IEET's PURPOSE
The liberal democratic revolution, centuries old and still growing strong, has at its core the idea that people are happiest when they have rational control over their lives. Reason, science, and technology provide one kind of control, slowly freeing us from ignorance, toil, pain, and disease. Democracy provides the other kinds of control, through civil liberties and electoral participation.
Technology and democracy complement one another, ensuring that safe technology is generally accessible and democratically accountable. The convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science in the coming decades will give us unimaginable technological mastery of nature and ourselves. That mastery requires progressive democratization.
Our purpose, therefore, is to stimulate and support constructive study of ethical issues connected with these powerful emerging technologies.
The Debate Over Human Enhancement
In the next fifty years, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and cognitive science will allow human beings to transcend the limitations of the human body. Healthy lifespans will extend well beyond a century. Our senses and cognition will be enhanced. We will have greater control over our emotions and memory. Our bodies and brains will be surrounded by and merged with computer power.
>The prospect of rapid change in the human condition understandably worries many people. Now a loose coalition of groups has emerged to forbid human enhancement"”from genetic therapies and psychopharmaceuticals to prosthetic organs and nanomedical robotics. This "bioconservative" coalition is diverse, including some bioethicists, religious conservatives, disability rights and environmental activists, and leftist critics of biotechnology.
The IEET believes this debate desperately needs voices that avoid these extremes, voices that argue for the potential benefits of new technologies while proposing realistic policies to mitigate their risks within a strong democratic framework.
Defending Rights While Taking Risks Seriously
Responding to the polarization of the debate between technophobes and anti-regulatory technophiles, an emerging global network of technoprogressive thinkers are defending people's rights to use human enhancement technologies, while taking seriously the need to regulate their safety and social consequences. Technoprogressives address questions such as the right to use"”and not use"”cognitive enhancement technologies in an increasingly competitive society.How much clinical testing will be necessary to ensure the safety of genetic enhancements? How can we regulate psychoactive drugs in a way that respects cognitive liberty? When should parents be permitted to genetically enhance their children? How can we avoid exacerbating inequality as human enhancement technologies spread? Which enhancement therapies should be provided through the market and which as a right of citizenship through universal...
