Prosthetic Technology and Human Enhancement: Benefits, Concerns and Regulatory Schemes (Part One)

This IEET exclusive explores the history, current use, and future potential of prosthetic devices and implants. It also addresses benefits and concerns that run directly to the individual. This is Part One of what will be a three-part series.

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/Niman20130502

Just a short note on publishing timeframes – I’m in the process of moving and will soon be studying for the bar, so it might be a bit sporadic. I’ll do my best to make the transition as painless as possible, however.

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Prosthetic Technology Presentation

This is a presentation I gave at the William S. Boyd School of Law in preparation for the Southern Association for the History of Medicine and Science conference in Charleston, South Carolina.

It covers the history of prosthetic devices, current prosthetics, future trends, and ethical questions.

 

Slides:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2QzBzjmgxN5RktFOHlpaWQ5VFk/edit?usp=sharing

Cyborg Possibilities – The Arms and Legs (Part Three)

See Part One and Part Two.

This article doesn’t need any of the special categories or explanations – the two classifications are pretty self explanatory. Let’s jump right in.

Arms:

(We’ve come a pretty long way from this.)

The most recent advancements in bionic arms seem to be included in the BeBionic prosthetic arms. This arm can detect signals in the nerves that exist in whatever amount of the arm remains and then uses those signals to drive the prosthetic’s functions. Essentially, operation ought to work much like the user’s original arm did: The person thinks about moving their arm in a certain way and the arm responds.

Despite looking cooler, the BeBionic hand is still a ways away from a human hand. Yet, the improvements are impressive. Grip strength has improved from about 17 pounds to about 31. It can hold about 100 pounds of weight, up from about 70. It also comes in a range of designs. The hand isn’t exorbitantly expensive, but at $25,000 to $35,000 it isn’t exactly cheap either. At that price range, concerns that future human enhancement technology will be a possibility only for the well to do seem likely.

Fortunately, there are alternatives. For instance, two designers recently created a prosthetic hand for an extremely frugal $150. The hand is an excellent example of multiple new technologies converging, as much of the prosthetic is 3-D printed. This particular hand is impressive for the low cost, but there are downsides as well. For instance, this hand is operated via pulley system. Instead of electrical signal sensors powering the hand, regular old nylon rope attaches to the fingers of the prosthetic hand and a ripcord connects to what remains of the biological hand that attaches to the arm. When the ripcord is pulled, the fingers close. It does restore functionality, and it’s most certainly better than nothing, but it’s not exactly elegant. It also doesn’t seem very useful for someone entirely without their biological hand. Yet, for the boy who it was custom made for, the results are pretty impressive.

A few things are worth remembering, however. First, this is an extremely inexpensive prosthetic. There’s a lot of wiggle room between $150 and $35,000, and the sweet spot between price and performance may well lie a few thousand dollars to the right (though still within the range of many not-rich people.) Second, this is an early design, and it’s opensource, which means we can likely expect better functionality soon. Third, technology is advancing all the time, so things that are prohibitively expensive now will become cheaper in a year or two. The amount of functionality that $150 can buy will continue to improve.

Of course, that third point means that the top end technology will continue to improve too. So, assuming one is fortunate enough to be able to afford the latest and greatest prosthetic, what might that look like? Enhanced dexterity is one of the most important improvements that can be made, and some progress is being made on that front. Instead of detecting muscle movements, it would be very helpful if the limb could just read the wearer’s mind and perform accordingly. Although it is not yet ready for a prosthetic device, a team of MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital researchers have created a device that allows monkeys to move a cursor on screen with their thoughts. See below for similar technology in prosthetic legs.

The robot Rex, featured in Part Two, also has prosthetic hands that have individually controlled fingers.

Ultimately, prosthetic limbs shouldn’t just replicate biological limb functionality, they should improve upon it. Two students of Singularity University – the joint Kurzweil / Diamandis tech university – have created a glove that even folks who still have both their hands can use. This glove allows users to sense vibrations, temperature  and sound. It also has an accelerometer and a buzzer for important notifications. The next version will be able to detect ultrasonic waves, potentially allowing users to detect, say, breast cancer lumps and heart abnormalities. It’s easy to imagine the technology in this glove transferred into a prosthetic hand, and for additional functionality to be included. Why not equip your bionic hand with a screen, connect it to the internet, and insert a light source? Why not integrate cellular phone technology, or GPS? The possibilities are endless.

 

Legs:

Much of the 2012 news about prosthetic legs focused on Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius. Rightfully so, I’d say – it’s pretty amazing that a person without biological legs can run within a few seconds of the fastest human beings on the planet. Perhaps even more impressive is that Pistorius’ legs aren’t particularly advanced. Certainly they’re state of the art in terms of lightweight running limbs, but there are no electronics in his legs. It was Oscar’s performance that was amazing, not the technology in his legs.

For hi-tech limbs, we can look at the leg developed by the Centre of Bionic Medicine at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. Like the bionic arms above, this leg responds to muscle signals. Unlike many other prosthetic limbs, this one can move at both the knee and the ankle. An on-board computer uses an algorithm that adapts to each individual user. As the algorithm gets better, the legs is better able to predict what the user is trying to do and assist them in that task.

Using this leg, Zac Vawter was able to kick a ball, walk around, and climb stairs (a task more difficult than it sounds for above the knee amputees.) Indeed, Zac was able to climb stairs so well that he took the stairs all the way to the top of the 103 floor Sears Tower in Chicago.

A similar leg was installed on the aforementioned Rex. The Genium leg is controlled by three microprocessors, has four sensors to sense its location in three dimensions along with its speed, and allows the users to “walk backwards, shuffle step, stop short, pivot on their prosthetic leg and perform a wide range of common movements naturally without concentrating.” The powered knee allows users to stand and climb stairs – something traditionally very difficult for above the knee amputees – and lasts for five days.

Other prosthetic legs seem to be at a similar stage of development.

Not everyone needs a prosthetic leg, however. Sometimes the bionic legs we have just don’t work properly. For some of these problems the Hanger WalkAide may be helpful. For patients who suffer from “foot drop” (an inability to lift one’s leg), the WalkAide provides electrical signals to the nerve responsible for lifting the foot at the correct times. Essentially, the WalkAide combines the predictive technology of a bionic leg with an easy to wear device that can be attached to a biological limb.

Finally, as with prosthetic arms, inexpensive versions of prosthetic legs exist. Jaipurfoot.org provides inexpensive foot, below knee, and above knee leg replacements to people around the world. As with cheaper prosthetic arms, the technology in cheaper prosthetic legs does not (and is not supposed to) match that of the more expensive versions. The Jaipur legs and feet have no microprocessors, no gyroscopes, and no batteries lasting for days. Yet, for folks who cannot afford tens of thousands of dollars for a state of the art prosthetic limb, the ability to walk again at a reasonable price is vastly more important than whether or not their leg is able to anticipate their next step.

Oh yes, that goes for cats, too.

Cyborg Possibilities – The Torso and Skin (Part Two)

See Part One here.

Returning to our Deus Ex graphic, the next three categories are the torso, back, and skin. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll lump the torso and back together. The skin, however, deserves its own category.

The Torso:

I am construing the torso broadly here to mean the entire center region of the body, excluding the skin itself. I will also include some things that travel through the entire body, but are not specific to any particular extremity or the head.

Most of the work in the area involved replacing organs with mechanical analogues. The most comprehensive collection of these technologies was showcased by Rex just last week. Rex, an artificial humanoid, has prosthetic limbs that I’ll talk about tomorrow, but also an entire collection of artificial organs.

Rex has, for instance, a “spleen-on-a-chip” to cleanse his blood, an artificial kidney (which “packs the technology of a fridge-sized dialysis machine into a unit no bigger than a coffee cup”) and an artificial pancreas to adjust blood glucose levels.

The pancreas, for instance, encases insulin within a gel protective barrier. Designed by Professor Joan Taylor of De Montfort University in the UK, the gel responds to excess glucose by softening and releasing insulin. When the glucose levels stabilize, the gel hardens again, trapping the remaining insulin inside. Although still in trials, Professor Taylor hopes that it will be available for implantation into humans within seven years.

The kidney, designed by Professor Shuvo Roy at the University of California, San Francisco, is “made up of a silicon nanoscale filtration system” and is powered by the body’s own blood pressure. The blood passes through the filtration system to a cartridge of living renal tubule cells from a healthy donor (or, perhaps, engineered from the patient’s own cells.) Clinical trials are expected to begin in five years.

Additionally, Rex has an artificial heart and windpipe – both versions of technology that are already implanted into patients.

The SynCardia heart is designed as a holdover until a biological heart can be transplanted in, but has been operating on some patients for as long as five years.

The Guardian reports that this heart-lung combination is also connected to a “network of pulsating modified-polymer arteries.” Relevant to Part One, Rex also has cochlear implants, artificial retinas, and is at least somewhat artificially intelligent.

“Rich Walker, the managing director of Shadow, says: ‘We were surprised how many of the parts of the body can be replaced. There are some vital organs missing, like the stomach, but 60 to 70 per cent of a human has effectively been rebuilt.’

But the project does not just show what can be done for those who lose limbs or suffer organ failure. It heralds a future in which the artificial replacements are better than those we are born with.”

Yet, as cool as Rex is, there are different designs in the works that were not incorporated into him. For instance, the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine is working on an artificial lung design that layers gas pathways with blood channels and then grafts on endothelial cells. No word, yet, on how close they are to a clinical trial. For now, patients must still be hooked up to a machine outside the body.

Consider also this alternative power source for pacemakers and other medical devices. If an entire replacement heart is unnecessary, or perhaps if the heart is fine but another device needs to be implanted, this device ought to be able to take the energy provided by a beating heart to power the device. These sorts of device – one that produces power from the body’s own mechanisms – helps solve the battery problem and could help power human-machine hybrids.

Yet another way implants might be powered is through wireless charging technology. WiTricity, an MIT spin-off company, has invented a method of transmitting electricity though the air via coils. If this technology is scalable, and can be integrated into implants, one might charge their implants simply by being home or at another location where these wireless electricity coils are installed.

While still extremely early in the research phase, 3-D printers are helping researchers create nanobots that will be able to travel through our bodies to defeat toxins and disease. Entire artificial immune systems seem possible, but still have a long way to come.

Other versions of the artificial pancreas are hot topics as well. IRCM, in Montreal, conducted a trial of an artificial pancreas and compared the results to traditional insulin therapy. The artificial pancreas showed “improved glucose levels and lower risks of hypoglycemia.” One downside to this particular artificial pancreas is that parts of it remain outside of the body. Other models, like this one, also depend on external mechanisms. While this may be the best we can do for now, ultimately internal artificial organs help to reduce infection and are more convenient for the patient.

It seems we will likely see more of these devices in the future as well, because pharmaceutical companies are beginning to realize the implants can work better than drugs for treating some types of disease. While I think custom medication still has a lot to offer, and will become much better at targeting just the disease without causing all sorts of collateral damage (read: side effects), it seems virtually certain that engineered solutions like nanobots will eventually overcome the capabilities of any drug.

One challenge facing an increasing use of implants is security. It turns out that it’s possible to hack them. While it’s probably true that any technology that can be created can be hacked, there is a particularly difficult trade-off when it comes to implants. Either implants should be like toasters – non-networked devices that can’t really be hacked, but also can’t be updated – or should they be like cell phones – easily updated but also fairly easily hacked? Finding the ideal solution – easily updated but not easily hacked – will be a challenge for security professionals in the coming decades.

 

The Skin:

I’m going to construe the skin somewhat broadly as well. While I’ll start with the skin proper, I’ll also include technology that deals with tissue generally.

One of the biggest news stories of the past year was the invention on spray-on skin. Products like ReCell use the patient’s own skin cells and turn them into an aerosol spray. The doctor can then spray the cells back onto the patient so that a new layer of skin can form over burns and other wounds. This sort of purely biological invention might seem out of place in a cyborg article, but imagine how much easier healing any implant that protrudes from the skin will be with this sort of technology. If a wire, sensor, or other portion of the implant can stick out from the skin, but the skin can heal in days instead of weeks or months, the risk of infection is greatly reduced. Likewise, this sort of technology seems like it could be translated to other types of cells, allowing, say, a heart implant to graft into existing blood vessels by coating it in the patient’s own heart cells. Finally, if nothing else, this sort of technology ought to help reduce scarring that would otherwise occur from invasive surgery to implant a medical device.

For some mechanical integration an implant may not be the best solution. For instance, imagine a person just wants to monitor their glucose level or blood pressure. An implant seems like overkill in this situation. Fortunately, new technology is giving people an option. Stick-on tattoos embedded with electronics could monitor these sorts of things and provide a visible readout to the user without needing to implant a device underneath the skin. In addition to being safer because they do not require invasive surgery, they ought to be much cheaper and, thus, more versatile. For short-term readouts, this technology can’t be beat.

While a whole field of wearable electronics is outside the scope of this article, it’s worth highlighting one new technology: Screens on your fingernails. Engineers in Taiwan are attempting to find a way to coat fingernails in organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) so that your nails become either screens unto themselves or extensions of other screens that they come near. If painting on a screen is as simple as painting your fingernails, we might find that these screen become more pervasive and that men suddenly care more about painting their nails. These, too, could help display internal metrics without the need for an implant proper, or they could easily display information from an implant.

On the other hand, it may be more beneficial to replace the skin entirely. If that’s right, then this touch-sensitive, self-healing plastic skin might be a good start. Admittedly, it’s not very attractive. While still very early in the research phase, this skin heals much faster than human skin and does provide touch sensitivity – something very much lacking in current prostheses, yet so very important for humans.

Still, if we’re not replacing the skin entirely, but need something more than just a stick on or paint on solution, perhaps a compromise can be found. For skin and other tissues, engineers are getting better at integrating tissue and electronics. This sort of technology allows machine and man to happily coexist. Implants can be wired up to the skin directly (perhaps providing information to those fingernail screens or other paint-on solutions) without having to find an entirely new replacement for skin itself. Devices can be grafted directly into biological organs if necessary. Harvard researcher Dr. Charles Liber says:

“We can use electrodes to measure activity in cells or tissue, but that damages them. With this technology, for the first time, we can work at the same scale as the unit of biological system without interrupting it. Ultimately, this is about merging tissue with electronics in a way that it becomes difficult to determine where the tissue ends and the electronics begin.”

The team was able to integrate electronics without disrupting tissues as well as create blood vessels with embedded networks that could monitor pH changes within the blood vessels.

According to NewScientist: “Lieber’s team also managed to grow an entire blood vessel about 1.5 centimetres long from human cells, with wires snaking through it. By recording electrical signals from inside and outside the vessel– something that was never possible before– the team was able to detect electrical patterns that they say could give clues to inflammation, whether tissue has undergone changes that make it prone to tumour formation or suggest impending heart disease.”

The next step, according to Lieber, is to try to control cells directly through these embedded networks. If this is possible, then even (mostly) organic organs can be monitored and optimized via computer. There are indications that this is possible. For instance, bioelectronic engineer Klas Tybrandt of Linkoping University in Sweden has created a chip that uses biological ions and chemicals instead of electrons. This sort of chip is ideally suited to integrate with a partially human body because it ‘speaks the same language’ as biological cells – sodium ions and acetylcholine for instance – instead of just using electricity. This sort chip is important because it could directly upgrade the human central nervous system. It could, for instance, restore mobility to paralyzed people. It might also be able to optimize flexibility and dexterity for healthy people. It could also hijack other central nervous system responses – short-circuiting a panic attack for instance – before it ever gets started.

Stay tuned next week for the third and final part where I’ll review some prosthetic limb technology for arms and legs.

Cyborg Possibilities – The Head (Part One)

It has been a while since I last talked about prosthetic devices. For reference, see here, here, and here. This is part one in a several part series, but I intend to put out the whole series over the next week. What are the hottest new things to come out in the last year or so? Let’s start from the top, make our way down, and pretend this is Deus Ex.

Cranium Augmentations:

Direct brain augmentations are still getting off the ground, but there has been a lot of movement in this area.

Take, for instance, the first pacemaker for Alzheimer’s disease implanted in the United States just a few months ago. This little device has already been used for Parkinson’s patients, and could boost both memory and cognitive resilience. The device essentially runs an electric current through the brain in an effort to electronically stimulate the brain into regaining some of its functionality.

Similar electrical stimulation turns out to be really good for pain relief, too. Speaking to the benefits of implants over medication, University of Michigan senior researcher Alexandre DaSilva says:

“Instead of giving more pharmaceutical opiates, we are directly targeting and activating the same areas in the brain on which they work. (Therefore), we can increase the power of this pain-killing effect and even decrease the use of opiates in general, and consequently avoid their side effects, including addiction.”

Non-implant versions of this (called Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation) have shown some success in boosting the capabilities of humans functioning at a normal level. Indeed, the Focus headband is currently awaiting FDA approval. Various less corporate “body hackers” and “grinders” are trying to put together a similar device from readily available parts and believe they can help make these devices more efficient and compatible.

For all this, however, brain implants and brainwave detecting technology are just starting to hit the mainstream. Companies like IntraXon are creating devices that can sense brainwaves and use them for everything from video games to fitness and entertainment. There are even kids toys the use the technology, like the Star Wars Force Trainer.

(If this isn’t the future, I don’t know what is.)

Some very primitive experiments involving telepathy are already being conducted. For better results, the doctor says, he would need to implant the devices into the brain instead of use an external sensor. Admittedly, unless the results were -much- better, it doesn’t seem that the results justify sticking bits of tech in one’s brain just yet.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the various other Brain Control Interfaces (BCIs) that are being developed to control other things, but I’ll talk more about them in relation to various prostheses for limb replacement in another post.

Lest all this brain augmentation seem a little scary, you can take some comfort in the fact that Ray Kurzweil thinks you’re still you, even if you are jacked into a handful of neural implants. The philosophical jury is still out on whole brain replacement, but that’s a little outside the scope of this update.

Outside of the brain proper, implants are also able to restore the ability to hear in some patients. This implant, for instance, replaces the middle ear and uses bones to transmit sound to the inner ear.

“The technique has been designed to treat mechanical hearing loss in individuals who have been affected by chronic inflammation of the outer or middle ear, or bone disease, or who have congenital malformations of the outer ear, auditory canal or middle ear. Such people often have major problems with their hearing. Normal hearing aids, which compensate for neurological problems in the inner ear, rarely work for them. On the other hand, bone-anchored devices often provide a dramatic improvement.”

The implant should be ready implantation by doctors within a year or two.

The ears, it turns out, are also viable power sources. By using nerve cells in the ear, wireless transmitters and other neural implants can function without the need for an additional power source – at least for short periods of time. Reducing the need to charge electrical implants is crucial in making those implants viable in the long term, and so this early research is encouraging.

Eye Augmentations:

A variety of implants, all aimed at restoring sight to the blind, have emerged recently. The MIT Technology Review put together a nice survey of these technologies at the end of 2012.

As they note, currently existing technologies often restore sight, but produce crude, roughly 60 pixel displays. This crude image is clearly better than nothing, but is hardly the sort of advanced technology for which anyone would give up their biological eye.

Yet, better technology is in the works. The next generation plans to nearly triple the resolution – moving from 60 electrodes to 200. An Israeli company has produced a prototype, currently being tested in pigs, that contains over triple that number – 676 electrodes – and believes the technology is scalable up to 5,000 electrodes.

It doesn’t take much to imagine that this technology will eventually give people 20/20 vision – or better. Remember that camera technology in cell phones rapidly moved from cruddy images in the late 1990’s to phones released just last year capable of 41 megapixel and 3-D images. In fifteen years, if the same technological progress holds, bionic eyesight might be much better than biological eyesight.

In addition to restoring sight to the blind, or perhaps upgrading current biological sight with enhanced resolution bionic eyes, a whole host of other technologies can be integrated into bionic eyes. Broadly speaking, augmented reality is the superimposition of additional images or information onto another image. Think, for instance, the yellow first-down line in football broadcasts. In this case, we’re talking about overlaying information onto sight.

While a complete overview of augmented reality is well outside the scope of this article, we are already beginning to see AR technology in devices. The much hyped Google Glass ought to be out this year and promises some amazing experiences.

Other technology integrates contact lenses and glasses to allow the user to focus on objects both near and far with the same eye – something difficult to do with glasses-only technology. Google’s augmented reality game Ingress uses cell phones to overlay a massively multiplayer game onto the real world, requiring participants to go to real world locations to affect in game objects. Linking this sort of augmented reality game with Project Glass or a bionic eye means that the user will be able to experience an entire world that is invisible to those people without the device or implant. Augmented reality, used this way, can literally create an entirely new layer of existence. Indeed, because more than one program can create these realities, multiple worlds can be superimposed onto the same physical space – a sort of virtual multi-worlds hypothesis made true on a single physical plane.

To conclude this portion, take a look at this post, where I explore the possibility of augmented reality in the legal setting (it’s not all fun and games, after all!) and the video below, Sight, which explores the potential for augmented reality and bionic eyes.

Why Lance Armstrong’s Doping Doesn’t Matter

Manny Ramirez. Mark McGwire. Barry Bonds. Baseball is no stranger to superstars using steroids. Sprinter Ben Johnson was disqualified from an Olympic victory decades ago. More likely than not, every sport has players who use ‘performance enhancing drugs’ – it’s just that the player’s performance is not generally enhanced to superstar status. Now Lance Armstrong has admitted to doping, and once again the world is shocked.

For me, the most unfortunate part of this whole story is that Armstrong lied to so many people for so long about doping. He sued people who ‘lied’ about his doping. He put out press statement after press statement about how he was a clean athlete. He threatened teammates and others. It’s the hypocrisy that bothers me, really. I have the same sort of scorn for politicians who blather on about family values and the sanctity of marriage after cheating on their spouse with a gay prostitute the night before. It’s not the sex that bothers me, it’s the lying.

For the moment, let’s put that aside. Armstrong broke the rules. Somewhere in the professional cycling handbook there’s a ‘no doping’ clause, just as there is in most other sports handbooks. As The Verge points out, doping can mean anything from manipulating blood through transfusions and hormones to taking performance enhancing drugs. My contention is this: A ‘no doping’ clause is a terrible rule. Not just because it’s easily circumvented by creating new drugs that aren’t on the official ‘banned’ list, and not just because it encourages athletes who want to cheat to find clever ways to evade the tests. It’s not even terrible because the extent of doping’s impact isn’t very clear. Does anyone really question whether McGwire, Bonds, Johnson, or Armstrong were excellent athletes who would have had great success even if they hadn’t been doping? It’s quite likely that all these athletes would have been very good – perhaps even great – but doping made them better. Maybe just slightly, but it was enough. The rule is stupid, because ‘just slightly’ is about to become greatly.

Whenever I make this contention, people inevitably come back with something along the lines of a fairness argument. It’s not fair to allow doping because these dopers are cheating. They have an unfair advantage. It’s not natural, etc. Yes, dopers are cheaters. If no one was doping, there would be no cheaters. This is clearly the goal of the expensive and invasive testing processes designed to detect dopers and the suspensions and revocations of awards after dopers are caught. It’s a system designed to detect and then punish, with the goal of scaring would-be dopers straight and eliminating cheaters. You know what else eliminates cheaters without the expense, invasive tests, and asterisks next to awards or revocation of medals? Allowing doping. If it’s not against the rules, then there are no cheaters. Instead of all the extraordinary measures taken to combat doping, sports authorities could get rid of cheaters entirely (of the doping variety, anyway) by deleting a couple of paragraphs.

Allowing doping largely takes care of the unfair advantage argument as well. If it’s neither secretive nor banned, then anyone who wants to enhance their performance is free to do so. It might be an advantage, but it’s no longer unfair. But I suspect that people who use the unfair advantage argument generally mean the third thing: That it’s not natural. This, I think, is the worst argument of all.

Can we just get rid of the idea that because something is ‘natural’ that it’s better? That argument is already a fallacy for cripes sake. But it’s not just that the argument is technically wrong – it’s just plain stupid. If an athlete gets sick, we don’t get bent out of shape about them taking antibiotics or Nyquil. Hell, we don’t even get mad if they’re taking steroids as part of a recovery process. Humankind’s distinguishing characteristic is arguably our ability to use tools to improve our condition. We nearly all use drugs when we’re sick. Many of us will huff steroids to get rid of a simple allergy. Is it really that unbelievable that an athlete being paid millions of dollars to do well wants to use a tool to help them become better? Why do we all of a sudden get bent out of shape about their using an unnatural substance to run better when we were fine with that athlete using the same substance to recover from a torn ACL a year prior?

It comes back to the unfair advantage argument. These athletes aren’t ‘pure humans’ or something like this, and so by taking a substance to get better it’s ruining the core of the sport. Consider this argument in two different lights.

The first light is something like: This athlete wouldn’t naturally be this good, so it harms the sport to allow her to take a performance enhancing substance to get better. Let’s take American football as an example. Ryan Fitzpatrick (starting quarterback for the Buffalo Bills) is not as good as Tom Brady (starting quarterback of the New England Patriots). As far as I know, neither of these athletes are illegal dopers, though I suspect they probably use legal substances to get rid of the aches and pains of, say, getting sacked by Brian Urlacher. As far as I know, both QBs put in a ton of work, are smart guys, and are dedicated to their jobs. That is, it isn’t the case that Tom Brady is more motivated than Ryan Fitzpatrick. Certainly the surrounding team helps Tom look better than Ryan, but if we stripped that away and just looked at their statistics in running, passing accuracy and passing distance, I think we’d find that Tom is perhaps a little quicker, a little more accurate, and has a little more arm than Ryan.

Tom, it seems, has slightly better genes than Ryan; at least for the purposes of throwing a football while avoiding large guys trying to tackle him. They’ve both worked hard, put in the effort, but Tom just has a higher capability ceiling than Ryan. It’s how he was born, and that’s fine because it’s natural. But is it really? Isn’t this really the ultimate unfair advantage? There’s nothing about Tom’s greater ability that ‘ruins the game of football’ like we might argue were the case if we found out he’d been doping. In fact, if Ryan started doping and became as good as Tom and then got caught, we’d probably say that it was Ryan who was ruining the game of football by doping, even though he only improved to the same level as Tom. Tom, through random chance, is better at football than Ryan, but Ryan is the bad guy if he uses a tool to get to the same level as Tom. What kind of sense does that make?

The second light to the natural-is-better statement has already been hinted at. Tom Brady, being a great quarterback, doesn’t ruin the game of football. Michael Phelps didn’t ruin swimming because he was perhaps the best swimmer who ever existed. Naturally great athletes don’t ruin their sport, no matter how good they are. Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, and Lance Armstrong didn’t ruin their sports by being great either. When we were unaware of the fact they were doping, they provided a spark to their sport like we hadn’t seen before. These folks were legends because they were good, and arguably revitalized their sport. I’d even argue that most people wouldn’t even care about cycling (to the extent that anyone cares about cycling, anyway) if it weren’t for this Lance Armstrong guy who won a ton of titles. A quarterback who comes in and is better than Tom also isn’t going to ruin the game of football. Great athletes make for great sports, and doping is arguably a way to make great athletes better. Great athletes are the reason we watch the NFL instead of high school football games.

That is exactly why we ought to allow doping. If it’s legal, if it’s not an unfair advantage, and if we get rid of this silly and fallacious notion that natural is better we will have better athletes. Maybe the National Football League, Major League Baseball, and professional cycling don’t want to allow dopers into their leagues. That’s fine. Create a new league where it’s legal.

We are approaching a time where steroid doping is going to look like drinking a cup of coffee in the morning – maybe it provides some advantage, but it’s miniscule. The Daily Mail ran a story a few months ago about amazing Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen and the (extremely unlikely, imo) possibility that she was genetically enhanced. Past that claim, they did a pretty good job of explaining what genetic enhancement could look like. Athletes whose blood carried more oxygen, who are stronger, faster, and have more endurance. Athletes with quicker reflexes and more durable ligaments and bones.  In short, professional athletes doing what they do, but better.

Outside of sports, some people are talking about modifying soldiers to give them superior capabilities. A decade ago, DARPA was looking into the possibility of modifying soldiers “to reduce their susceptibility to stress, sleep deprivation, fatigue, pain and blood loss while enhancing their memory and learning.” DARPA’s “Metabolic Dominance” program was covered by Wired nine years ago – and consider that we were allowed to know about that program. Generally, human enhancement is catching on and becoming more acceptable:

For its part, the National Intelligence Council expects some resistance to biomods. “Moral and ethical challenges to human augmentation are inevitable,” the Council advised. Americans, especially, tend to have deep reservations about changing people’s biology, [Georgetown researcher Andrew] Herr points out. That doesn’t mean they won’t do it. He points out increasing acceptance of cognitive-enhancing drugs among American college students. “Seventy to 80 percent of upperclassman have at least once taken these drugs illegally to get better grades,” he says. “If the younger generation in our country is more comfortable with this, then that would make the use of these kinds of things in society, and by extension the military, very different.” – Wired

Soon, doping isn’t going to mean taking a shot of steroids or getting a blood transfusion, but rewriting our DNA and making it more efficient. As soon as it’s feasible a military, somewhere, is going to embrace it. If genetic modification is acceptable for our military, then it will become acceptable elsewhere too. For instance, what happens the first time a soldier leaves the service and, say, wants to play football again like they did in college? Will the NFL let him in?

If the NFL does let this player in, they’re likely to be much better than other players – that is, after all, the point of the modification. And this athlete will be better in a way that the current doping scandals don’t even begin to approach. It might be like dropping Tom Brady into a high school football match.

That brings us to the second point. If the NFL refuses to allow the player, then surely someone will start another league. This league will be better (more exciting, faster, etc.) than the NFL to the same extent as the NFL is better than high school games. There will be no cheating as far as modifications go because modification will be specifically allowed. The advantage won’t be unfair, and there won’t be some suggestion that the athletes ought to be natural in the sense we mean now.

In less than a decade, someone will take Lance Armstrong’s place. There will be another great cyclist, because sports never stop just because one athlete got busted. Maybe this athlete will be a ‘natural’ and surpass Lance’s abilities because the athlete was lucky enough to have excellent genes. Maybe the athlete will be modified to an extent Lance never imagined. Either way, the sport will go on. Before long, enhanced athletes will become the norm, even if we still have quaint throwback leagues for unenhanced humans. Modification and doping makes sports better, and that is why Lance Armstrong’s doping doesn’t matter.

Some Brief Thoughts On Immortality

It’s difficult to delve far into transhumanist discussion without hearing people talk about immortality. A recent poll on IEET showed that better than three-quarters of IEET readers “did want immortality”. Of the remaining quarter, the largest chunk was concerned about boredom and the next largest (roughly 4% of the total) were concerned about overpopulation. I think that “immortality” needs to be unpacked a bit more.

One sense in which immortality is often tossed around is as a synonym for ending aging. David Brin used it that way in a headline earlier this year, but in the article proper pointed out a couple of important points. First, ending aging does not guarantee immortality, it only prevents one significant cause of death: old age and it’s assorted maladies. Death via foul play, accident, and natural disaster are still very much on the table. Even in this limited sense, however, there are still concerns relating to the capabilities of the human brain, political implications, and unforeseen psychological effects, though it’s unclear whether these concerns can be mitigated by technology or not. I tend to think that probably they can.

Still, immortality as a synonym for ending aging is popular. Professor and author James Miller used it the same way in an article published by H+ earlier this year. Here, he attempts to spell out some ways in which government could help assist end of aging research. PBS also used immortality as a synonym for ending aging in a video just a few weeks ago. This usage is problematic for a couple of reasons.

First, it’s just inaccurate. As Ray Kurzweil points out at 1:12 in the video above, “I can never talk with you and say ‘I’ve done it, I’ve lived forever!'” Immortality is a moving target, one perpetually unreachable, and so the concept of saying that one has achieved immortality is, strictly speaking, nonsense. This is true whether or not the speaker means by immortality ending aging or any other method of prolonging life (mind uploads, robotic bodies, whatever.) Thus, however long we live, we will never know if we’re actually immortal or not.

Second, it’s highly improbable. Given a long enough time span, it is utterly ridiculous to think that one will continue to live. Even if (and this is a whopper of an if) one could live to, and subsequently past, the heat death or collapse of the universe trillions of years into the future, on a large enough timeline even the most unlikely of events becomes a certainty. Thus, almost surely whatever defenses one uses to stave off death will ultimately fail, even a massively redundant combination of defenses.

Third, talking about immortality, while attention grabbing, is a bit grandiose. I think, for a variety of reasons, most people (though not IEET readers, it seems) don’t really want to be immortal. They want to live, understandably, a long time, and healthily, and have a good life. But talking about immortality makes it sound like we’re aiming for a pipe dream; it’s an idea that people can’t really get behind. It might even be an idea, as I’ve tried to suggest, that’s ultimately stark nonsense. But an idea that people can get behind is life extension; perhaps even of the indefinite variety. If we talk about improving life and helping people to live longer, healthier lives, only true deathists will think that that’s a bad idea. It helps us gain popular support (something that, admittedly, we probably ought to cultivate since many of our ideas are just on the edge of [or a bit past] what people are prepared to accept.) That’s not to say that immortality proper is completely off the table, just that it seems to me we ought to use the word only when we really mean immortality and not when we just mean life extension.

One final thought, for when we are talking about actual immortality. For me, the very idea of living even until the end of the universe seems like it would end in immeasurable boredom. Aubrey DeGray has said “I’m not sure I want to live to 100, but I want to make that choice when I’m 99.” This is not a knock down argument; people have suggested that it is at least conceivable that one could change their goals, habits, and pursuits indefinitely and never grow bored. Maybe they can, and I certainly don’t begrudge anyone trying. However, I’m reminded of a story I read in my Death & Dying class in undergrad. Julian Barnes wrote a book called The History of the World In 10 1/2 Chapters, and the last chapter of that book is called “The Dream”. More than most pieces, I think it encapsulates what most of us hope Transhumanism will produce (though there’s a good bit more mechanical augmentation and/or genetic engineering in our version, and less mysticism) yet comes to (what I thought was) a surprising conclusion.You can read it here, with all credit to the original author, for consideration. If nothing else, you ought to read it because it’s clever and entertaining.

Rebuilding The Human Body

I often post articles relating to medical technology, but today I’m going to focus on just those technologies that are available or being researched now that can be implanted into (or onto) humans. Specifically, I am going to talk about several new technologies that promise to restore (and one day replace) faulty biological systems. We will start at the top.

Eyes:

Scientific American reports that scientists have created a retinal implant that can restore sight to some of the blind. Light-detecting cones (called photoreceptors) in the eyes that malfunction cause some forms of blindness. By implanting a tiny 3mm x 3mm chip at the back of the eye, the device can act as artificial photoreceptors and transmit the light that the failing biological photoreceptors no longer do. This implant has been tested on humans (a continuing trial has expanded to five additional cities) but the implant still is not perfect. For one, it requires an external power supply (which sits behind the ear in this model.) For another, only a “narrow field of vision” is restored. Several other companies are also working on solutions.

Already, however, upgrades are in the works. Technology Review reports on a new light-powered implant that promises to remove the external power supply while also granting a much clearer and wider field of vision. However, this device requires relatively bulky external glasses to function (as does another device set for testing next year.) Based on Kurzweil’s exponential predictions, we can expect these devices to double in power and shrink by half in size roughly every two years. By 2020, these devices may very well be fully implantable into a skull, completely replacing the faulty eye.

Not only could one replace the eye, however, the implant could have additional functionality. For instance, Fox News reports on new contact lenses in development for the Department of Defense that offers Heads Up display (HUD) technology in addition to other virtual reality and augmented reality solutions. Other devices, including drones, could transmit real-time battlefield information to each soldier’s implants, giving a true bird’s-eye view of the battlefield and increasing situational awareness immensely. Since this technology is already quite small, integrating it into a false-eye instead of a contact lens ought not to be a very difficult prospect. Of course, this technology is valuable outside of the military as well, so regular folks ought to get a more immersive video game experience and be able to access technology-enhanced vision for their own uses too.

 

Chest:

The eyes are hardly the only organs we can replace; scientists recently implanted an artificial, and pulseless, heart inside a man. Instead of a pulsing supply of blood like a regular heart provides, the new heart supplies a continuous stream of circulating blood.  Although the blood vessels, veins, capillaries, and other blood-transferring structures still limit the force with which blood can be circulated, presumably a device like this could increase blood flow on command when a person is engaged in strenuous activity (and without having to get one’s ‘heart racing’ beforehand.)

Not only is the function of the heart being improved upon, but also scientists have recently created the lightest artificial heart and implanted it into a baby. Doctors in Rome replaced a 16-month old baby’s failing heart with a device that weighs a mere 11 grams (the normal adult heart weighs more than 300 grams.) Further, this device has already gained FDA approval, and so is ready for transplantation into other patients.

Perhaps one way to use these continuous-flow devices is to propel tiny devices for surgery or, later, for delivering drugs and maintaining the general health of our bodies. Scientists at Stanford have invented one such device. This tiny device can move through blood vessels and other parts of the body at the doctor’s direction, cleaning out blood clots and the like. This device has some way to go before it is ready for clinical trials, but does provide proof of concept now.

Arms:

Prosthetic arms have been progressing nicely for several years now (see my Deus Ex article, for instance.) Just recently, however, there have been a number of really exciting improvements in prosthetic arms.

Traditionally (if such a word is appropriate in this sort of fast-moving field) prosthetic arms operate through sensors on the inside of the prosthetic that monitor electrical signals traveling to whatever is left of the patient’s limb; an arm severed above the elbow, for instance, still has muscles that run to the point where the arm was amputated and the sensors detect electrical signals through the skin at the end of the arm. This allowed crude movement at first, and more fine motor control later as the number of sensors increased. There was, however, no sense of feeling in the limb. Now, however, scientists in Vienna have found a way to replace some nerves that originally controlled hand and arm movement and have relocated those nerves to the chest; now the patient, British soldier Andrew Garthwaite, will be able to ‘feel’ through his prosthetic arm when sensors in the arm transmit data to the nerves now relocated into his chest. The movement of nerves ought to also make control of his new arm more fluid and natural. See this video from the BBC:

DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and other agencies are trying to improve upon this technology even more by promoting further nerve growth and more feeling in limbs. Wired magazine also has an article describing the technical challenges; the need for polymers that are inoffensive to biological tissue, yet are conductive and strong.

Finally, whether fitted with a prosthetic limb or not, a direct user interface can be implanted under your skin to control other implants (perhaps some of those for bionic eyes, say.) Controlling other implants is going to have to be done manually, though there are several ways to do that. Some, for bionic eyes, could rely on tracking the user’s field of vision to select icons imposed in the field of vision simply by focusing on them for a moment. Others, like for bionic limbs currently, must be pressed manually. The circuit board in the article provides additional functionality, including audio, touch input, and vibration feedback. Of course, ideally limbs could be controlled by thought alone, though we are some way from that. Researcher Albrecht Schmidt says, for instance: “You can also extend social networks into your body — be connected with others with implants, feel pulses of vibration from others,” he added. “This can get very personal… it’s a way of letting someone under your skin.”

 

Legs:

Prosthetic legs has also been making progress, though there currently seems to be a divide between prosthetics that replace legs (like those mentioned in the previously linked Deus Ex article) and bionic systems that connect to the legs on the outside and provide more functionality.

Esko Biotics recently sold its first pair of these latter types of legs. This system is not an implant, but instead an exoskeleton. This exoskeleton moves the limbs of those whose spine no longer allows the patient to control their own limbs. This is important because not all leg conditions could be solved via implant; it is not that there is anything wrong with a paraplegic’s legs, per se, but instead with the nerves that control them. A bionic apparatus like this, then, provide benefit where simply replacing the legs would not.

KurzweilAI.net reports on a similar exoskeleton that uses a skullcap to read electrical signals from the brain, and then translates those electrical signals into exoskeleton movements for the patient’s legs. This system bypasses the faulty nerves and directly controls the legs very like what an undamaged nervous system would do. However, the signals that reach the scalp and are captured by the cap are not very precise; certainly not as detailed as the original signals. A direct brain-machine interface (or BMI) would be better, but involves currently risky surgery and tinkering with the brain; an always dangerous endeavor.

See the following video for an inspirational video about a paraplegic who completed a marathon (though a number of improvements would be ideal):

For some more implant news, check out this BBC feature that highlights a couple of additional technologies: Can You Build A Human Body?

I will conclude with one last quote from Albrecht Schmidt, who I think captures the moment perfectly: “We’re at a point where implants may become something quite normal,” Schmidt said. “This work will open up discussion as to whether we get implants not for a medical reason, but for convenience.”

Musings On Robot Sex Dolls and Companions

The currents of the internet work in odd ways; this past week the theme seems to be robot sex. Since I have had it on the brain, I figure I will contribute to the trendiness and throw my own 2c in. (Just as a note, I will indicate any link that is explicitly Not Safe For Work).  I am going to blur the line a bit between just discussing robot sex and discussing robot companionship, a somewhat more involved relationship than the purely physical.

It seems to me there are essentially three main questions when it comes to human-robot sex. First, can we build a machine that anyone would want to have sex with? Second, how “intelligent” should that machine be? Third, is this just a fetish for weirdoes?

Technical Feasibility:

Not only can we build robots that people want to have sex with; we already have.

Certainly, there are all manner of devices people use for sexual pleasure, but I want to focus on machines more sophisticated than your average vibrator.

The aptly titled fuckingmachines.com (NSFW) is a pornographic site founded in 2000 that features videos and pictures of women having sex with robots that are not particularly technically advanced, and certainly not on the level of a sophisticated android sex-bot. Think battle bots for the bedroom. Despite the lack of sophistication, these are industrial pieces of hardware. For the home user, somewhat tamed versions of machines built for pleasure are available from mainstream websites like this “Love Glider Sex Machine” from Amazon.com (NSFW).

Andydroids.com (NSFW) has a number of both male and female android dolls for purchase. Although the website is not well constructed, this page (NSFW) seems to show various servos, circuit boards, and otherwise fairly advanced robotics working together to create a somewhat lifelike robot. Less sophisticated, but perhaps more lifelike, are Real Dolls (NSFW), in production since 1996. Real Dolls are as close as I have seen to human-looking sex bots, but are still a long way from indistinguishable from human.

The most realistic robot that I have yet seen (though it is not designed specifically for sex) is Geminoid F from Osaka University’s Professor Hiroshi Ishigurou. This robot can smile, talk, move, and appears very lifelike. According to this video, she even has “basic emotions and behaviors” programmed in. The biggest problems that I can see from the demonstration videos are that (1) the robot might be firmly entrenched in the “uncanny valley” (2) her movements are still a little jerky, and (3) her software is highly advanced, but hardly lifelike.

The uncanny valley is a hypothesis that argues that as robots become more human-like a human observer’s emotional response becomes more positive and empathetic. However, at some point, the robot is –too- lifelike, and a feeling of revulsion quickly replaces the positive and empathetic emotional response. If the robot becomes yet more lifelike, to the point of being indistinguishable from a human, the human observer’s emotional response will again become positive and empathic. Thus, to have a sex bot that anyone would actually want to have sex with, the robot is going to have to be on one side or the other of the uncanny valley; either not particularly lifelike, or extremely lifelike. For a robot that is expected to be more than a sex toy (say, for someone that a human might want to be partnered with) the robot would have to be extremely advanced and nearly indistinguishable from a human being.

Jerky movements can be compensated for by ever-better servos and other methods of movement. Popular Science, for instance, recently reported on Nobuhiro Takahashi and the University of Electro-Communications’ new robotic butt that responds to “slaps, caresses, and finger pokes.”

The video is a little creepy, but shows the sort of fine ‘muscle’ movement that Geminoid F lacks; movement that could be very useful in other parts of the robot as well.

ExtremeTech posted an article about Kissenger, a telepresence robot designed to allow two humans to kiss across great distances through a robot. Although this is hardly more advanced than previous robots, it does suggest that humans are willing to at least attempt to transmit an emotional connection through a robot. In addition, as ET points out, how much of a stretch is it from kissing a robot with another human on the other side to kissing a robot controlled by an A.I.?

This ScienceDaily article highlights synthetic skin that could, one day, allow a robot to feel. Even if we assume that there is no qualia (roughly: experiential consciousness) behind a robot feeling, all the data streams involved in transmitting some kind of feeling could be very useful for triggering micro-movements in various parts of the skin, perhaps even including subtle changes like goose bumps, etc.

Technically, I think we are about there. Some more materials development (in particular a temperature regulation system and a lubrication system would be two huge upgrades that I have not seen) some finer muscle control, and some more realistic design and robots might just climb out of the uncanny valley. However, what about the software side of the robot?

A.I. and Sex-Bots:

The next question is how much artificial intelligence a robot companion ought to have.

On one end of the scale, we have Real Dolls – essentially human-looking mannequins without any sort of robotics or artificial intelligence. These sorts of sex-bots are fine as far as they go for purely physical entertainment, but most people probably will not develop any emotional connection to their toys (especially if they hang their Real Doll by the “removable neck bolt” as their FAQ suggests.)

Towards the middle of the scale, and likely right at the edge of our current capability, we have Geminoid F; a robot with basic emotional scales programmed in that can spontaneously create new reactions to situations. The jerky physical movement is mimicked by the jerky emotional reactions; they are broadly appropriate, but are not exactly finely tuned enough to seem human.

Ideally, it seems like the perfect robot companion ought to have emotions that at least mimic human emotions very well; the ability to smile, wink, and bite their lip at just the right time and have something that at least seems plausibly like a twinkle in their eye. Perhaps complex human-based personality profiles could be uploaded that allow the robot to seem very much like a human being, albeit with customizable settings for each individual user to account for differing tastes. Maybe the robot could exhibit this personality outside of the bedroom as well; transforming a sex robot into something more like a personal companion or even a partner.

However, it seems important to limit both sex robots and companion robots to non-conscious levels of intelligence. Most importantly, because I think that cognitive criteria are the defining hallmarks of a “person,” and that a robot with actual consciousness ought to be considered a person. If we think it is wrong to keep people for sex toys (and we certainly do) then I cannot see the same behavior being justifiable for conscious robots.

However, even outside of the moral personhood angle, a conscious robot would have something like free will, or at least clearly articulable preferences. If the goal of a sex-robot or companion robot is to have the ideal partner, then we certainly don’t want our robot telling us ‘no’ or ‘I’m not in the mood’ (unless we program that in for some sort of more realistic behavior.) We want to be able to program in our individual desires and preferences which make the robot ideal for each of us, and a robot with free will would presumably be overwriting our preferences with their own fairly often. A robot with true artificial intelligence would not have many advantages over a human partner.

In short, much like the physical problem of the uncanny valley, we want a robot intelligent enough to seem human-like without actually being conscious enough to be a person.

Who Would Want A Sex Robot?

We can dispense with the obvious fairly quickly; probably people with intimacy issues, various kinks and fetishes, and those who just want sex without everything else that often comes with it would be first in line for a very realistic sex-bot. ExtremeTech recently wrote an article about robot prostitutes that argues that robots could take over the prostitution industry (wouldn’t a sex-bot be cheaper over the long run, after all?) in addition to lessening human trafficking, pedophilia, and other sex crimes.

I think, however, a compelling case can be made that more than just the socially awkward and sexually deviant (in the clinical sense) would appreciate a sex-robot. Dick Pelletier recently wrote a piece for IEET where he highlights a number of authors who have argued just that, including tech luminary Ray Kurzweil: “Author Ray Kurzweil says tomorrow’s ‘droids could quickly learn to flesh out our positive feelings, providing an addictive allure almost impossible for us to resist.” Indeed, with ruthless, cunning efficiency a robot with sophisticated enough software could read various biometric signals that humans give off, allowing him or her to customize their personality to the preferences of their human owners that the owner may not even know that they have. Moreover, like any good device, the robot would presumably become more accurate over time, and change as their owner does. This sort of adaptive learning is an ingenious solution to forcing the operator to think of all of their own preferences and program them into their robot companion; something humans have a difficult enough time expressing to each other.

The allure of the perfect seducer / seductress is vast, and not to be underestimated. No matter how fabulous your human partner is, there is bound to be –something- about him or her that is not 100% ideal. Maybe they snore. Maybe they like to cut you off while you are talking. Maybe they just forget to put the toilet seat down. Whatever it is, trivial or serious, there is some way (and, likely, a number of ways) that they are not ideal. Of course, humans overlook these qualities in other humans all the time during relationships; coping with each other’s idiosyncrasies and quirks (which might even become endearing after a while) is largely what human relationships are about, and provide an extra level of intimacy in a relationship. Nevertheless, even if your human partner –is- wonderful and you cannot think of a single thing you would change about them, they are still only one personality.

An interesting implication of robot-companions is that there is little reason why multiple personalities could not be installed within one physical frame, and those personalities could be changeable at will. Maybe you want a sultry professional for an office meeting, a wild party girl for a Halloween party, a tomboy for a Super Bowl party and a quiet intellectual for a lazy Sunday afternoon. Perhaps you want a nice gentleman for dinner, a jock for the pool, and a real alpha-male for bed later. A robot companion can switch effortlessly into different personalities, each tailored to your specific desires. These personalities could even be ported into different physical frames for those who desire a differing physical appearance every now and again.

Beyond the physical and personality advantages, there could be greater emotional security from a companion bot as well. From Dick’s IEET article: “A robot partner would be the perfect mate, never showing boredom or being inattentive, Levy says. You will always be the focus and centerpiece of their existence and you never need worry about their being unfaithful or going astray, because loyalty and being faithful are embedded in their programming.” With a divorce rate hovering somewhere around 50% in the United States, human relationships seem to be the emotional equivalent of a coin flip (and subsequent relationships fare even worse.) Never mind the cost of alimony and child support.

In short, I think that with advanced enough A.I. (but not too advanced, per the above) sex or companion robots could very well become the ideal mates for humans. Human-robot relationships could be purely sexual, or they could become more like true companions. Either way, such human-robot interactions do not necessarily mean the end of human-human interactions, or inevitable extinction for lack of reproduction. There are, after all, plenty of children to adopt, and there is little reason to think that the technology involved in creating children will fail to advance as rapidly as other technologies.

We are still a long way from this sort of interaction, but the upsides seem considerable.

Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs

Sorry for the delay between posts; life ambushed me for a few weeks there.

I haven’t talked about general breakthroughs in medicine recently, and I have a considerable backlog of cool stories on the topic, so let’s explore that a bit today. These breakthroughs aren’t necessarily transhumanist in nature, but they certainly all contribute to the general goal of better healthcare and are but a few steps away from some truly amazing technologies. So, without further ado, the Top 10 Medical Stories in My Queue:

10) The explosion of personalized medicine. The Wall Street Journal wrote a piece earlier this year about the idea of a “doctor in your pocket.” The idea is to have cheap, quick, accurate medical screening on a device that people can carry with them. Daniel Kraft has been very vocal about the explosion of this sort of technology in a limited sense, and Peter Diamandis recently announced an X-Prize for essentially the same concept; a lab on a chip that can diagnose a patient better than a group of board certified physicians. While diagnosis itself is not necessarily transhuman, clearly other transhumanists are interested in the idea, and if successful this sort of technology ought to keep people healthier for longer. With a $10 Million prize pool, there ought to be plenty of incentive to stuff Watson into a cell phone and make med students everywhere cry crocodile tears. The next step: An AI doctor in every house.

9) Likely to be included in these new personalized medicine machines: A cancer sniffing sensor for early detection. Gizmodo has a great article detailing what NASA’s been up to recently, including sensors that can detect toxins in the air and cancer. The really cool thing about this sensor is that it’s virtually production ready and can be attached to a cell phone right out of the box; that is, this isn’t a theoretical device, it’s all but here. Despite all the grumping about the government that frequently goes on, two federal programs (the Department of Homeland Security is the other) are pushing hard to get this technology into circulation. DHS, however, is mostly interested in the toxin and bomb chemical detecting properties while, for our purposes, the cancer detecting ability is probably more interesting (although if bomb making chemicals -are- detected near my cell phone, I sure wouldn’t mind a heads-up!) I don’t know what technology this sensor is using exactly, but it seems reasonable to include the sensor that MIT recently reported on that detects lung cancer through a breath test at an astounding 83% accuracy. There is room for improvement, as trained dogs can detect lung cancer with 98% accuracy, but as Gizmodo quipped, at least you won’t have to carry a Labrador around in your pocket.

8) Intelligent pills. Nature ran a story about them earlier this year, and both Scientific American and Pop Bioethics picked up the story long before I got around to it. The pills will have included along with the medicine a placebo that houses a small sensor. When the sensor interacts with stomach acid, the current will transmit information a very short distance; ideally to a Band-Aid-like device that can be worn on the skin and will measure heart rate, respiration, temperature and the like. This skin sensor, in turn, could wirelessly transmit health information to your doctor, allowing them to check in on your vitals without you needing to visit the office. If you frequently forget to take your pills, (a “problem area” in current medicine) your doctor (or, more likely, a digital secretary) can give you a quick call to remind you. Other pills that include cameras and other sensors are also in development, though those probably wouldn’t be used outside of particular contexts.

7) Wirelessly controlled ‘pills’. Science Daily posted an article about a month ago claiming that MicroCHIPS Inc. successfully tested a device that, once implanted into a patient, can deliver medication when it receives a wireless signal to dispense the drug. The device delivered amounts of the drug comparable to an injection (without needles, which I’m a fan of). Like the pills that alert the doctor when they’ve been taken, these devices help to ensure patient compliance with the doctor’s proscribed drug regimen. Unlike those pills, these devices can automatically deliver the proper drug dose, requiring the patient to neither swallow pills nor suffer injections. Although the initial device only carried 20 doses of the drugs, the final product ought to have hundreds. Further clinical trials will follow.

6) Continuing the pill trend, scientists are working on a special type of aspirin that doesn’t cause ulcers. Oh yeah, and it seems to fight cancer, too. In mice, at least, the drug fights colon, lung, breast, prostate, pancreas and blood cancers. Although the drug seems years away from human clinical trials, the lack of side effects and the bolstered cancer fighting properties show a lot of promise for the future.

5) Rounding out the pill discussion, researchers at Oxford University have discovered something curious about common beta-blockers, normally used to treat heart disease. They seem to also lesson racist associations. Although the sample size was small (18 white college students) the results occurred at a “statistically significant” rate as compared to those who received the placebo. The current theory is that the beta blockers affect the portion of the central nervous system that regulates fear and emotional responses. If the study is repeatable, interesting ethical questions arise about medicating out racist beliefs.

4) Chips for humans. MSNBC reports that the FDA recently approved an RFID chip for humans. Although similar technology has been used for years in pets to help reunite lost pets and their owners, human trials go rather a lot more slowly. There’s also some security issues to work out; RFID isn’t the most secure technology in the world (though it does take someone with some know-how to get to the data, and they need to be in fairly close proximity.) Ultimately, I imagine these sorts of chips will carry a lot more than patient information; credit card info, for instance, has been tried elsewhere in the world and offers a unique way to pay. Either the cost will have to come down from its $150-$200 price point, or the functionality is going to have to drastically increase to justify the costs.

3) Someday, we might be able to replace limbs with bionic equivalents that don’t break, in the meantime we’re stuck with the bones we have. Well, that and some new fracture putty if the Department of Defense has their way (those pesky government types again!) The DoD has commissioned research that already is beginning to bear fruit; the fractures bones of rats healed enough within two weeks that they were up and running around again. Next step; pigs and sheep (sheep bones have already been restored within a month.) Following those trials, the putty may be farmed out to the university veterinarian clinic and, if that goes well, to human trials afterwards. It’s not quite the nutrient bath from the movie Wanted, but it’s better than a cast for months.

2) While your bones are being healed by putty, the doctors might as well patch up your internal organs with some new gummy adhesive. Researchers from UCSD have developed a self-healing gummy (meaning the gummy repairs itself when it’s torn or broken) that becomes super adhesive when it comes into contact with acid; acid like that, say, that resides within the stomach. Perhaps the gummy will be useful for organs other than the stomach, but it seems well suited already to help treat stomach wounds.

1) Finally, for the poor sap that’s -really- undergone some punishment, there’s one last piece of tech that’ll help put Humpty Dumpty back together again. San Diego start-up company Organovo is printing muscles, layer by layer, and then placing it into a mold that allows the muscle to grow into something just like that which comes out of a human being. So far, Organovo has printed cardiac muscle, blood vessels, and lung tissue. Right now the company is focusing on creating tissue identical to natural human tissue so that scientists can experiment on the tissue without having to experiment on attached humans, but it hopes to use the same technology to print whole organs for transplant in the future. Between these last three technologies, then, even the worst accident victim ought to be in pretty good shape in the near(ish) future.

Thanks for sticking with me through the hiatus; the next post ought to be coming more quickly next time.