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Artificial Humans

Ethical Considerations. Artificial Humans . Maria-Stella Portelli. Definitions .

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Artificial Humans

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  1. Ethical Considerations Artificial Humans Maria-Stella Portelli

  2. Definitions • Artificial organs: Human-made devices designed to replace, duplicate, or augment, functionally or cosmetically, a missing, diseased, or otherwise incompetent part of the body, either temporarily or permanently, and which require a non-biologic material interface with living tissue. • Bioartificialorgan: Device combining living elements (organelles, cells, or tissues) with synthetic materials in a therapeutic system. • Implant: Any biomaterial or device which is actually embedded within the tissues of a living organism • Prosthesis: An artificial device to replace a missing part of the body. Ref: ‘Prostheses and Artificial Organs’ by Galletti and Nerem (2000)

  3. Advantages • Prolong life • Improve quality of life • Replaces the use of heart/lung/kidney machines • Availability of organs for donation • Avoid xenotransplantation

  4. Case Studies • Doctors discovered a golf-ball-size tumour growing into Mr Beyene’s windpipe. Despite surgery and radiation, it kept growing. • The doctor, Paolo Macchiarini, at the Karolinska Institute had a radical idea. He wanted to make Beyene a new windpipe, out of plastic and his own cells. Implanting such a “bio-artificial” organ would be a first-of-its-kind procedure for the field of regenerative medicine, which for decades has been promising a future of ready-made replacement organs - livers, kidneys, even hearts - built in the laboratory. • In Beyene’s case, an exact copy of his windpipe was made from a porous, fibrous plastic, which was then seeded with stem cells harvested from his bone marrow. After just a day and a half in a bioreactor - a kind of incubator in which the windpipe was spun, in a nutrient solution - the implant was stitched into Beyene, replacing his cancerous windpipe. Fifteen months after the groundbreaking surgery, Beyene, 39, is tumor-free and breathing normally.

  5. Considerations • Could there be a time in which artificial organs could be better than the body’s own natural ones? • Hardly break down • Do not age • Not struck by disease • Are we creating some sort of superhuman?

  6. Identity and Dignity • Issues of identity (superiority/inferiority complex) • Till what percentage can your body be replaced by artificial devices? • Would a cyborg still be an autonomous person?

  7. Prolonging life vs quality of life • To what extent should we try to lengthen the life span of humans? • How should such goal be balanced against the goal of improving the quality of human life

  8. Enhancing social stratification • Increasing the division between the rich and the poor

  9. The Brain • We would be messing around with personality, feeling, emotions, reasoning, memory, decision making … • Could cyborgs be morally responsible for their behaviour when their brain has been engineered by others so as to function in a particular way? • Should artificial devices that allow humans to have superior perception, cognition, motor control or positive moods and attitudes be allowed? • The idea of ‘brain dead’ – would we be resurrecting the dead?

  10. Discussion

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