(2004-08-30) Hughes Nbic Vs Bush

JamesHughes on the potential battles between the George W Bush administration and the NBIC crowd. The NBIC's initial report stunned even the most optimistic techno-utopians with its predictions of rapid human enhancement, life extension and nano-neural interfaces in the coming decades. Turns out that when people on the cutting edge of the molecular, information and cognitive sciences begin to talk about merging their fields and applying them to extending the human body and brain, things get very transhumanist (Transhumanism) very fast - nanobots or no nanobots... These attacks from the pulpit have put the fear of God into Roco and the NBIC program. At the recent February meeting of the NBIC in New York City, which I attended, Mihail Roco objected strenuously when panelists such as "neuroethicist" Zack Lynch began to wax poetic about the posthuman implications of the endeavor. Bush appointee Philip Bond, undersecretary for technology in the Department Of Commerce, was on hand to endorse the NBIC program, but made a special effort to note that its implementation should respect ethics and "human dignity.".. The week after the USC report, in an example of the kind of bold bring-it-on leadership we've come to expect, LeonKass and the Bush administration replaced two of the most forthright advocates of Stem Cell research on the President's Council on Bioethics with three prominent Christian right-wingers.