How to enhance humans
Finding ways to live much longer – and better – shouldn’t be left to the cranks
BRYAN JOHNSON wants to live for ever. The American businessman pops a hundred pills a day, never eats after 11 am, and obsessively monitors dozens of his body’s “biomarkers”. The goal, as he will tell anyone who asks, is not merely to live a few years longer. It is to vanquish death entirely.
Eccentric? Undoubtedly. But Johnson is not alone. He is part of a growing movement that sees the human body as just another piece of hardware to be hacked, optimised and upgraded. In the name of “human enhancement”, Johnson and his fellows, who include Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, are exploring life extension, brain implants and drugs that enhance mind and body.
It would be easy to recoil from a project that is filled with cranks and has uncomfortable echoes of the eugenics movement of the early 20th century. But it would be a mistake to dismiss all forms of human enhancement. The idea that medicine should seek to augment the body, not just restore it to health when it goes wrong, has plenty of merit. The key to maximising the benefits and minimising the risks will be to drive out the quacks and bring this rapidly growing project into the scientific mainstream.
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