Un libro sobre transhumanismo y afines

Gracias a una anotación de Roger E. Pielke Jr. en Prometheus (su blog, sobre ciencia y politica científica, muy interesante), me entero de que el think tank británico Demos (left of center, como dirán por allí) ha publicado el libro The politics of human enhancement and life extension
(aquí en pdf, gratis, claro). Tiene una pinta estupenda. Hoy he tenido tiempo de leer la introducción y me han quedado muchas ganas de seguir leyendo. Los de Demos presentan las distintas posturas sobre la mejora técnica del cuerpo humano ("human enhancement" mal traducido) y la prolongación de la vida. En la primera parte escriben los partidarios y en la segunda los que plantean dudas.En gran medida, el libro trata de la perspectiva llamada "transhumanismo", a la que ya me referí en tiempos.

Así argumenta en el libro uno de los partidarios de la mejora técnica del cuerpo humano, Arthur Caplan, director del Centro de Bioética de la Universidad de Pennsylvania:

The real threat is the anti-meliorists. Those who argue for a distinct essence, a kind of template of humanity that somehow is in there as a core that cannot be touched or changed or manipulated without loss of who we are – they are nervous conservatives who worry that the bearings will be lost if we admit that what we are is a jumbled set of mishmash traits evolved and designed to handle a random environment from the past that we don’t have to care about any more.

The anti-meliorists don’t tell us what human nature is. They posit a static notion of human nature which isn’t consistent with evolution. They posit the view that what our nature is, whatever it is, is right, when we know that it’s right only in relation to a set of environmental challenges that don’t exist any more or that we’re modifying all the time.

We are a creature or species, as all are, in a state of flux. The antimeliorists are making the conceptual error, that the way we are is the way we should be. I’m submitting that what we know from evolution, from Darwin’s day on, is that the way we are is an interesting accident. And it tells us certain things about what will make us function well, but it doesn’t tell us anything about the way we should be or what we should become or how we should decide to change ourselves.

No dejen de leerlo, los de Demos no suelen dar puntadas sin hilo.