the transhumanist times
TRANSĦUMAȠI§T ŦIMES
FEBRUARY, 2016 NO. 01, ISSUE 01
AN ENHANCED NEWS AGGREGATOR FOR THE POST-HUMAN WORLD
₣uŧure
Bөdiєs 10 enhancement
Night Vision Eyedrops & the latest in Biohacking for the cyborg on a budget.
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Ħ+
SIRI INTERVIEWS BINA48 A conversation between
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the intelligent personal assistant application and the world’s first sentient humanoid robot
to CrossҎollinatε Ŧhrough Selәcted DNΛ
Copy and Paste Any Genetic Code With CrisprCas9 tanya lewis Business Insider
“Mosaic reproduction would be the compilation and conglomeration of different gene types, not cross-species, but within one species.”
A biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, [Jennifer] Doudna is widely credited as one of the pioneers of a genetic technology that lets scientists tweak the DNA of practically any living creature. Known as CRISPR/Cas9, the technique has been credited with the potential to cure genetic defects, eradicate diseases, and even end the organ transplant shortage.
14 preservation
Vote for Zoltan Istvan if you Cryonics ad want to live sales definitely forever still illegal in Canada 12 preservation
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[see CRISPR 05]
"the new [human] genre, primo post-human" natasha vita-more
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any trends never catch on. They remain thoughts without a future. It is a lexicon of culture that takes hold and finds its way across generations and circumstances. Thus is the story of human nature, as it is diced and sliced over the millennia
by theoreticians, philosophers, artists and scholars. With theories tripping effortlessly onto blank slates, the cyclic changes of social progress move proudly forward and humbly backward judging our passions—the causes and effects [see POST-HUMAN 03] of existence.
plus Primo Post-Human prototype developed by Natasha Vita-More in 1993
Managing Existential Risk From Emerging Technologies Despite the political and organizational challenges, policy makers need to take account of low-probability, high-impact risks that could threaten the premature extinction of humanity. [see RISK 14]
the transhumanist times
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FUTURIST PHILOSOPHER DEFINES
ŦRANSИUMѦNIST VΛLUӘS
Transhumanists view human nature as a
by nick bolstrom
Transhumanism is a loosely defined movement that has developed over the past two decades but most rapidly in the past few years [2,3]. It represents is an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and evaluating the ethical, social and strategic issues raised by present and anticipated future technologies. The focus is especially on those technologies that either pose a threat to the survival of the human civilization, or, in contrast, promise to create opportunities for overcoming fundamental human limitations. Examples of technologies of the latter kind are those that may enable radically extended human lifespan, the elimination of disease and unnecessary suffering, or the enhancement of human intellectual, physical and emotional capacities. In other words, transhumanism is the study of the means and obstacles to humanity using technological and other rational means to
becoming posthumans, and of the ethical issues that are involved in this. ‘Posthumans’ is the term for the very much more advanced beings that humans may one day design themselves into if we manage to upgrade our current human nature and radically extend our capacities. Transhumanism goes beyond secular humanism, with which it shares many assumptions, by advocating not only ”traditional” means (such as education) to improve the human condition, but also the use of science, technology, and other empirical methods to enhance the human organism itself, physiologically. Transhumanists view human nature as a work-inprogress: a half-baked beginning that can be remolded in desirable ways through intelligent use of enhancement technologies. In this sense transhumanism is not only an area of study but also a world-view that has a value component. That value component is the subject of this paper.
THE SUPERS
work-in-progress: a halfbaked beginning that can
>>>
Yale University
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DOMINANT AREAS OF TRANSHUMANISM ARE KNOWN AS
be remolded in desirable ways through intelligent use of enhancement
super intelligence
technologies.
super longevity
∞
super well-being what kind of transhumanist are you? take the test >>>
Ħ+ THE 3 SUPERS WILL BE ACHIEVED THROUGH
PROACTIONARY
DEMOCRATIC
-changing the genetic source code
PRECAUTIONARY
-fusing with machines -friendly ai
Enћancemeŋŧ for All? A Feminist Ethical Analysis of the Discourses and Practices of Democratic Transhumanism by amy michelle debaets
Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences
“Technologies can be used to support both freedom and tyranny. Technology is not inherently either the problem or the solution, but is instead a tool through which ethical progress might be implemented or hindered.”
∞
-curing the disease of aging -cryonics, or suspended animation
-fazing out the biology of human suffering with: -genetic engineering -pharmacology -nanotechnology -neurosurgery
SPONSORED CONTENT
the transhumanist times
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FUTURE BODIES CONT.
21ST CENTURY PRIMO PROTOTYPE
Limited lifespan
Ageless
Legacy genes
Replaceable genes
Wears out
Upgrades
Random mistakes
Error correction
Sense of humanity
Enlightened transhumanity
Intelligence capacity 100 trillion
Intelligence capacity 100 quadrillion synapses
Gender restricted
Gender changeability
Prone to environmental damage
Impervious to environmental damage
Corrosion by irritability and depression
Turbocharged optimism
Elimination of messy gaseous waste
Recycles and purifies waste
Paradise
Natasha Vita-More, body builder, artist, and chairwoman of Transhumanist nonprofit organization, Humanity+
“When I designed Primo Posthuman – a future body prototype – I designed it with the understanding that the future human does not have to be restricted to any one gender. That the future human could be male or female or male and female, it could be androgynous, neither gender or it could be a multiple combination of genders. So you could be male for a certain amount of time, then female for a certain amount of time, hermaphroditic or you could be asexual with no specific gender.”
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by amy harmon
ABOLITIONISM 101
PLUS: ENDING SUFFERING THROUGH DESIGNER DRUGS AND BIOENGINEERING
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EVOLUTION
20TH CENTURY HUMAN BODY
New York Times
Geneticists developing powerful genome editing tools are worried that transhumanists will try to use them on themselves before they’re deemed safe and effective for use in humans, which could undermine the future of technologies, such as CRISPR/Cas9, that allow for specific, targeted DNA editing. Many of the biggest names in
the field are at the International Summit on Human Gene Editing, where they are trying to reach a consensus on when, how, and for what purposes humans should edit their own DNA (or the DNA of an embryo). CRISPR holds promise in the potential eradication of diseases like HIV, Huntington’s, and Alzheimer’s, and could be used to prevent children from being born mentally impaired. The scientific community seems to generally agree that using CRISPR to potentially prevent disease is ethically OK as long as the technology overall is deemed safe for use in humans. Things get sticky, however, when you consider that gene editing could theoretically be used down the line to create designer babies, to prevent premature aging, or to stimulate muscle growth, among myriad other applications. Transhumanists, many of whom believe science can be used to ulti-
the transhumanist times
4 ly performed by farmers to prevent injuries and a procedure that the American Veterinary Medical Association says is “considered to be quite painful.” Instead, when the calves were both just a
Open Season in Gene Editing of Animals
the DNA of living things has centered largely on the complicated prospect of editing human embryos. But with the federal government’s approval last week of a fast-growing
can take decades to achieve a particular goal, like cows that are both resistant to disease and produce a lot of milk. And until recently, genetic engineering techniques used to manipulate DNA had been so imprecise as to make them too expensive and difficult to perform in many animals. Chinese researchers have produced meatier cashmere goats that also conveniently grow longer hair for soft sweaters, miniature pigs lack-
Myostatin inhibiting engineering will one day make you as muscular as Wendy the Whippet
by amy harmon New York Times
SIOUX CENTER, Iowa — Other than the few small luxuries afforded them, like private access to a large patch of grass,
“It’s pretty cool,” said Micah Schouten, the calves’ caretaker, looking at his charges.
there was nothing to mark the two hornless dairy calves born last spring at a breeding facility here as early specimens in a new era of humanity’s dominion over nature. But unlike a vast majority of their dairy brethren, these calves, both bulls, will never sprout horns. That means they will not need to undergo dehorning, routine-
single cell in a petri dish, scientists at a start-up company called Recombinetics used the headline-grabbing new tools of gene editing to swap out the smidgen of genetic code that makes dairy cattle have horns for the one that makes Angus beef cattle have none. And the tweak, copied into all
of their cells through the normal machinery of DNA replication, will also be passed on to subsequent generations. “It’s pretty cool,” said Micah Schouten, the calves’ caretaker, looking at his charges. The uproar over the new ease and precision with which scientists can manipulate
bioethicists say, raises questions that are both unique to animals and may bear on the looming prospect of fiddling with our own. “We’re going to see a stream of edited animals coming through because it’s so easy,” said Bruce Whitelaw, a professor of animal biotechnology at the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh. “It’s going to change the societal question from, ‘If
salmon as the first genetically altered animal Americans can eat, a menagerie of gene-edited animals is already being raised on farms and in laboratories around the world — some designed for food, some to fight disease, some, perhaps, as pets. Just this week, researchers reported having edited mosquitoes so that they will no longer carry the
parasite that causes malaria. And the power to reshape other species, scientists and Pig26, which was genetically modified as part of the research by the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute to develop resistance to African swine fever.
we could do it, would we want it?’ to, ‘Next year we will have it; will we allow it?’ ” Animal breeders have for centuries scoured species for desirable traits and combined them the old-fashioned way, by selective mating. But that process
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ing a growth gene to be sold as novelty pets and bulky beagles lacking a muscle-inhibiting gene, an edit that could make for faster dogs. Using the most powerful of the new tools, called Crispr-Cas9, in pursuit of treatments for human disease, researchers are also altering pigs in hopes of making them grow human organs and cre-
ating “gene drives” that would ensure that the edit to make mosquitoes malaria-proof, for instance, would spread through the whole population.
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Human-Animal Chimeras Are Gestating on U.S. Research Farms A radical new approach to generating human organs is to grow them inside pigs or sheep.
CRISPR RELATED PATENT APPLICATIONS BY YEAR
2015
2013
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by antonio regalado MIT Technology Review
“The specter of an intelligent “The specter of an intelligent mouse stuck in a laboratory mouse stuck in a laboratory somewhere screaming ‘I want to somewhere screaming ‘I want to get out’ would be very troubling get out’ would be very troubling to people.” to people.” could blur the line between species. Last September, in a reversal of earlier policy, the National Institutes of Health announced it would not support studies involving such “human-animal chimeras” until it had reviewed the scientific and social implications more closely. The agency, in a statement, said it was worried about the chance that animals’ “cognitive state” could be altered if they ended up with human brain cells. The NIH action was triggered after it learned that scientists had begun such experiments with support
from other funding sources, including from California’s state stem-cell agency. The human-animal mixtures are being created by injecting human stem cells into days-old animal embryos, then gestating these in female livestock. The experiments rely on a cutting-edge fusion of technologies, including recent breakthroughs in stem-cell biology and gene-editing techniques. By modifying genes, scientists can now easily change the DNA in pig or sheep embryos so that they are genetically incapable of forming a specific tissue. Then, by adding stem cells from a person, they hope the human cells will take over the job of forming the missing organ, which could then be harvested from the animal for use in a transplant operation. “We can make an animal without a heart. We have engineered pigs that lack skeletal muscles and blood vessels,” says Daniel Garry, a cardiologist who leads a chimera project at the University of Minnesota. While such pigs aren’t viable, they can develop properly if a few cells are added from a normal pig embryo. Garry says he’s already melded two pigs in this way and recently won a $1.4 million grant from the U.S. Army, which funds some biomedical research, to try to grow human hearts in swine. Because chimeras could provide a new
supply of organs for needy patients and also lead to basic discoveries, researchers including Garry say they intend to press forward despite the NIH position. In November, he was one of 11 authors who published a letter criticizing the agency for creating “a threat to progress” that “casts a shadow of negativity” on their work. The worry is that the animals might turn out to be a little too human for comfort, say ending up with human reproductive cells, patches of people hair, or just higher intelligence. “We are not near the island of Dr. Moreau, but science moves fast,” NIH ethicist David Resnik said during the agency’s November meeting. “The specter of an intelligent mouse stuck in a laboratory somewhere screaming ‘I want to get out’ would be very troubling to people.” The chance of an animal gaining human consciousness is probably slim; their brains are just too different, and much smaller. Even so, as a precaution, researchers working with farm-animal chimeras haven’t yet permitted any to be born, but instead are collecting fetuses in order to gather preliminary information about how great the contribution of human cells is to the animals’ bodies.
The Silky, Milky, Totally Strange Saga of the Spider Goat by jesse hirsch Modern Farmer
In the rapidly evolving field of trangenics, things have been getting weird for years. Cabbage has been grown with scorpion venom. Mice have been bred to chirp like birds. Glow-in-thedark kitties are real. And,
naturally, scientists created a goat-spider hybrid. But let’s get this out of the way: These goats can’t set webs to catch their prey, they don’t possess super-strength, and they aren’t tottering around the barn on eight bony legs (as amazing/terrifying as this would be). No, spider goats look, snuggle, and frolic just like the goats
we all know and love. They have just a wee bit of spider DNA squirreled away in their genetic makeup. The only outward difference between spider goats and your garden-variety ruminants is in their milk: It contains elements of golden orb spider silk. The milk is not for human consumption, at least not in the chèvre sense — it
“We all kind of marvel at how fast this took off as a technology,” Doudna told Business Insider. “There’s just a really tremendous feeling of excitement for the potential of CRISPR.” But the technique has also drawn concerns. Some worry it could lead doctors and families to one day create “designer babies” whose genes have been carefully selected to make them smarter, stronger, or more beautiful. There's a scarier possibility linked with CRISPR, too: Scientists — or anyone with access to a basic biology lab — could unleash genetic mutations that could spread fairly easily through a population of animals, and the results could be irreversible. For example, some have proposed using this method to prevent mosquitoes from spreading malaria, but the changes could get out of hand and wipe out other species or entire ecosystems.
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The Chimera was, according to Greek mythology, a monstrous fire-breathing hybrid creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of more than one animal.
Braving a funding ban put in place by America’s top health agency, some U.S. research centers are moving ahead with attempts to grow human tissue inside pigs and sheep with the goal of creating hearts, livers, or other organs needed for transplants. The effort to incubate organs in farm animals is ethically charged because it involves adding human cells to animal embryos in ways that
[CRISPR cont.]
the transhumanist times
Pandora trying to close the box she has opened. At left, the evils of the world taunt her as they escape. Engraving, based on a painting by F.S. Church
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is meant to be refined, so the silk can be extracted and made into body armor, parachutes, fishing line and surgical sutures. See, golden orb spider silk is one of the strongest, most impenetrable substances on the planet, and it’s also extremely lightweight. Kevlar was built to replicate this wonder fiber, but the real deal would be even better.
REGULATE GENE EDITING IN WILD ANIMALS
Scientists have already used CRISPR to modify mosquitoes and the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. And in combination with another molecular-biology technique called gene drive, they have found a way to massively increase the efficiency of spreading these transformations to offspring and through the population. Once introduced, these genetic changes are self-propagating. If released beyond the laboratory, the effects would spread with every new generation and would quickly run out of control.
the transhumanist times
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by zoltan istvan Motherboard
$69,000
ASSISTIVE TECH PRICE RANGE
rough terrain wheelchair LOW
Major media is repo rting on what is being billed as a landmark agreement for the physically disabled community. A court has ordered the city of Los Angeles to spend $1.3 billion dollars over the next three decades to fix its dilapidated network of sidewalks and access ways, many of which are in disrepair and present challenges for people with disabilities to traverse.
Such a massive amount of money sets a precedent for other similar lawsuits to take place in America. If we take the largest 50 cities in the US, and just half of them agree to similar actions over the next decade, there might be another $25 billion dollars going to giving people with disabilities better sidewalks. On the surface, this seems like great news for those who have mobility issues. However, with so much radical transhumanist technology being invented in the 21st Century— like exoskeleton suits—should society instead try to use that
exoskeleton
HIGH
In the Transhumanist Age, We Should Be Repairing Disabilities, Not Sidewalks
money to eliminate physical disability altogether? The question is: Why hasn't America, its government, and its numerous multi-billion dollar healthcare and biotech companies actually ended heart disease, instead of just treating it? Clearly, we haven't been tackling these issues in the best way possible, as Carmat is doing. In the case of people with disabilities getting better sidewalks, I'm wondering if the nearly three million Americans in wheel chairs might rather have exoskeleton suits that allow them to run, jump, and play active sports. Exoskeleton technology is poised to become one of the most important innovations of the decade, affecting not only people with disabilities, but also the obese and the elderly—which together account for nearly a third of the American population.
1 billion 5-15%
$200
Global Population of People With Disabilities Global Population with Access to Assistive Technology 200,000,000
400,000,000
600,000,000
800,000,000
1,000,000,000
Understanding Deafness: Not Everyone Wants to Be 'Fixed' by allegra ringo The Atlantic
Cochlear implants run upwards of $100,000
Hearing people often assume that Deaf people would naturally want to take advantage of any method that could lead them to the hearing world — especially cochlear implants, the most advanced hearing technology we have. In reality, that assumption is far from true. When the police showed up, there were maybe 50 protesters, most of them Deaf, outside the Omni Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
Officers stepped out of their squad cars — four in total — and spoke to the protesters through an American Sign Language interpreter. They soon left amicably, though, apparently having not found much that needed policing. The protesters were rallying against the Listening and Spoken Language Symposium, an annual event put on by the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and
Regulatory attitude toward germline gene modification
"A hearing parent in this situation may be easily convinced that a cochlear implant and an oral-based approach is the only legitimate option."
deaf/Deaf audiological condition of not hearing
a particular group of deaf people who share a language – American Sign Language (ASL) – and a culture.
american sign language is the 4th most commonly spoken minority language in the US
Ambiguous
Restrictive
Ban
Elon Musk Nominated For Neo-Luddite Of The Year Award Avoids Genetic Engineering, calling it the “Hitler Problem.” Delving into the “perfect human”
kevin loria
Business Insider
waters starts to get ethically murky very fast, especially if you are eliminating conditions that you consider undesirable.
As the story goes, when billionaire innovator Elon Musk was deciding what he wanted to do with his life, he asked himself the question: “What will most affect the future of humanity?” He came up with five answers: space exploration (and colonization), sustainable energy, the internet, artificial intelligence, and the ability to reprogram the human genetic code, or genome.
the transhumanist times
De Un fen it- se Ex Inn pe ov rim at en ion tal
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Silicon Valley and “Disruptive” War Research
The Pentagon hopes to generate more “disruptive” weapons technologies by pursuing closer ties with researchers in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.
More Than Human? The Ethics of Biologically Enhancing Soldiers Our ability to “upgrade” the bodies of soldiers through drugs, implants, and exoskeletons may be upending the ethical norms of war as we’ve understood them. If we can engineer a soldier who can resist torture, would it still be wrong to torture this person with the usual methods? Starvation and sleep deprivation won’t affect a super-soldier who doesn’t need to sleep or eat. Beatings and
electric shocks won’t break someone who can’t feel pain or fear like we do. This isn’t a comic-book story, but plausible scenarios based on actual military projects today. In the next generation, our warfighters may be able to eat
grass,communicate telepathically,resist stress, climb walls like a lizard, and much more. Impossible? We only need to look at nature for proofs of concept. For instance, dolphins don’t sleep (or they’d drown); Alaskan sled-dogs
by patrick lin The Atlantic
can run for days without rest or food; bats navigate with echolocation; and goats will eat pretty much anything. Find out how they work, and maybe we can replicate that in humans.
by john horgan
The Scientific American The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Darpa, recently sponsored a threeday conference in St. Louis with the cute title, “Wait. What? A Future Technology Forum.” Darpa organized the conference to “consider current and future advances in the physical and information sciences, engineering and mathematics through the lens of current and future national and global security dynamics, to reveal potentially attractive avenues of technological pursuit and to catalyze non-obvious synergies among participants.” The conference “is part of a broader effort by the Pentagon to tap into the ingenuity of Silicon Valley,” John Markoff reports in The New York Times. The Pentagon recently opened an office in Silicon Valley called Defense Innovation Unit-Experimental, or DIU-X. The office says its mission is to help the Pentagon be “more permeable to sources of disruptive change that would keep us at par or ahead of the Nation’s adversaries.”
HULC
®
anthropomorphic exoskeleton gives users with the ability to carry loads of up to 200 pounds for extended periods of time and over all terrains FEATURES • Speed: 3 mph march; up to 10 mph burst • Fits warfighters’ height range of 5’4” to 6’2”
the transhumanist times
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get the latest in diy body mod tips, learn about grinder culture, become a cyborg!
the transhumanist times
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ENHANCEMENT
the transhumanist times
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How to Become a Cyborg
Viktoria Modesta, the world's first bionic pop star
julianne pepitone NBC News
In tattoo parlors and basements around the world, people are turning themselves into cyborgs by embedding magnets and computer chips directly into their bodies. They call themselves biohackers, cy-
borgs and grinders. With each piece of technology they put beneath their skin, they are exploring the boundaries — and the implications — of fusing man and machine. Welcome to the world of biohacking.
WEARABLES
Wheelchairs
Google Glass
Fitbit Health Tracker
Prosthetic Limbs
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation
Exoskeletons
Wifi-Sensing Hearing Aids
Digital Telepathy via Electronic Temporary Tattoos
Internal Compass Belts
Wearable Sonar Belt
Seismic Sensor
LOW-END
CYBORG STATUS SPECTRUM
Hear Colors through Skull Antenna Implant
Tragus Headphones Night Vision Eye Drops Gesture Sensitive Northstar implant Dermal implant flash drives
Self Healing Neuromodulators
Remote Control Contraceptives
Fingertip Bio-magnets
IMPLANTABLES
Northstar is an implant which features gesture recognition, can detect magnetic north, and mimics bioluminescence with subdermal LEDs. Developed by Grindhouse Wetware is an open source biotechnology startup company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Moving Objects with Thought via Neural Implants
Cyborg couple Neil Harbisson and Moon Ribas created the Cyborg Foundation, that helps humans become cyborgs and promotes cyborgism as an art movement.
HIGH-END
Bionic Contact Lenses
the transhumanist times
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the big business of neo-humanity jathan sadowski
Slate Magazine
$5B Terasem Movement Foundation
The melding of human and machine intelligence might make us immortal—and might make a bundle for an ingenious few.
MARTINE ROTHBLATT Highest paid female CEO
RAY KURZWEIL
$27M
Singularitarian
Project Calico Singularity University
$29B
Project Calico Singularity University
LARRY PAGE Google Co-Founder
$3.3B
SERGEY BRIN Google Co-Founder
$34B
PETER THIEL Paypal founder, Project Calico Singularity University Methuselah Foundation
$1B
JOHN SPERLING
University of Phoenix founder
DON LAUGHLIN Real Estate Mogul
$1.2B
Alcor
$3.5B
Project Calico
DAVID MURDOCK
California Health and Longevity Institute
Kronos Longevity Research Institute, Genetic Savings & Clones
$600M
California Health and Longevity Institute
MARC ANDREESSEN Netscape Founder Venture Capitalist
The Ellison Foundation
$43B
The Pentagon recently opened an office in Silicon Valley called Defense Innovation Unit-Experimental, or DIU-X. The office says its mission is to help the Pentagon be “more permeable to sources of disruptive change that would keep us at par or ahead of the Nation’s adversaries.”
$500M 2045 Strategic Social Initiative
DMITRY ITSKOV Russian Web Mogul
LARRY ELLISON Internet entrepreneur, philanthropist, part time “Uncle Rico” impersonator name
affiliation
net-worth
the transhumanist times
Following Vitrification, neuropatients are placed in individual aluminium containers.
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PRESERVATION
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A-1217
S-100000095
2
OTHER MEMBERSHIP FEES: $10,000 Surcharge for cases outside the U.S. and Canada. $25,000 Surcharge for cryopreservation of non-members arranged by a third party who is an Alcor Cryopreservation Member. $50,000 Surcharge for cryopreservation of non-members arranged by a third party who is not an Alcor Cryopreservation Member. $530 Member Annual Dues
WHOLE BODY
NEUROPRESERVATION
$200,000
$80,000
cost of cryonics at alcor life extension foundation
The Only Anti-Cryonics Law in North America by miné salkin Motherboard
In the province of British Columbia, you can buy weed from a vending machine and marry someone of the same sex, but cryonically preserving yourself is practically illegal. Although the procedure itself is not outlawed, the government made it illegal in 1990 to advertise or market the sale of a cryonic arrange-
ment—lest anyone believe they might one day have the chance to be brought back to life. But in light of the Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark ruling in f avour of assisted suicide earlier this year, shouldn’t those living in the province have the right to decide what to do with their future selves too? Transhumanists, obviously, believe that the law is unconstitutional, and have been hoping for years to overturn the law in court.
Carrie Wong is president of the Lifespan Society of BC, and is leading one such campaign to challenge the province’s anti-cryonics law. “Now it’s legal to get assistance with end-of-life. Now people can choose how they want to go,” said Wong. “Our case is similar. It’s a violation of our constitutional rights. [...] People have the right to believe it whatever they want to believe about the afterlife.” Christine Gaspar, leader of
"A person must not offer for sale, or sell, an arrangement for the preservation or storage of human remains that is based on cryonics"
the Cryonics Society of Canada, said that society founder Ben Best and other members of the cryonics community have tried to discover the reasoning behind this puzzling law in the past, but to no avail. “It just sort of appeared,” she said. “Ben tried to research it and made calls but nobody gave him a clear answer of who wrote it and why. Nobody questioned it, and it was quietly passed because there were no advo-
cates for or against cryonics.” According to Section 14 of the Cremation, Interment and Funeral Services Act, “A person must not offer for sale, or sell, an arrangement for the preservation or storage of human remains that is based on (a) cryonics, (b) irradiation, or (c) any other means of preservation or storage, by whatever name called,and that is offered, or sold, on the expectation of the resuscitation of human remains at a future
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head transplant timeline
MEET THE LATE DR. ROBERT WHITE, WHO TRANSPLANTED THE FIRST MONKEY HEAD
1908
first dog head transplant by Charles Guthrie
1950
1970
by miné salkin Motherboard
Back in 2009, Motherboard met up with Dr. Robert White, the neurosurgeon behind the infamous “monkey head transplant” experiment of the 1970s. In what turned out to be his last ever interview, White discussed the historical interest in brain and head transplantation and his contributions to neuroscience. White died in 2010, but interest in his trademark experiment has survived him and brought stomach-churning bioethical questions to the forefront. Many, including us, have referred to White’s surgical undertaking as a head transplant. However, in countless interviews, he reiterated that a more apt label would be “full body transplant.” After all, White, an observant Catholic and member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, believed that the brain was the anatomical seat of the soul. In transferring the entire head, surgeons transfer the essence of an organism – the “living principle.” The donor body was a mere receptacle, a mechanism through which the person could be kept alive. The trouble is that body transplants by definition require decapitation and decapitation means severing the spinal cord. While recent research has demonstrated that it is possible to reestablish connectivity in rats whose spinal cords have been cleaved, that sort of procedure has only been undertaken within single rats. It has not involved attaching the head of one organism to the body of anoth-
er. This necessary surgical injury means that any recipients of a body transplant will be quadriplegic. Despite the physiological obstacles, White always dreamt of taking these ideas to the next level: the human-body transplant. He hoped it would offer an alternative to death for individuals suffering from multiple organ failure and other terminal conditions. It’s an ethically explosive subject. While your initial reaction might be pure revulsion, think of some of the deeper considerations: how would this transplant affect someone’s identity? How do you justify using an entire body to save just one person when the organs within that body could save several? Should such a surgery be denied to someone who needs it based on visceral disgust alone? Not to mention that pursuing such a goal would invariably involve even more problematic experimentation on primates, a morally-knotted issue we’ve been wrestling with for years. Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero recently raised the specter of White’s dreams when he proposed last month in Surgical Neurology International that the technology now exists for human “cephalic exchange.” He posits that the several groups of inorganic polymers called polyethylene glycol, or PEG, are “able to immediately reconstitute (fuse/ repair) cell membranes damaged by mechanical injury.” In laymen’s terms, PEG can help
“I remember that the head would wake up, the facial expressions looked like terrible pain and confusion and anxiety in the animal.”
1965 First Dog brain transplant by Robert White
Vladimir Demikhov, grafted the upper bodies of young dogs onto the shoulders of other dogs, creating dogs with two heads, both able to move, see, and even lap up water. Survived for 29 days.
2002 Neurosurgeon Robert J. White, who was inspired by the work of Vladimir Demikhov, performed a highly controversial operation to transplant the head of one monkey onto another’s body in the 1970s.
stitch the severed spinal cords together, but only if the cuts are clean. Even if it is theoretically possible, the proposed operation does not come cheap. Your wallet will take a hit, or more likely implode, to the tune of thirteen million dollars. Jerry Silver, a colleague of White’s and the neurosurgeon behind the rat spinal cord experiment, objects to the entire notion of a human head/body transplant. “It’s complete fantasy,” he said in an interview with CBS News. Reminiscing about the psychic torture that he believes White’s original monkey patient suffered, he added, “I remember that the head would wake up, the facial expressions looked like terrible pain and confusion and anxiety.” He dismissed Canavero’s theory as “bad science.” Given how controversial the monkey experiment itself was, it’s highly likely that Silver is one of many. White, a man not known for his humility, once reportedly said to PETA President Ingrid Newkirk that it is completely unacceptable to impose limits on scientific inquiry. And perhaps, even more so than the tragic hybrid monkey itself, that is his legacy: Unabashedly shattering disquieting scientific barriers so that issues like human head transplantation are something that will haunt our nightmares and ethical debates for quite some time.
Low-temp head transplant in a rat. Scientists in Japan graft infant rats’ heads onto the thighs of adults, to test cooling the brain to prevent brain damage with oxygen loss.
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First head transplant in a monkey. Robert White transplants the entire head of a rhesus monkey onto another monkey’s body. The monkey could see, hear, and taste, but White did not attempt to fuse the spinal cord. The monkey lived for several days after the surgery
2013
2014
Italian doctor Canavero proposes human head transplant. He outlines a procedure involving a clean cut to the spinal cord to minimize damage and using polyethylene glycol (PEG) to fuse the spinal cord.
Head transplants in mice. Xiao-Ping Ren and colleagues in China report a headswapping experiment in mice, resulting in a white mouse with a black head, and vice versa.
Considering Head or Whole Body Preservation?
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“Meat isn’t the best platform for being a person. To the extent we preserve meat, it will be a pretty modified meat.”
the transhumanist times
14
TERASEM MOVEMENT INC.
An existential risk is defined as a risk that threatens the premature extinction of humanity, or the permanent and drastic destruction of its potential for desirable future development. These risks could originate in nature or through human action.
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Artificial intelligence (AI) is the science and engineering of intelligent machines. Narrow AI systems — such as Deep Blue, stock trading algorithms, or IBM’s Watson — work only in specific domains. In contrast, some researchers are working on AI with general capabilities, which aim to think and plan across all the domains that humans can.
Lifenaut To Offer Digital Immortality Services Uploading your mind to your digital avatar now beta testing customers Humans have sought immortality since at least the 22nd century B.C., if the ancient story "Epic of Gilgamesh" is any indication. And if we're looking for biological immortality, we might have to keep looking. But if you don't mind living a virtual life, immortality might be yours for the taking. Our new digital lives have opened up countless ways for us to express thoughts and share ideas, particularly on social media. While you're busy posting your latest selfie, something much more meaningful is happening. With each photo you take or message you write, technology is slowly capturing digital artifacts of your life. Artifacts that someday not too far from now might be reassembled into your virtual avatar. The website, called LifeNaut, allows you to create a "mindfile," a digital archive of your "unique and essential" characteristics. Started by the Terasem Movement Foundation, LifeNaut hopes that intelligent software of the future will be able to "replicate an individual's consciousness."
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VOTE FOR ZOLTAN IF YOU WANT TO LIVE FOREVER
THE FOUNDER OF THE TRANSHUMANIST PARTY PLANS TO UPGRADE HUMANITY, AND HE’S RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2016
by sarah fecht Popular Science
VIEWING AGING AS A DISEASE
Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation and Middle Earth wizard Aubrey de Grey, is developing regenerative medical technology to cure the aging process and enable human beings to live indefinitely.
Zoltan Istvan didn’t see the half-buried bomb. He was reporting on a story about Vietnam’s forgotten landmines when he wandered off the path to look at the scar of an explosion on the jungle floor. The next thing he knew, he was on the ground--his guide had tackled him just before he could step on a small landmine. The bomb didn't go off, but Istvan was shaken. While he cleaned off his camera lens, he decided to take a
break from journalism for a while. He returned home to write a novel, The Transhumanist Wager, about a man’s quest to live forever using science, medicine, and technology. Then he decided to run for president. Beyond being a politician, Istvan is an entrepreneur, a blogger, and the founder of the Transhumanist Party--a group of some 25,000 people who want to enhance the human body and extend the human lifespan using science and technology. Man and machine are already merging through
the transhumanist times
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the transhumanist times
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