Ethics: the questions posed by our bionic bodies | Observer editorial

Science is sending us towards a posthuman future. We need to decide if that's where we should be goingIn the cult 1970s television show, The Six Million Dollar Man, astronaut Steve Austin (Lee Majors) is shown crash-landing on Earth, then being whisked into an operating theatre. "Gentleman, we have the capability to make the world's first bionic man," intones the narrator over the opening credits. "Steve Austin will be that man… Better, stronger, faster."Today, as our profile in the New Review of Bertolt Meyer, a young Swiss man whose life has been transformed by a £30,000 prosthetic device, shows, this bionic future is fast becoming a reality – and for a lot less than $6m. From artificial hearts that greatly extend human life spans, to drugs such as modafinil that enhance cognitive function, to nano implants that can detect the presence of cancer-causing enzymes, to gene tests for Huntington's and other rare genetic disorders, we are approaching the point at which medical technology can not only rebuild us but may actually be able to make us "better than well". Science and technology are moving from repairing us to enhancing us.The question is, should we embrace these posthuman futures or should we be worried about them? And what happens when these technologies and machines get so smart that humans can be written out of the equation altogether? Do we really want our iPhones to be our doctors, scanning our bodies for viruses, suggesting appropriate medication that can th...
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