Genetic
Manipulation
Gene therapy, in the
sense of the delivery of 'good' or 'curative' dna into humans in
order to cure or ameliorate genetically-caused conditions, is also
already widely practised. It affects only the 'somatic' dna rather
than the 'germ-line' dna, and is therefore not transmissible to
children. It is a blunt weapon, and perhaps will never be otherwise,
because of the difficulty of replacing all of the errant dna in
a body on a continuing basis. For some localized conditions affecting
only specialized types of cell, that can happen, but in most situations
treatment has to be ongoing and is never more than partial.
Existing gene therapy
could therefore be seen as a stop-gap measure pending the application
of germ-line therapy at the embryonic stage. The problems in introducing
germ-line therapy are by now at least as much ethical as practical.
What is acceptable today in therapeutic terms, such as in vitro
fertilization and the selection of early-stage embryos to head off
diseases and to select the sex of a child, stops short at the 'improvement'
of the human genome on a more systematic basis. There is plenty
of customer demand for it, though: it is reported that 115,000 women
have already given birth to children resulting from in vitro
fertilization in the US alone. In Denmark, more than 4% of babies
are said to be born after in vitro fertilization.
The techniques for
more direct interference with the dna of an embryo already exist,
and have been tested in animals. There are various techniques that
can be used: A 'knockout' experiment, so-called, involves the creation
and manipulation of a DNA construct in vitro, with an alteration
to the targeted gene (or dna segment) which prevents its expression.
The construct is then taken up by embryonic stem cells, where the
engineered copy of the gene replaces the organism's own gene. These
stem cells are injected into blastocysts, which are implanted into
surrogate mothers.
Rats that glow in the
dark because of the embryonic implantation of luminous jelly-fish
dna is one headline case of genetic manipulation. But scientists
and legislators are hesitating before permitting changes to be made
to human embryos. Many of them are completely against it, so that
while it seems a certainty that it will come to pass, it is difficult
to know the time-scale.
Pre-conception screening
(PGD) for a variety of genetic disorders is already available. PGD
can be used to screen for many conditions including Downs Syndrome,
Trisomy 21, Tay Sachs Disease, hemophilia A and B, Gaucher's Disease,
Sickle Cell Anemia, and others. The next step may be for clinics
to start offering 'cleaning-up' services to couples in which rogue
dna would be identified before conception, and deleted, modified
or neutered if it got through to a particular embryo after conception.
Where in vitro fertilization is offered, the 'cleaning-up'
can evidently be performed before implantation.
Not all of the objections
to techniques such as in vitro fertilization are ethical.
There are practical dangers involved, especially if single male
sperm are injected into a female egg (intracytoplasmic sperm injection
- ICSI), or if multiple fertilized embryos are implanted into the
woman. The long-term consequences of bypassing nature in this way
are not yet known, and the situation is not helped by great uncertainty
over the legal status both of the clinics where such operations
are performed and of their supervisory agencies, which date from
an earlier time and do not have the right regulatory equipment to
cope with such rapidly advancing technologies. In the US, in particular,
Congress has struggled to come up with legislation in this area.
In September, 2006,
President George Bush used his veto power for the first time in
his presidency to strike down an embryonic stem-cell research bill,
saying it "crossed a moral boundary."
The
bill, which the Senate had passed 63-37, would have loosened the
restrictions on federal funding for stem-cell research. House Republican
leaders tried to override the veto, but their vote was 235 to 193,
short of the necessary two-thirds majority. "This bill would
support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding
medical benefits for others," said Bush. "It crosses a
moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect. So I vetoed
it."
Absent
fundamental legislation, which would be immensely difficult to pass,
the use of federal funding is one of the few weapons available to
the Congress in the area of medical research. The rapid growth in
the use of in vitro fertilization and related research
has been driven by consumer demand, with baby-hungry parents willing
to pay substantial sums to get a child, cutting out the government
since its money is not required.
Such
regulation as there is in the US has come from private-sector organizations.
Insurance companies, who routinely refuse to pay for IVF but often
end up paying for post-natal care of multiple births, pushed the
American Society for Reproductive Medicine to issue guidelines (in
2005) aimed at reducing the chances of multiple births. For younger
patients, ASRM recommended transferring at most two embryos to the
mother's womb; older women, whose embryos are less likely to implant
in the uterus and begin developing, can receive as many as five.
European
countries seem less hamstrung than the US, and have legislated to
introduce similar rules based on research conducted by Van Blerkom
and others in the late 1990s showing how to select the most viable
embryos and reduce the number that is transferred to the mother.
But choosing embryos requires painstaking attention, often at odd
hours of the night, and American fertility clinics have been reluctant
to invest in technologists who can perform it.
In
England, Parliament created a licensing board, the Human Fertilization
and Embryology Authority (HFEA) in 1991, which has maintained tight
control over developing genetic technologies. In one recent case,
a family with four boys that had lost their young daughter in a
fire asked to be allowed to choose female embryos for IVF. HFEA
refused. Of course, the family just has to get on Easy-Jet and go
to Denmark.
Among
the aspects of genetic engineering which are the subject of regulation
in one country or another are:
- The
number of eggs that can be fertilised;
-
The number of embryos that can be transferred;
-
The use of cryopreservation;
-
The use of third party reproduction;
-
The ability to perform tests or interventions on the embryo.
In 2004, the government of Italy, presumably under pressure from
the Vatican, made it a crime to freeze human embryos or to perform
pre-implantation diagnosis.
So
the picture is messy, and crying out for over-arching, global guidelines.
Doubtless they will be developed in due course; but technology is
moving so fast that rule-making will have a hard time catching up
with actuality.
The
first 'in vitro' babies are now 28 years old, and the volume
of IVF births is such that statistically significant studies will
shortly begin to show whether or not fears of damage to the germ-line
are justified, especially when IVF children themselves have children.
Remote Control By Monkeys
In
2003, Researchers at Duke University Medical Center taught rhesus
monkeys to consciously control the movement of a robot arm in real
time, using only signals from their brains and visual feedback on
a video screen. The scientists said that the animals appeared to
operate the robot arm as if it were their own limb. The scientists
and engineers said their achievement represents an important step
toward technology that could enable paralyzed people to control
"neuroprosthetic" limbs, and even free-roaming "neurorobots"
using brain signals. In previous research, Nicolelis and his colleagues
demonstrated a brain-signal recording and analysis system that enabled
them to decipher brain signals from owl monkeys in order to control
the movement of a robot arm. The researchers chose frontal and parietal
areas of the brain because they are known to be involved in producing
multiple output commands to control complex muscle movement.
In
the initial behavioral experiments, the researchers recorded and
analyzed the output signals from the monkeys' brains as the animals
were taught to use a joystick to both position a cursor over a target
on a video screen and to grasp the joystick with a specified force.
After the animals' initial training, however, the researchers made
the cursor more than a simple display -- now incorporating into
its movement the dynamics, such as inertia and momentum, of a robot
arm functioning in another room. While the animals' performance
initially declined when the robot arm was included in the feedback
loop, they quickly learned to allow for these dynamics and became
proficient in manipulating the robot-reflecting cursor, found the
scientists.
The
scientists next removed the joystick, after which the monkeys continued
to move their arms in mid-air to manipulate and "grab"
the cursor, thus controlling the robot arm.
"The
most amazing result, though, was that after only a few days of playing
with the robot in this way, the monkey suddenly realized that she
didn't need to move her arm at all," said Nicolelis. "Her
arm muscles went completely quiet, she kept the arm at her side
and she controlled the robot arm using only her brain and visual
feedback. Our analyses of the brain signals showed that the animal
learned to assimilate the robot arm into her brain as if it was
her own arm." Importantly, said Nicolelis, the experiments
included both reaching and grasping movements, but derived from
the same sets of electrodes.
"We
knew that the neurons from which we were recording could encode
different kinds of information," said Nicolelis. "But
what was a surprise is that the animal can learn to time the activity
of the neurons to basically control different types of parameters
sequentially. For example, after using a group of neurons to move
the robot to a certain point, these same cells would then produce
the force output that the animals need to hold an object. None of
us had ever encountered an ability like that."
Also
importantly, said Nicolelis, analysis of the signals from the animals'
brains as they learned revealed that the brain circuitry was actively
reorganizing itself to adapt. "It was extraordinary to see
that when we switched the animal from joystick control to brain
control, the physiological properties of the brain cells changed
immediately. And when we switched the animal back to joystick control
the very next day, the properties changed again.
"Such
findings tell us that the brain is so amazingly adaptable that it
can incorporate an external device into its own 'neuronal space'
as a natural extension of the body," said Nicolelis. "Actually,
we see this every day, when we use any tool, from a pencil to a
car. As we learn to use that tool, we incorporate the properties
of that tool into our brain, which makes us proficient in using
it." Said Nicolelis, such findings of brain plasticity in mature
animals and humans are in sharp contrast to traditional views that
only in childhood is the brain plastic enough to allow for such
adaptation.
RCRs, RCCs and Eclones: Their Development, Capabilities
and Uses
As
described above, experiments involving the control of remote robotic
machines or bionic assemblies by primate brains took place as early
as the first decade of the 21st century, but they typically involved
the implantation of electrodes or the use of scanning techniques
to detect and amplify neural events.
The
first demonstration of remote cognitive control by a human brain
using a neural bionic implant took place in 2014, utilizing a miniaturized
radio transmitter self-powered by heat from the body. Other competing
technologies included the use of nanobots in the bloodstream to
detect and transmit neural events, 'headsets' similar to ear-mounted
mobile phone transceivers which used magnetism to detect neural
events, and straightforward electrode implantation with a connecting
'port' on the side of the head.
By
2020, such technologies were routinely used for the control of prosthetic
devices and remote agents such as household appliances and robots,
and by the mid-2020s, two-way communication was becoming normal,
employing receiving devices in or pointing towards appropriate parts
of the brain (secondary visual, aural and tactile neural processing
regions). 'Avatars' in VICs (Vicarious Internet Communities) were
thus able to communicate directly with their controlling human brains.
Although
quasi-human electronic brains had existed from the late 2010s onwards,
they were too large and expensive for most uses, and it was not
until the first nano-scale bio-electronic self-replicating assembly
was demonstrated in 2023 that the way was opened for human-scale
cognition to be used as a routine feature of free-standing robotic
agents. A combination of this technology with the rapidly developing
2-way brain-to-brain communication and control systems led to the
first true RCR (Remote Cognitive Representation, or sentient robot)
in 2027.
Although
RCRs as such didn't exist until 2027, it had been clear from 2020
onwards that their arrival was only a matter of time, and the wide-ranging
ethical and practical concerns posed by RCR technology were the
subject of the RCR Congress in 2025, which laid down a Code of Conduct
for the construction and operation of sentient robotic agents.
Initially,
limitations on communication bandwidth and lack of complete knowledge
of the 'wiring diagram' of the human brain (finally achieved only
in 2030) meant that a human could 'inhabit' a remote brain only
partially, receiving sensory and cognitive output, and issuing control
instructions at several levels up from actual motor or neural cognitive
functions. By degrees, the intensity of the inhabiting became deeper,
and by 2040 it had proved possible, with practice, to build a limited
degree of consciousness in the remote brain. This is best thought
of as a sharing of consciousness between the two brains; attention
to sensory input, for instance, in the remote brain would overlay
attention to local sensory input. Of course, a flow of sensory and
cognitive data from the remote brain to the 'host' brain continued,
so that the experience obtained during inhabiting would be available
to the host brain after inhabiting ceased.
Many
types of RCR did not have full or even any human neural equivalence,
for instance canine and feline RCRs, which became available from
2029. There was intense competition among RCR producers to build
faster, stronger and more skilful robots for sporting and entertainment
purposes, and the first Non-Human Olympiad took place in 2037.
In
the following year, the first experimental RCC (Remote Cognitive
Collective) was demonstrated. It had long been clear that shared
inhabiting of a remote brain was technologically feasible, but there
had inevitably been much agonizing over the practical and ethical
details. These were largely ironed out during the process that led
to the Human Settlement in 2041, and the agreed-upon freedoms for
RCC development were rapidly exploited during the remainder of the
2040s, so that when the Global Genetic Gathering was instituted
in 2050 (to supervize the development of the human genome), it naturally
took the form of an RCC.
Although
RCRs and RCCs had reached a high degree of sophistication by 2050,
and were in everyday use for an immensely wide range of activities,
people inhabiting them were still essentially visitors, with restricted
local consciousness. The cognitive results of such inhabiting were
fed back to the host brain, and there was never any point at which
the person left her own body in a complete sense.
The
problem was not by any means the comparability of remote brains
with original human brains; by 2050 they were equal or superior
in virtually all respects, although an 'inhabitant' could only make
partial use of them. The issue was back-up. The sense of continuity
that a person has, and that forms an essential part of their experience
as 'I', is highly dependent on an uninterrupted flow of sensory
and cognitive neural events. Accidents in the 2040s, before connection
technology had become totally secure, in which the link between
an inhabited remote brain and its host brain was broken had shown
that if the interruption was for more than a few minutes then the
sense of continuity in the host was severely disrupted, even to
the point of serious mental illness.
It
was therefore necessary for a technique to be developed for twin
representations of a brain to back each other up on a continuing
basis before it would be safe for a person to 'step outside' of
their own brain and take up fully conscious residence elsewhere.
Initially, this was achieved, very imperfectly, through switching
off appropriate sections of the host brain, recording events in
the remote brain, and using periodic packet updates to maintain
the state of the host brain. Two hours turned out to be the maximum
period between updates for continued viability of the host brain.
'Maintaining state', as it became known, was the central focus of
cognitive research in the 2060s. Using periodic updating, a full
human brain ('eclone') operated remotely in a bio-electronic assembly
for the first time in 2055, but it was 2070 before the technology
was secure enough for people to abandon their original bodies for
any length of time with a reasonable presumption that they could
one day return to them, and even then the back-up procedures were
cumbersome and arduous, as well as very expensive. People usually
experienced some cognitive deficits on returning to a backed-up
host brain from an eclone, but these were not seriously damaging
to normal conscious functioning.
Population
pressure after 2060 meant that there were strong economic incentives
for people to abandon their original bodies, existing just in electronic
form, and many did so. Eclones could of course migrate easily between
'storage' bio-electronic facilities, RCRs and RCCs, and an electronic
person made minimal demands on resources. Such individuals ran the
risk that the particular device they were inhabiting at a given
moment would accidentally be destroyed; but by that time the risk
was extremely small.
Other
people chose to remain in their original bodies and inhabit eclones
on a temporary basis, leaving their original bodies in a passive
state but with a communications link open to the eclone in order
to maintain state in the host. This worked, but if done without
ongoing back-up - for economic reasons or just out of laziness -
meant that on re-assuming the original body, where state had been
maintained, there would be a very uncomfortable cognitive disjunction:
deciding to 'maintain state' in your original body inevitably meant
that equivalent state could not be maintained in the eclone. These
were the people who lost their lives in 2085 when the Japanese earthquake
destroyed 3 billion original, stored bodies, since their un-backed-up
eclones were unviable if detached from their host brains.
Between
2070 and 2090, back-up procedures gradually improved, and finally
in 2090 real-time back-up was achieved for the first time. From
then onwards, it was possible for people to exist as different,
simultaneous representations of themselves, whether in RCRs, RCCs,
as static e-clones, or in their original bodies. Back-up remained
expensive, however, until as late as 2010. From then on it could
be considered as a routine and unregarded aspect of human life.
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