Futurology
Futurist Juan Enriquez asks: Is it ethical to evolve the human body? In a visionary TED talk that ranges from medieval prosthetics to present day neuroengineering and genetics, Enriquez sorts out the ethics associated with evolving humans and imagines the ways we'll have to transform our own bodies if we hope to explore and live in places other than Earth.
When Juan Enriquez gives a TED Talk, it is always worth checking out. In his latest, Enriquez examines medieval prosthetics to present day neuroengineering and genetics, and sorts out the ethics associated with evolving humans and imagines the ways we'll have to transform our own bodies if we hope to explore and live in places other than Earth.
"When you're talking about a heart pacemaker as a prosthetic, you're talking about something that isn't just, 'I'm missing my leg,' it's, 'if I don't have this, I can die.' And at that point, a prosthetic becomes a symbiotic relationship with the human body," states Enriquez.Enriquez has a talent for bridging disciplines to build a coherent look ahead. He is the managing director of Excel Venture Management, a life sciences VC firm. He is a member of the board of Synthetic Genomics, which recently introduced the smallest synthetic living cell. Called “JCVI-syn 3.0,” it has 473 genes (about half the previous smallest cell). The organism would die if one of the genes is removed. In other words, this is the minimum genetic instruction set for a living organism.
"All of a sudden, it's not just one little bit, it's all these stacked little bits that allow you to take little portions of it until all the portions coming together lead you to something that's very different."
In the talk (video below), Enriquez mentions the new MIT Media Lab Center for Extreme Bionics headed up by Ed Boyden, Hugh Herr, Joe Jacobson, and Bob Lander. Bionic prosthetics are now being integrated into bone, muscle and skin. Boyden been examining how to connect bionics directly into the brain using light or other mechanisms "If you can do that, then you can begin changing fundamental aspects of humanity," says Enriquez.Enriquez, co-author of Evolving Ourselves: Redesigning the Future of Humanity--One Gene at a Time
, also discusses genomics work being done by the likes of George Church and others. Using genetic engineering and regenerative medicine, the promise is becoming open for more than just simple fixes to our DNA. We are on the forefront of potentially being able to rewrite our code completely.
All of a sudden, what we're doing is we've got this multidimensional chess board where we can change human genetics by using viruses to attack things like AIDS, or we can change the gene code through gene therapy to do away with some hereditary diseases, or we can change the environment, and change the expression of those genes in the epigenome and pass that on to the next generations. And all of a sudden, it's not just one little bit, it's all these stacked little bits that allow you to take little portions of it until all the portions coming together lead you to something that's very different.
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Enriquez brilliantly links the work being done in genomics and bionics to the development of humanity to the next levels of the Kardashev scale. The scale was originally designed in 1964 by the Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev, who was searching for signs of extraterrestrial life in cosmic signals.The Kardashev scale has three main classes, each with an energy disposal level: Type I (10¹⁶W), Type II (10²⁶W), and Type III (10³⁶W), a civilization in possession of energy on the scale of its own galaxy. Other astronomers have extended the scale to Type IV and Type V. Due to the necessities of space travel, Type II and Type III civilizations alters fundamental aspects of their bodies. "We can't even begin to imagine what that might look like," says Enriquez, "But we're beginning to get glimpses of instruments that might take us even that far."
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