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Tony Smyth's avatar

April fools day is over. This cant be our real world can it? If so, WTF

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David Kirtley's avatar

We have only seen the beginning of this so far. I don't know what we can even know enough of where we are headed to begin to decide what is ethical.

We routinely perform amputations of healthy tissues for "cosmetic" and social reasons that don't raise any complaints. Extra digits. Vestigial tails. Extra limbs. We routinely cut off healthy flesh for religious reasons. Breast reductions. Tummy tucks. Excess skin removal after weight loss. All kinds of operations to make people more aesthetically pleasing or conforming better to norms.

How long until we can replace severed limbs not just with some prosthetic device but create a functional replacement? Where do you draw the line? How about a body replacement for a quadriplegic? New limbs for people with birth defects?

How do you deal with enhanced abilities? We are already giving cochlear implants to deaf people. What happens when we can do really crazy things like give vision to the blind, add the ability to take up oxygen from water to replace breathing or fly?

I can't really even say what would be right or wrong about the whole transsexual issue if the operations and hormone treatments would actually work and give the patients a real change of sex instead of creating something that is neither and making a cosmetic approximation of the other sex without the functionality.

These questions have long been the fare of speculative fiction but we are reaching the technical capability to do them in fact.

Who gets to decide what is ethical? Governments don't have a very good track record for making ethical choices. Individuals don't have a great record of making the wisest choices either. Religions have their issues as well.

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