afford the technology will have access to it.

The potential upside is massive. It offers the promise of erasing devastating hereditary diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s from the family tree. If only the wealthy can afford the procedures, the fear is it will create a two-tiered society of the healthy rich and the sickly poor. When you add in the possibility of enhancing traits such as intelligence or height, you further run the risk of disadvantaging the offspring of those without financial means.

There are many books, video games, and movies that talk about the problems with genetic engineering causing inadvertent stratification of society, including Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312, the BioShock video game series, and the 1997 movie Gattaca.

Critics of genetic engineering claim there’s no need to edit DNA because screening during the in vitro fertilization (IVF) process can accomplish many of the same results for the gene pool, and at much lower costs.

In an article for MIT Technology Review, Sangamo Biosciences CEO Edward Lanphier argued, “People say, well, we don’t want children born with this, or born with that—but it’s a completely false argument and a slippery slope toward much more unacceptable uses.”

Zoltan Istvan, the 2016 United States presidential candidate from the Transhumanist Party, disagrees: “Critics—many of them fundamentally religious—worry that genetic engineering will create a race of non-human beings who resemble monsters. Their fears are overblown and tied more to Hollywood horror movies than actual science. The far greater likelihood is that genetic engineering will create a populace free of diseases and ailments that have plagued humanity for tens of thousands of years. In fact, genetic engineering could change the very nature of healthcare.”

Nonetheless, in an editorial in Nature magazine, Lanphier has joined colleagues in calling for restrictions on editing the human germ-line, noting that there’s a difference between genetically engineering a noninheritable change for therapeutic purposes and genetically engineering a baby with changes that will be passed down to its future offspring as well.

“In our view, genome editing in human embryos using current technologies could have unpredictable effects on future generations,” Lanphier said. “This makes it dangerous and ethically unacceptable. Such research could be exploited for non-therapeutic modifications. We are concerned that a public outcry about such an ethical breach could hinder a promising area of therapeutic development, namely making genetic changes that cannot be inherited.”

It’s worth considering that the success rate of genetic engineering is still low—MIT researcher Guipong Feng has pegged genetic engineering tool CRISPR’s (clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats) success rate in deleting/disabling a gene in a zygote (the single-cell union of sperm and egg) at about 40 percent. We won’t have to worry about making these decisions about our offspring in the very near term, but given Kurzweil’s assertion that technology improvements are ever accelerating, chances are this will be an issue in the next decade, and certainly, we assert, by 2030.

That’s assuming, of course, it isn’t banned by legislation. As we write this, 15 of 22 European countries have already banned such human genetic modification, and while there’s been no decision in the United States yet, but that could change. Blocking genetic engineering through legislation would come with a hefty social and financial cost: A rise in medical tourism to other parts of the world.

“People are going to go overseas if they don’t allow it here,” stresses Istvan. “It’s just like we go overseas to have a kidney replaced because it’s so much cheaper, we are going to go overseas to have these babies done this way. And you can already see people talking about it. There is money going to be put into it.”

In Brave New World, Huxley imagined a cloning-like method he called Bokanovsky’s Process, which took a single fertilized egg and caused it to divide multiple times into dozens of identical embryos. In 1996, however, the birth of Dolly the sheep proved the process could start with DNA from another living being, not just a traditional egg/sperm pairing.

While the capability to clone genetic material opens up the possibility of creating gene-based therapies to halt or eliminate debilitating disease, it also opens up the fear of the unethical use of such genetic material by unscrupulous researchers or governments. That’s a theme explored extensively in the television show Orphan Black. The show has also examined the ethics of cloning, unforeseen health problems, religious persecution, and issues of personal identity.

In the United States, politicians on both sides of the aisle share concerns about the future of cloning. According to the 2012 Republican Party platform, “We urge a ban on human cloning and on the creation of or experimentation on human embryos.”

In a 2009 address, President Barack Obama claimed, “... we will ensure that our government never opens the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction. It is dangerous, profoundly wrong, and has no place in our society, or any society.”

The United States House of Representatives has faced legislation aimed at banning human cloning at least four times, but at this point, no legislation has cleared both the House and Senate. Most of these bills have been voted down or, as the saying goes, died in committee.

That said, while there have been no bills passed at the federal level to forbid cloning, 15 states have passed laws on the issue, with some banning reproductive cloning outright, and two forbidding the use of public funds for cloning research. Just under half of these states also prohibit cloning for therapeutic reasons.

As you’d expect, the take on cloning from the major world religions is mixed:

• Christianity—The Roman Catholics are firmly against it. “Halting the human cloning project is a moral duty which must also be translated into cultural, social and legislative terms,” notes a 1997 report from the Vatican. “In human cloning the necessary condition for any society begins to collapse: that of treating man always and everywhere as an end, as a value, and never as a mere means or simple object.” Protestants, on the other hand, have been known to encourage the use of cloning for therapeutic purposes. In the 2008 Lutheran document Genetics and Faith: Power, Choice and Responsibility, the church’s take was to “encourage individuals, corporations, and institutions to set public policy that will [...] encourage stem cell research and, if necessary, therapeutic cloning.”

• Hinduism—In Hinduism, there are unofficial guidelines prohibiting the cloning of humans, however there are no laws on the books as of yet prohibiting the practice in India. In fact, India has been at the forefront of research in this area, with one group having cloned a bison and another group of researchers working at resurrecting the Asiatic cheetah, an extinct species.

• Islam—When it comes to Islam, it’s less clear. According to the Qu’ran, (Al-Zariat 51:49), all things must come in pairs, and because reproductive cloning is dependent simply on a single gender, it is not acceptable. On the other hand, cloning of single body parts for therapeutic purposes would arguably be considered acceptable.

• Judaism—Judaism also considers cloning to be acceptable under the right circumstances as well. In the article “Cloning People and Jewish Law: A Preliminary Analysis,” Rabbi Michael J. Broyde says, “... it would appear that Jewish law accepts that having children through cloning is perhaps a mitzvah in a number of circumstances and is morally neutral in a number of other circumstances. Clones, of course, are full human, and are to be treated with the full dignity of any human being. Clones are not robots, slaves, or semi-humans, and any attempt to classify them as such must be vigorously combated.”

After the discovery of human embryonic stem cells in 1998, a debate started about what types of research the government should be allowed to fund. The Bill Clinton presidential administration ultimately decided that the best compromise was to only allow federal funding for research to be carried out using embryos discarded after in vitro fertilization treatments, but not for research on embryos created specifically for research purposes. But implementation got delayed until Clinton left office, leaving the issue to fall in the lap of the incoming administration of George W. Bush.

In July of 2001, Pope John Paul II weighed in on the matter: “Another area in which political and moral choices have the gravest consequences for the future of civilization concerns the most fundamental of human rights, the right to life itself. Experience is already showing how a tragic coarsening of consciences accompanies the assault on innocent human life in the womb, leading to accommodation and acquiescence in the face of other related evils such as euthanasia, infanticide and, most recently, proposals for the creation for research purposes of human embryos, destined to destruction in the process.”

Former President George W. Bush authorized funding for stem cell research, but only for stem cell lines that were already in existence, and not for any future potential sources.

While he originally claimed there were more than 60 stem cell lines available for research after this restriction was put into place, many of the lines being counted were actually considered to be dead ends, and unviable for research.

There was also a lack of diversity in the genetic material found in the existing embryos: All originated from parents who were seeking IVF procedures. That meant the embryos came from stock that had potential fertility issues, among other limitations.

While the Bush restriction effectively cut off the possibility of creation of embryos specifically for stem cell research, it meant that researchers weren’t allowed to avail themselves of embryos generated by in vitro fertilization procedures that were still being created—and still being discarded—effectively wasting any potential they might have had when no longer needed for IVF.

It also had the side effect of driving stem cell research abroad to countries without these restrictions in place.

“This was absolutely a tragedy for science,” said Zoltan Istvan, leader of the Transhumanist party. “Stem cells have proven and continue to prove everyday that they offer huge hope, and could be one of the biggest and most important medical projects in the 21st century for human beings. And to have it stopped in America, and to have some of our best scientists leave America because they weren’t able to get the funding was, like I said, a tragedy for transhumanism.”

Between 2004 and 2007, Congress passed several bills designed to expand the parameters for federal funding of stem cell research beyond the 2001 restrictions, but Bush vetoed all of them. This effectively limited researchers to use of the same limited run of stem cell lines being used since the restrictions were imposed, which researchers continued to argue was not varied enough.

When Barack Obama took office, he used Executive Order 13505: Removing Barriers to Responsible Scientific Research Involving Human Stem Cells, to lift the restrictions on federal funding of new stem cell lines, noting, “When government fails to make these investments, opportunities are missed.” That opened research up to an additional variety in stem cell lines, but again, only for embryos that were otherwise going to be discarded anyhow. On the other hand, the order continued to reinforce the ban on funding of any research using embryos created strictly for research.

The good news for stem cell research is that the United States Supreme Court has been reluctant to reopen the possibility of further restrictions on the use of embryonic stem cells. In 2013, opponents felt there was no need to continue using embryonic cells thanks to the discovery of (adult-derived) induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS).

Current research makes it possible to turn any of your own cells back to a cell that can be used anywhere. When this technology become possible, a cell from, say, the liver, could be altered and used as a brain cell by turning it back into a pluripotent stem cell. (To refresh your memory on this reference Chapter 2, “Baby Science: How to Conceive a Tennis Star and Other Procreative Miracles,” and Chapter 5, “The Human Computer: How to Rewire and Turbo-Boost Your Ape Brain,” where we talk about this process in detail.)

Today, it is possible to take any cell from a particular area of the body and convert it into a stem cell that can only be used from the part of the body where it was sourced.

The Supreme Court refused to hear a case that could have led to further restrictions of government funding of embryonic stem cell research. “We couldn’t be happier that this frivolous, but at the same time potentially devastating distraction is behind us,” noted Doug Melton, Harvard Stem Cell Institute’s codirector, “and we can once again focus all our attention on advancing all forms of stem cell science, including research using embryonic stem cells—which are the gold standard against which we measure other types.”

Even techniques that don’t utilize embryonic stem cells, such as nuclear transfer, have opened up a whole new can of worms, as the technique requires donated eggs, which again leads to worries about human cloning.

“We call for a ban on the use of body parts from aborted fetuses for research. We support and applaud adult stem cell research to develop lifesaving therapies, and we oppose the killing of embryos for their stem cells. We oppose federal funding of embryonic stem cell research [...] We call for expanded support for the stem-cell research that now offers the greatest hope for many afflictions—with adult stem cells, umbilical cord blood and cells reprogrammed into pluripotent stem cells—without the destruction of embryonic human life.”

It’s basically a revised stance held by George W. Bush, except for complete opposition to any federal funding and a seeming unwillingness to even make use of the embryonic stem cells already in the research pool. But at least there’s recognition that stem cell research has great promise in finding cures and/or therapeutic treatments for conditions such as Parkinson’s disease. Perhaps there’s a small victory there.

As this book goes to press, the 2016 election season is in full swing. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump isn’t quite sure what to make of the issue, claiming, “I’m studying it very closely [...] It’s an issue, don’t forget, that as a businessman I’ve never been involved in.” His closest competitor for the nomination, Ted Cruz, strongly opposes the use of embryonic stem cells in research.

It’ll be interesting to see what ends up being in the 2016 Republican Party platform.

Under the Democrats, decisions about funding of stem cell research and the addition of new stem cell lines has now fallen to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The organization works under the restrictions enacted in President Obama’s 2009 signing ceremony.

For the 2016 nomination race, there are a few small differences between the two frontrunners. Hillary Clinton has supported stem cell research, even promising to lift the ban on embryonic stem cell research. And while Democratic leadership contender Bernie Sanders has voiced general support for stem cell research (including embryonic), he’s also opposed the use of cloning, even for therapeutic reasons.

During a 2006 address, Pope Benedict XVI had this to say:

“Progress becomes true progress only if it serves the human person and if the human person grows: not only in terms of his or her technical power, but also in his or her moral awareness [...] In this light, somatic stem-cell research also deserves approval and encouragement when it felicitously combines scientific knowledge, the most advanced technology in the biological field and ethics that postulate respect for the human being at every stage of his or her existence.”

“The fact that you at this Congress have expressed your commitment and hope to achieve new therapeutic results from the use of cells of the adult body without recourse to the suppression of newly conceived human beings, and the fact that your work is being rewarded by results, are confirmation of the validity of the Church’s constant invitation to full respect for the human being from conception. The good of human beings should not only be sought in universally valid goals, but also in the methods used to achieve them.”

Pope Benedict later went on to write the introduction to a book on stem cell research, The Healing Cell: How the Greatest Revolution in Medical History Is Changing Your Life, coauthored by Dr. Robin Smith, Max Gomez and Monsignor Tomasz Trafny.

Among the Protestants, there seems to be a level of acceptance of these new technologies, at least from one camp.

In the 2008 document “Genetics and Faith: Power, Choice and Responsibility,” published by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the church said: “The truth is, though, that for better or worse, our society, indeed the human race, is going to be living in the age of genetics for good. We must take responsibility for this new living space because it’s not going away.”

Speaking about genetic manipulation and stem cell research more specifically, the document refers back to a 2004 ELCA Social Policy Resolution: “The human capacity for genetic manipulation should be understood, in principle, as one of God’s gifts in the created order to be pursued for the good of all. As with any such gift, it must be used responsibly and tested for its contribution to justice and stewardship.”

On the other hand, it’s still suggested that only embryos that would otherwise be discarded following IVF treatment be used. One bit of guidance that has been used as justification for allowing stem cell research comes from The Qur’an 5:32: “... if any saves a life it is as if he saves the lives of all mankind.”

“As long as it has not been implanted in the womb and it is still a frozen fertilized egg, it does not have the status of an embryo at all and there is no prohibition to destroy it ... it is preferable not to destroy the pre-embryo unless it will otherwise not be implanted in the woman who gave the eggs (either because there are many fertilized eggs, or because one of the parties refuses to go on with the procedure—the husband or wife—or for any other reason). Certainly it should not be implanted into another woman. ... The best and worthiest solution is to use it for life-saving purposes, such as for the treatment of people that suffered trauma to their nervous system, etc.”

“Many Hindus see the soul—the true Self (or atman)—as the spiritual and imperishable component of human personality,” wrote Pankaj Mishra in the New York Times. “After death destroys the body, the soul soon finds a new temporal home. Thus, for Hindus as much as for Catholics, life begins at conception.”

It’s worth noting that this core belief hasn’t prevented the Indian biotech industry from rocketing ahead with genetic research—especially benefiting from Bush’s funding restrictions in the United States. It’s worth saying, though, that India is not strictly a Hindu state; nearly 15 percent of the population identifies as Muslim. And of course, business rarely saddles up closely to every tenet of a dominant religion when there is money to be made. In the boardroom, beliefs can often be selectively ignored if they get in the way of profit.

“... business rarely saddles up closely to every tenet of a dominant religion when there is money to be made.”

It would be like asking a senior cleric at a church, mosque, or temple to comment on the Star Trek communicator and its impending impact on society in the 1960s (when the original show aired). The device was science fiction then and yet a half-century later, members of most congregations on the planet have a smartphone in their pocket. And the device does far more than the Star Trek communicator ever could and has had a further-reaching impact on culture and society than anyone could have ever imagined.

Istvan believes the pushback and the impending new technologies will soon come as the technologies find their way into our every day life. “I would not be surprised if over the next five to 10 years you see a huge shift of these religious people implementing laws that absolutely make a lot of this stuff illegal,” he says. “It’s because it’s the very first start of people saying ‘well, lets put a moratorium on something when we don’t understand it or it seems unethical’. But, what’s unethical is very much open to question. Obviously, making babies smarter or healthier or completely eradicating disease, these are great things, but a lot of Christians don’t look at it that way.”

In the meantime, we’re starting to see early reaction—and some opposition—coming from society and technology critics. While the technology industry often roars ahead with new technology simply because it can be done, some are starting to ask whether simply being able to do something is enough justification to do so, especially when there can be unintended consequences.

Writer Nicholas Carr has explored this topic for a number of years now. In his 2008 Atlantic Monthly article “Is Google Making us Stupid?” (and further in his book The Shallows), he argued that our recent habit of always turning to online sources for answers to our questions has impaired our ability to retain information in the long-term, or to engage with deeper, longer-form arguments at all.

More recently, in The Glass Cage, Carr worries that automation has been having much the same affect our ability to think and troubleshoot real world problems. “Automation complacency takes hold when a computer lulls us into a false sense of security. We become so confident the machine will work flawlessly, handling any challenge that might arise, that we allow our attention to drift.”

While the end result of that lack of focus could be as simple as trusting your phone’s autocorrect feature to the point of sending nonsensical (yet formally correct) messages, the stakes could be much higher as all these technologies converge.

Imagine, for example, following turn-by-turn directions beamed straight into your eye by something such as (the now defunct) Google Glass or more likely some future optical implant. Now imagine finding yourself walking straight into a location you shouldn’t actually be in, owing to faulty GPS location information, out-dated map data, or map data that’s been maliciously hacked. Who hasn’t already been advised to make an illegal U-turn by a GPS device?

The consequences of these seemingly innocent technology errors could range from simple disorientation to getting robbed—or worse killed. This gets worse if the error happens while you are at the helm of an airliner or space shuttle filled with hundreds of passengers.

In The Glass Cage, Carr relates the story of the ocean liner Royal Majesty which ran aground after the cable to the GPS unit came loose; despite many visual indications that the ship was off-course, the crew continued to trust the technology was correct.

Critics of many of these technologies designed to augment our capabilities, then, are concerned that improper implementation might ultimately have the opposite effect.

More problematic, at least in the short term, is the concern that these new robotics and automation technologies will threaten the average person’s ability to have a job and earn a living. While self-driving cars seem to offer many positive benefits, such as the elimination of fatalities caused by impairment or inexperience, extending the concept to self-driving transport trucks means a loss of jobs and income, at least until the truck drivers can retrain for another occupation.

But what if all jobs become automated to the point there’s less need for a human workforce? What if manual labor is replaced by robots and automation? What if a robot makes your pizza and delivers it by drone? Wait, that would be cool.

Istvan says part of his party’s platform is to support a universal basic income, to ensure that everyone has their basic needs taken care of, even as automation and technology takes over the actual labor.

“You are going to see a huge outcry and this will probably be one that will cause the most civil unrest,” he says. “Universal welfare is a basic system but everyone needs something if they don’t want to work because the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer but maybe we can make it so no revolution can occur and give everyone a—what I call—a luxury communism. I’m not supportive of this type of communism but quite frankly it’s just better, robust and it will work.”

Yes that’s a current presidential candidate advocating a new kind of communism. Fear not, however, because this is just semantics. No need for neo-McCarthyism here.

This redesign of America would require a complete restructuring of how society currently works, which is the sticking point.

Istvan said he wouldn’t be surprised if some politicians adopted an anti-robotic stance, at least if those robots start replacing human jobs. That said, you can’t win Wall Street with that platform. “And if you can’t win Wall Street you can’t win the election,” he explained.

“It’s really a matter of making sure that economies run smoothly. We can’t have something like in 2007 where all the banks collapse. If all the banks collapse, America collapses,” muses Istvan. “If that happens we are going to go back to the real world, which means you might not be able to get tomatoes at your local Albertsons. You may not be able to get fresh water, even in a first world country. We get this sort of dystopian society and that could stop transhumanism in its tracks.”

This sentiment is echoed by David Wood in his book Transpolitica: “... there are many uncertainties that influence technology—both how it is developed, and how it is deployed. Technology does not determine its own outcome. Instead, the allocation of resources to technological development is strongly impacted by the operation of markets, incentives, subsidies, regulations, and public expectations. In turn, all these factors are impacted by politics (either in commission or in omission).”

In short, even if the technology is there to lengthen life or enhance human capabilities, it will require bringing all parties onboard to be sure that funding and research continues on the technology itself, and that financing continues to be available so people can continue to live at a certain standard, even if robotic automation technology obviates the need for humans in the workforce.

When you consider the history of political and religious reaction to the other body modification and technological innovations detailed through this chapter, it seems rather unlikely that the path forward will be obstacle-free. Ironically, science is not in the way of people becoming super.

People are.