My LTUE Paper

By no means are all facets of "humangineering" repugnant. A trip to Walter-Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. will quickly dispel any consideration that viable cybernetic replacement limbs could possibly be "evil". Likewise, ask the parents of a child dying of leukemia or cystic fibrosis if gengineering is moving too fast. I doubt they'll say that the ethical concerns outweigh the chance of saving the life of the one they love.

However, in the realm of fiction considerations are made of the ultimate end point of opening the floodgates of humangineering research, development, and application. Super cybernetic soldiers are de rigeur in the military science fiction branch of the space opera genre. Less militant novels and stories cataloging the hazards of unrestrained genetic manipulation populate the shelves at bookstores like hyperactive rabbits. In fact, the phobia of gengineering is so profound that an assumption of the failure of such efforts is often rolled casually into stories without hardly a conceptual burp or pause to explain on the author's part. In fact, a significant subset of slipstream genre stories conceive of worlds where fantasy creatures are created from the humangineered manipulation of willing or unwilling subjects.

The word "fear" effectively wraps up many concerns about humangineering and for good reason. We are at the infancy stage in these technologies despite the many decades of dreaming and research. The chances of doing harm are far more likely than the potential rewards of doing good. Today's genetic researchers are the Madam Curies of the present, examining radium samples with no idea of how the radiation is tearing apart not only their own cellular structure but conceivably that of the entire human race.

And yet, despite this obvious peril, the research will continue and technologies will grow, and all the poorly formulated government regulations or half-informed, media-manipulated public outrage in the world cannot stop it. Human beings will move forward down this path. Time is the only variable.

What, then, is the foreseeable future from the lay person's point of view? Where are we now and where will our journey into the very definition of "human" take us? Fiction has gone there already and points out many of the hurdles we and our descendents will face. From the subtle and inferred eugenics of Card's Ender's Game to the far more recent heavily modified soldiers of Scalzi's Old Man's War, many have looked forward with emotions ranging from starry eyed hope to abject horror. The truth must, by definition, lie somewhere in between.

The fundamental tenet of humangineering is a commitment to "improving" the human animal. This goes far and away beyond such simple goals as "replacing" or "regrowing" a lost limb or curing a genetic anomaly. In fact, one of the common assumptions of "improvement" in fiction is the addition of nanotech devices or genetic manipulation that halts and destroys cancer before it starts almost as a precursor to any other changes. However, before reworking the human chassis for good or ill, we must first clear many hurdles that bar the way to mere "functionality".

Case in point: cybernetics. People have long dreamed of coming up with artificial limbs that could be controlled by the host body as if they were simply the original limb come back to life. Right behind that concept, however, is the "oh, neat" idea of a man with a new "bionic" arm who now has the capability of crushing bowling balls with his fingertips or ripping hatches off tanks on the battlefield.

What I find amazing is how many people forget that just because an arm or even an entire modified person is capable of lifting a tank, there's no guarantee that the rest of the person or even the ground they stand on will hold up to actions like that. Basic physics doesn't change just because we modify one aspect of the system and it's entirely possible that your bionic soldier will end up in a bog over his head if picks the wrong place to employ his capabilities.

However, just hitting the first basic goal of functionality is a far event horizon for us now. Here are a few of the fundamental engineering and medical issues that come to a layman's mind after only a few minutes of focused thought:

1.                  Neurologic interface

2.                  Robust power supply

3.                  Rejection of implants

4.                  Sensory matrix creation and compatibility

5.                  Exterior appearance, texture, and temperature

6.                  Cancer fallout from genetic manipulation

7.                  Unintended consequences of ignoring "junk" DNA affects

Let's pause here to consider just these few issues.

The holy grail of artificial limbs as heralded by research being done in places like Johns Hopkins University, MIT, and the like, is connecting a cybernetic prosthesis to the human "circuit board" and allowing the mind to control the technology much as it did the muscle in the organic limb. This is called "neurologic interface", and it's nothing at all as easy as picking up a PLC controller at an industrial supply house and programming it to work on an assembly line in a factory.

First off, the way the mind actually controls its limbs is based an organic anolog system generated by growth in situ that is run via nerves, not wires. People like to fall back on an analogy that nerves function like circuits in a computer, but they don't. Because of the vagaries of individual brains and the way we as humans grow and develop plus how we can't really make wires and nerves talk to each other without inflicting pain, the best researchers have been able to do is extrapolate broad "intentions" to move from changes in brain activity or watch for twitching muscles related to limb movement near where severed arms or legs used to be. Actually reading the raw data from the brain patterns and converting it into specific orders for "actuator A to contract by five millimeters while actuators D and J extend by the relative amount required to raise pressure between the grip pads on manipular digits three and one to fifteen grams per centimeter squared" is currently impossible. 

That does not mean infeasible, however. In fact, given the huge potential impact on the medical industry, a great deal of money and effort is being put into developing the interfaces and paradigms that will eventually allow technology to "read" minds, initially for actuating prostheses, but it will open the curtains shielding the other areas of the mind when it does.

Which, of course, rips the top off the can of worms labeled "technical mind reading" and all the pros and cons that go with it. Concerns such as, at a start, being able to extract information from people without the need of physical coercion or – perhaps – bothering with one of those pesky warrant things.

Beyond interfacing with a prosthetic of any kind, we also need to consider how to power it. Inorganic technology does not run off sugar, water, and oxygen like we do. Nor is it truly self-repairing (without resorting to the latest popular science fiction Deus Ex magic wand, nanotechnology, anyhow). Yet power storage and conversion are the main hurdles past control that cybernetics must overcome, a problem that the technology shares with things like electric cars. Basically, the energy density of available fuels, fuel cells, or batteries is insufficient to power sizable near-human replacements based on current-model electro-mechanical actuation, let alone drive a super-modified soldier into combat. Nor is anyone likely to be too eager to fuel an entire market of cyborgs with micro-nukes.

Which brings to mind the amusing idea of a nuclear-powered therapeutic cyborg attempting to board a plane for the Bahamas for a little well-deserved rest and relaxation. Just imagine a group of TSA agents having to deal with the yellow and black nuke symbols on the patient's prosthetics and you are sure to get a chuckle. Then put the poor man or woman on a scale with someone checking their allowable baggage weight limit and you can see yet another potential downside aspect of the cybernetic side of humangineering.

In the end, the solution to the energy problem will present itself in either very high energy density batteries or in "chemical converter" technology (probably on the silicon-microwafer scale) that will convert the same chemicals that fuel our bodies into a form of energy that the cybernetic appliances can use. The "chemical converter" technology will likely emerge as a winner, but will get cyborgs banned from all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets across the country.

This assumes, however, the electro-mechanical aspect of cybernetics as originally envisioned by Masamune et al in Japanese genre media. In all probability, the line between cybernetics and organics will blur until the foreign addition to the body is little more than a modified and extrapolated extension of the system to which it is being introduced, up to and including being genetically "keyed" so that it does not set off an immune reaction with the remaining original host organics.

Thus we raise the issue of rejection. Most all people even vaguely aware of organ transplants know that rejection – the attack of the host's immune system against the donated tissue or foreign material – is the chief killer of patients following surgery. Actually, the use of immuno-suppressant drugs is the chief cause since the lack of a strong immune system opens the door for life-threatening infections, but the relationship is direct and clear. Thus, a super-cyborg soldier or assassin would not be of much use if he could never go outside for fear of literally catching his death of cold now, could he?

This is one of the first obvious areas where cybernetics and gengineering must interface. The two disciplines will be needed in order to convince a patient's body not to attack the foreign material being introduced into the realm of the circulatory system. Think of this as a need for a biological "identification friend or foe" (IFF) that will have to be set up within the body of every cyborg whose interfacing and prostheses actually bridge the skin to blood barrier.

Once you have rejection licked as a developmental challenge, the next goal would be to actually have a sensory paradigm within the cybernetics that would mirror or replace the original nerve endings that the patient possessed. To do this properly, you also must first understand the neurologic interface. With that and rejection under control, you then must come up with a fabrication method and sensory paradigm that allows you to "grow" sensation back into the patient's system without accidentally connecting the pain inputs to the tickle, the heat inputs to the pain, or the touch inputs into the heat. I say "grow" because using discrete inorganic sensors will never give a patient the depth of feeling that normal skin has. Thus a new sensor paradigm is required on the nanotech level of fabrication that can replace or augment the human sensory definition set.

Those issues, though, are like the foundation of a house built to replace a previous one of a different design. In the realm of limb replacement, the goal is for the new "house" to be identical to the old one on the outside, regardless of how different the plumbing and heating are behind the siding and under the shingles. Thus, the development of artificial skin or a specifically designed sustainable organic replacement becomes critical both for the patient's morale and for easing their return to society. Texture, temperature, and appearance all go hand and hand in creating an illusion of normalcy when a very traumatic, major event has occurred. And, in opening consideration of the engineering of external components, engineers will take the opportunity to "improve" durability and functionality there, as well. Thus a war of design balance will occur between perceived advantages and the desire for the final product to blend as seamlessly as necessary with society.

In the earlier discussion of rejection and the previous comment on how fiction often assumes anti-carcinogenic systems in future cybernetics and genetic manipulation, we glance across the true likely outcome of genetic manipulation: incurred cancer. The outcome most likely in any genetic modification is damage rather than improvement and cancer is the most obvious and frightening outcome of such damage.

Our current understanding of the genesis of carcinogenic factors in the human body is incomplete. Some causes are obvious. Others fail to be repeatable. Cancers can be aggressive or slow, mestastize throughout a body or clump into a benign and easily extracted mass. One thing is for certain, though: there is no one cause nor one cure for cancer and there probably won't be in the future, either.   Accounting for all cancers with one technological "big stick" is almost laughable in concept, although future generations may actually achieve such a wonder. In considering the control of cancer projected forward by fiction, however, authors would do well to remember the fundamental complexity facing today's cancer researchers and not blithely challenge the reader's suspension of disbelief by proffering a "silver bullet" cure-all.

Congruent with the concern about gengineering actually spawning more cancer than it solves is the reality of what many researchers considered "junk" DNA at one time. Everyone hailed the mapping of the human genome not so long ago, but the "mapping" is not true understanding of what those genes do. There are, in fact, a great many genetic markers that, at first glance, seem to serve no purpose for the animal as a whole and were originally referred to with the "junk" moniker. In the fullness of time, though, researchers have found that this material that was almost disregarded as useless serves a similar purpose to the trace elements added to iron in order to make the various kinds of steel. Thus the "junk" DNA "influences" the overall human animal and the effects of every gene must be taken into account before true "improvement" can be made. After all, what good is extreme disease or environmental resistance if you contract a fatal genetic disability because one particular enzyme stopped being generated after your upgrade?

Please note, that the issues I have discussed here relate primarily to the first step in cybernetics: replacement. When you take the next natural humangineering step toward enhancement, new hurdles appear. Increasing the strength in a set of limbs, for example, induces higher levels of stress on the body as whole in terms of mass, acceleration, and force transmittal. You cannot "improve" one component in a body for strength or power and not support that change on a systemic level without fear of functionality repercussions. To upgrade the strength and power of a human being, you must upgrade the entire organism to bear the load.

But enhancement is not just about strength. Rather, the spread of our awareness of the virtual world fostered by the explosive growth of the Internet has proven that many other forms of enhancement can be done. Human beings who carry data processing "handlers" inside their skulls illustrate not only the previous concerns about interface and rejection, but also open Pandora's Box with regards to what we perceive as "reality". For once you add a layer of processing between the mind and the outside world, what does reality become? This is a recurrent theme in the Ghost in the Shell works by Masamune which draws into focus the fundamental question of "What is human?" in terms of our perceptions, let alone posing the question from a physical modification standpoint.

The true path of humangineering, therefore, is not limited to attempting to re-create long-ago TV's "Six Million Dollar Man". Instead, what will eventually emerge from the seeming disparity of cybernetics (as currently embodied by prosthetics and robotic research), the infant science of nanotechnology, and the looming promise and terror of gengineering is a fusion wherein human beings will be treated as malleable technology platforms to be modified for purposes not yet conceived, but already includes concepts of modifying humans for extraterrestrial environments as popularly envisioned by Clifford D. Simak instead of bothering with that whole "terraforming thing".

What may well define our humanity in the future could be how easy we make it to reverse humangineering modifications when the job is done or the purpose served – or, perhaps, whether our descendents will even care.

·        Old Man's War by John Scalzi (Completely humangineered soldier bodies)

·        Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (Eugenics to improve intelligence, reaction)

·        Ghost in the Shell by Shirow Masamune (Virtual reality and EM cybernetics)

·        City by Clifford D. Simak (Humanoforming as opposed to terraforming)

·        Gust Front by John Ringo (Humangineering modification of soldiers)

·        "neuologic interface for prosthetic control"

·        "junk DNA not so junk"

·        "cancer risks of genetic engineering"

·        "cybernetics versus prosthesis"

·        "Johns Hopkins University prosthetics research"

·        "DARPA prosthetics"

·        "DARPA cybernetics"