Dying in a Transhumanist and Posthuman Society by Panagiotis Pentaris

Author:Panagiotis Pentaris [Pentaris, Panagiotis]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781000479560
Google: K-hEEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-11-25T05:28:48+00:00

An interesting question here is, ‘Are genetically designed children not compatible with human nature?’ That said, cloning might be seen as a time of ‘new eugenics’ that change the nature of procreation. Yet, in such procreation, science has more space to manipulate DNA and ensure healthy ‘products’ (Brown, 2016; Glover, 1985).

Cloning, though, is not something new. Cloning technologies are. Gardeners have been cloning plants for a very long time, or invertebrates can also be cloned and regenerated. Technoscience is continuously advancing, diversifying the ways to maintain, recreate and monitor life (Oliver, 2013). Cloning technologies and organ engineering set new contexts in which human life and nature can be understood. The humankind progresses increasingly from the state of natural to that of cultural (i.e. man-made humanity and human body). Cloning and other technologies raise questions about ownership – who owns human body or blood, when it is cloned? When it is the product of cloning technologies owned by a single company, does the company equally own the body produced by those technologies? It seems that we are gradually moving to a space wherein our bodies will no longer be ours and will need to ‘rent them out’. This will be almost in the form of taxation, if it is not already part of it. In a transhumanist society, the posthuman will exist virtually in the main, and posthuman bodies will be on offer to move the digital self outside of the virtual world.

To conclude, cloning may be another way of responding to the risks of extinction of humankind. Shapiro (2020) offers that people fear extinction for three reasons: first, people fear missed opportunities; second, people fear change, and extinction requires change and adjustment to new circumstances; lastly, people fear failure, and the risk of extinction is an indication towards failure. The ethical and moral challenges in this discussion are undeniable (Schwab, 2012), while cloning also has penal implications (Rustin, 2014); the legal avenues of cloning remain ambiguous and with varied positions. The National Bioethics Advisory Commission, nonetheless, suggests that cloning a dying child is acceptable as long as it is purposeful and safe for the ‘created’ child. In other words, the ethical concern is for the clone and not the prototype, which might lead conversations to consider whether humans will become lesser than other man-made creations.

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