lot of fun stuff in this call for poposals
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May 26-28, 2006
Stanford University Law School, Stanford, California
http://ieet.org/HEHR/
Organized by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
http://ieet.org
Much of the criticism of enhancement technologies has focused on the
potential for increased discrimination against women, people of color,
the poor, the differently enabled, or "unenhanced" humans. Some
bioethicists have proposed a global treaty to ban enhancement
technologies as "crimes against humanity."
Defenders of enhancement argue that the use of biotechnologies is a
fundamental human right, inseparable from the defense of bodily
autonomy, reproductive freedom, free expression and cognitive liberty.
While acknowledging real risks from genetic, prosthetic, and cognitive
enhancement, defenders of enhancement believe that bans on the
consensual use of new technologies would be an even greater threat to
human rights.
Health care, disability and reproductive rights activists have argued
that access to technology empowers full and equal participation in
society. On the same grounds a generalized right to "technological
empowerment" might connect defenders of enhancement technologies with
disability activists, reproductive rights activists with would-be
parents seeking fertility treatments, the transgendered with aesthetic
body modifiers, drug policy reformers and anti-aging researchers with
advocates for dignity in dying.
Yet, what, if any, limits should be considered to human enhancement? On what grounds can citizens be prevented from modifying their own genes or brains? How far should reproductive rights be extended? Might
enhancement reduce the diversity of humanity in the name of optimal
health? Or, conversely, might enhancements inspire such an
unprecedented diversity of human beings that they strain the limits of
liberal tolerance and social solidarity? Can we exercise full freedom
of thought if we can't exercise control over our own brains using safe, available technologies? Can we ensure that enhancement technologies are safe and equitably distributed? When are regulatory efforts simply covert, illiberal value judgments?
Between the ideological extremes of absolute prohibition and total
lassez-faire that dominate popular discussions of human enhancement
there are many competing agendas, hopes and fears. How can the language of human rights guide us in framing the critical issues? How will enhancement technologies transform the demands we make of human rights?
With the Human Enhancement and Human Rights conference we seek to begin a conversation with the human rights community, bioethicists, legal scholars, and political activists about the relationship of enhancement technologies to human rights, cognitive liberty and bodily autonomy. It mis time to begin the defense of human rights in the era of human enhancement.
Examples of topics that might be addressed:
Day One: Human Enhancement and Control of the Body
For instance, papers might address:
- How much morphological diversity can the polity sustain?
- Animal-human chimeric enhancement and animal rights
- Reproductive cloning: Irrelevant, futile or an important battle?
- Disability rights and cyborg assistive technology
- Life extension and the right to die: Two sides of the same coin?
- Germline engineering and the consent of the future generations
- Procreative liberty and the genetic enhancement of children
- The medicalization of transgenderism
- Cosmetic surgery and future body modification
Day Two: Cognitive Enhancement Technology
For instance, papers might address:
- Enhancing capacities for citizenship
- Social equality and cognitive enhancement
- Freedom of thought as a basis for rights to use cognitive enhancement
- Pychoactive drug law reform
- Religious liberty and entheogens
- Regulating the risks of neural implants and brain machines
- The myth of the "authentic self"
- Challenges to human personhood and citizenship from cognitive
enhancement
- Use of technologies of personality modification in criminal
rehabilitation
― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Saturday, 29 October 2005 20:49 (twenty years ago)
leftists who highly value reason and intelligence, freedom, celebration of life, sexuality, women and pleasure, feminity, bodies, desires, impulses, and are defending human enhancement technologies should not waste time working on human rights , as deleuze said
"There are no human rights, there is life, and there are life rights. Only life goes case by case"
"Law isn't created through declarations of human rights. Creation, in law, is jurisprudence, and that's the only thing there is"
“There's no issue of rights of this or that. It's the matter of a situation, and a situation that evolves. And fighting for freedom, really, is doing jurisprudence.” , they should fight for jurisprudence instead, “That's what being on the left is about. It's creating the right.”
― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Saturday, 29 October 2005 21:09 (twenty years ago)