How will technology in medicine affect society in the future?

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To begin with, human cloning is the creation of one or more human beings who is/are genetically identical to another. In the UK, reproductive cloning (the creation of a new person who is genetically identical to another human being) is forbidden by law. But there is no explicit ban on therapeutic human cloning, where cloning techniques are used to initiate the growth of embryos in order to create new organs or cells for medical and research purposes. 

Designing births – one step away from therapeutic cloning, occurs naturally between humans.  Future parents have their own personal laboratory called the mind which they use to choose or ‘play God’ e.g. what colour eyes for example, their future children will have via flirting with the relevant coloured-eyed person etc. Via the birth of twins, as well.  In fact, the first fish which lived in water were clones.  It is not unnatural at all.

The RCA (Royal college of Art) at the Battle of Ideas annual weekend Festival 3 years ago in November featured an exhibition which I was lucky to go see.  Under the umbrella of a ‘Designing debate: biomedical futures’, this college interacted with scientists to explore the new roles, contexts and approaches for design in relation to the social, cultural and ethical impact of existing and emerging technologies.  One such experimental project was called Utility Pets, where the ethical consequences of xenotransplantation (transplantation of animal organs into humans) were pondered.

Elio Caccavale, a designer imagined that shortly after birth, people will be given a piglet to live with them, which has their own DNA engineered into it, so as to aid them from the  trivial of ending baldness to replacing cells in the body that are dying.   Another graduate, Revital Cohen in ‘Life support’ explored animals as medical devices i.e. a renal and respiratory patients at home, in bed hooked up to a live lamb, a transgenic animal in this instance.   A critic of cloning, Francis Fukuyama calls this Transhumanism or Posthumanism, ‘the world’s most dangerous idea’.  These consequential examples are a step from merely ‘bringing back’ pets that have died, as recently reported in the press and ‘unkantianly’ instrumentalising human life one step further.

An answer could skirt around human rights for the child but one could argue where there is a right not to gestate a child, there is an equal right to gestate or gain access to a child through any means necessary, as it seems likely that sometime in the future, cloning human spare parts will become a reality.   In the Whittaker case study, where Jamie was conceived in order to save his brother, Charlie through being a tissue donor.  It could in the future pave the way for medical issues associated with Jehovah witness’ blood transfusions to be vanquished.

Regenerating brain cells could cure Alzheimer’s disease, spinal cord regeneration, paralysis and; generation of new organs could be an alternative to transplantation, such as with the umbilical cord, a twin may be reminded when they are older that they did a special thing to save their sibling’s life. It was a gift thus assigning many medical problems to the annals of history.

When it is a bone marrow, on the other hand, one becomes a donor. This can cause negativity among some poor families who are reluctantly as the Philosopher Kant would approve, dutiful. And positivity in other families more middleclass, who can afford the treatment and defend time off work to take their child to the hospital, where comments like: ‘You’re special.  Out of 6 billion people in the world, you are the only one who can save your sister!’ are more likely to be common.  So the social class of a donor could be a driving force for any feeling Jamie may feel as he grows up, that he was wanted first for his genes and secondly, for himself.

What for example, is a genetic illness, when as a society we strive to be the most gifted intellectually and artistically as in sport, by lauding people who come first in competitions and are physically and mentally abled with awards.  Is there a sliding scale? Do we select for deafness or dwarfism? Why do we currently have to draw a line, somewhere, where we divide Olympians for example between abled and disabled?  We thus, need to be relativists in the true sense of the word rather than only choose the next winner of the Nobel Prize for literature for example to be someone who has been educated other than at a university like Oxford and is not blind or have some other disability.  Our values which we hold so dearly in society need to change to one where the spirit of taking part in a competition is lauded more and is the decider to who wins.