Transhumanism
–
The Future
of Medicine and Supplements
Transhumanism is a movement that’s recently gaining
popularity or at least attention through a select number of scholars who are
writing about the topic (such as Neil Bostrom, Anders Sandberg and Natasha Vita
More) and underground movements and websites that are covering and/or promoting
the topic (such as the-biomatrix. net, betterhumans. com, or transhumanism.
org). Despite this, most of the general public are completely unaware of the
concept which is shocking considering the amount of impact it could realistically
have on all of mankind within the next decade and the large number of issues
and controversies surrounding the subject.
The desire of a transhumanist you see, is to promote the use of
technologies for the end of bettering the human condition. At first you might
think that that’s a fairly straight-forward desirable scenario, until you
realise they’re talking about this on an individual level, with people who are
currently perfectly well by ordinary standards. The idea then, is to make it
possible for each of us to redesign ourselves – becoming faster, stronger, more
intelligent, more beautiful… and eventually perhaps even immortal. The goal is
to become ‘transhuman’ or ‘posthuman’ – a state where the very nature of
humanity has changes, where we are as different from current humans as a
gorilla or a maggot. Some dream of a future where our consciousnesses are
‘uploaded’ into a computer and we experience permanent connectivity with
everyone else, immortality, new forms of perception and permanent euphoria
currently impossible to experience with human brains.
All
that though still belongs in the realms of science fiction and is fairly far
away. What’s just around the corner though is almost just as astonishing and certainly
as much as, if not more of, an impact on society. The range of transhumant
technologies that have already been demonstrated to work and be viable are
extensive. While there are currently brain chips available that allow users to
interface directly with machines (designed to be used by paralysed patients),
the technology I’m currently most interested in is gene doping; not only
because it’s so close to being fully realised, but because of the massive
implications it has for health, fitness and sports.
Gene doping is the science of manipulating the genetic code or DNA of a
living organism, allowing scientists to almost redesign it from scratch, or at
least to change fundamental characteristics. This is achieved by injecting new
genetic code onto the genome of the creature which is located in the nucleus of
every single cell. The bulk of the DNA is ‘junk’ DNA meaning that it can be
written over without causing damage to the creature. This way, changes can be
made to the schematics that all creatures contain within them, meaning that the
way their body behaves will be altered accordingly. This effect can be either
permanent (known as insertional gene doping) or semi-permanent (known as
non-insertional gene doping). This technique has already been used to cure
various disease, either by erasing or altering faulty DNA code (the cause of
many illnesses – with cancer being caused purely by a mutation in the cells) or
by writing new code that can solve the problems in the patient’s body. This has
so far lead to mixed results and while some were successful, others it seems
lead to the development of cancer or the erasing of important DNA code.
Still, the fact that these procedures have even been
attempted on humans has large enough implications on its own. The ability to
alter the human
genome could well lead to a cure for all known disease, possibly even the
elimination of ageing. This obviously would cause many other problems with
overly dense populations and with administering the procedures which could not
become solely available to the privileged lest we see a far larger class divide
and very fast meta-evolution.
What has already been successful however is perhaps even more startling
in some ways and has large implications of its own. What I’m referring to here
is cases where gene doping has been used not to improve the condition of a
patient with an illness, but of a perfectly well human. Specifically it has
been tested on animals to see if their athletic ability can be improved, and
with successful results.
The
one that is of particular interest to me as a bodybuilder, is the increased
muscle mass scientists have managed to create in mice and other animals. Here
they knock out a single gene that’s responsible for the protein myostatin (myo
= muscle, statin = suppress). Myostatin you see is a protein that’s designed
specifically to stunt the production of muscle tissue. The exact evolutionary
purpose of this chemical is unknown, but it is likely that it prevented us
becoming too bulky in our primitive days which would mean we required too much
food for energy.
Today though, in a society where we have food at our easy disposal and
don’t have to track our prey, there’s really no reason to prevent this muscle
growth. A similar ‘gene-hack’ (if you will) is to trigger the body to produce a
higher volume of IGF-1 (Insulin-like Growth Factor) which has anabolic
properties.
Amazingly these studies proved 100% effective with the
subjects developing 2-3 times the amount of muscle mass with no additional
exercise (a significant amount) while at the same burning excess fat and
showing no negative side effects. While it is early days yet, chances are there
will be no long term side effects either. The reason that we can fairly safely
make this judgement is that there are examples of animals with the very same
mutation that have been around for much longer. ‘Bully Whippets’ for example
have been bread for myostatin deficiency resulting to make them better racers.
These dogs look like the ones Bruce Banner fights in ‘Hulk’ and can reportedly
run at ridiculous speeds to boot (there are two myostatin producing genes and
there are slight differences depending on whether the mutation is on one or
both). Belgian Blue Cattle have also been bread for myostatin deficiency and if
you type them into google images you’ll instantly see the kind of potential
this line of research has.
But as though that wasn’t already proof enough, the
most amazing part of the story is that humans already exist with mutations on
either one or both genes. The most famous example is the German super-boy born
in 2004 – the only current example of a human with a mutation on both genes.
This has lead to the child developing abnormal amounts of muscle and being able
to perform the iron cross and upside down sit ups while still an infant. So far
he has shown no negative side effects. Interestingly his Father, a former
sprinter, had a mutation on one copy of the gene.
Another super child, this time an American boy born in
2006, was born with damaged myostatin receptors meaning that despite having the
normal amount of myostatin his muscles do not respond to it. Again he is so far
healthy while being abnormally strong. Professional Bodybuilders are also said
to exist with single gene mutations with Flex Wheeler being one suspect. All
this suggests that the process will be easily reproduced in humans with no
undesirable side effects (although there is concern about the potential for the
heart to grow to unsafe sizes).
While this research was originally intended to help
patients with muscle wasting disorders (the majority of whom often display an
excess of myostatin) the process also has clear interest for bodybuilders and
other athletes. Gene doping will be able to be used for other performance
enhancing capabilities too – for increased running speed (it is believed that
scientists will be able to unlock a ‘dormant’ muscle twitch fibre present in
most animals allowing us to make sharp turns, run faster and jump higher),
jumping height, intelligence, endurance and more. Pharmaceutical companies are
already trying to develop short term myostatin blockers such as follistatin and
other which bind to the myostatin, however none of these have so far been
successful and those already on sale have mostly been shown to be scams with
little to no effectiveness.
The good news for those bodybuilders and athletes
however is that these gene doping techniques should soon be available to them,
either on the black market or even legally (until the government catch on and
start coming up with some policies). Some scientists have predicted that we’ll
see gene doping techniques as early as the 2012 Olympics (also the date many
prophets of doom predict to be the apocalypse… coincidence? Yes) and the
process is so simple and inexpensive that anyone with a PHD in biology would be
able to perform the experiment relatively cheaply.
This means the spread of gene doping techniques might
well be almost impossible to stop, and while that might seem desirable from a
personal perspective (who wouldn’t want to be an X-Man?) the problems with this
though lie with the gigantic implications it would have on society.
If anyone could have permanent bulging muscle resulting
from a single experiment then bodybuilding would be obsolete. If anyone could
have incredible speed then sprinting would be obsolete. For we bodybuilders who
have spent all our lives training to get ahead of the crowd, it would be pretty
upsetting to suddenly have that be a waste of time because of an injection.
While you could say that exercise would then cause more musculature on top of
that caused by the injection, it wouldn’t be desirable to have that much muscle
on top of what we’d already gained. It would take a lot away from the sense of
achievement and determination that come with bodybuilding. To make matters
worse, gene doping would be entirely untraceable and there’d be no way to
control for it (DNA sequencing is a lengthy and expensive process and even if
it wasn’t there’d be no way to prove that the bodybuilder wasn’t born with that
mutation). The potential problems that would be caused by the advanced life
spans meanwhile would be even more far reaching leading to overpopulation and
an end to progress. One study by Sinicki et al (2009, yet to be published)
demonstrated through a series of focus groups that the general public would
generally be against the ideals of transhumanism were they to be introduced.
It is incredibly important then that both government
officials and the general public keep their eye on the technologies as they
develop, deciding for each one where to draw the line and how to regulate their
use
