Bioethics is the division of applied ethics that researches the philosophical, social, and legal issues which arise in medicine and the life sciences.[i] It is mainly focused upon human life and human well-being, though it at times also views the ethical questions relating to nonhuman biological environments.[ii]

Issues in biological sciences were first encouraged by the effort to improve military medicine after World War II.[iii] Developments since then have steered to the institution of cancer treatments, anti-hypertensive drugs, the cardiac pacemaker, and the polio vaccine.[iv] The growing issues of the time, such as the increased use of people as subjects for medical research and the rising costs of health care, were infrequently discussed among those outside the medical field.[v] Both human cloning and embryo research became hot topics of discussion after the successful cloning of tadpoles in 1962 and the birth of the first human “test-tube baby” in 1978.[vi] Bioethics has been brought to the forefront of public attention due to the incredible, and almost unimaginable, technological advances of the past quarter century.[vii]

Unfortunately, the enhanced pace of such scientific advancement has delayed the capability of our cultural values and laws, in many cases, to keep up adequately with the opportunities and dangers which such developments present.[viii] Some of the basic moral questions which must be asked to gauge such bioethical issues: Are we in some cases treating human life as raw material to be exploited as a natural resource?[ix] Have we blurred the line between creation and manufacture?[x] What moral boundaries should researchers observe?[xi] For the general public, biotechnology, and the bioethics that can govern how we decide to use that technology, affects many aspects of people's lives.[xii] Bioethical choices can determine the way people bring their children into the world, the way disease or disability are treated, the way physical characteristics are used by the government in crime investigation, and how people use the last moments of their lives.[xiii] The ethical concerns regarding biotechnology can affect how these types of actions are regulated when such concerns are relayed to lawmakers.[xiv] Thus, a comprehensive appreciation of bioethical issues relating to regulation of biotechnology can help to ensure that medical advancements are not made in an unethical or immoral manner.[xv] This paper will set forth technological advances which have recently been made in human cloning, cybernetics, nanotechnology, brain computer interfaces, and robotic prosthesis.

Despite biotechnology’s benefits the development of biotechnology has moral limits that conform to specific moral absolutes.[xvi] But our primary concern must be the preservation of the “dignity or value of each human person at every stage and condition.”[xvii] Inherent in the respect for the dignity of a human person is respect for the autonomous choices for other persons.[xviii] Biotechnology must move forward at a speed that ensures that the inherent dignity of each human person is maintained while allowing science to improve the quality of lives.[xix] Scientific research and development can lead to bettering lives by helping scientists to discover cures for diseases and disabilities but such developments can include the destruction or alteration of human life.[xx] From the announcement that the first animal was cloned in 1997 in Edinburgh, Scotland[xxi] to the declaration in 2001 that Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), a small biotech firm in Massachusetts, had succeeded in creating the first human embryonic clone,[xxii] developments in cloning and the unresolved ethical issues surrounding the technology keep the issue in public debate.[xxiii]

Neurolaw

Over the last decade, we have seen extraordinary growth in the amount of legal scholarship, legal practice, and public policy at the intersection of law and neuroscience.[xxiv] Notably, in 2010 the Daubert hearing was held on the admissibility of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) lie detection evidence,[xxv] a Florida court was the first in the nation to admit quantitative encephalography (qEEG) evidence,[xxvi] and a Supreme Court decision on life imprisonment for minors cited brain development research.[xxvii] Given its lasting potential to reshape the legal system, as well as the ways in which the law and neuroscience are already moving into courtrooms and legislatures, it is crucial for the legal community to have resources with which they can learn and engage with neurolaw.[xxviii]

Cybernetics and Nanotechnology

In the near future, advances in science and robotics will modify the ways society views the human body by further supporting the concept of the human body as a machine having interchangeable, replaceable, and upgradeable parts.[xxix] Cybernetic technologies are mechanical and electronic devices that link directly with the human nervous system.[xxx] As cybernetic technologies become more advanced, they should approach and then exceed ordinary human functionality, nurturing the outlook that human capabilities can be enhanced well beyond the current baseline standard.[xxxi] An increase in the range and complexity of the human ability spectrum, spurred by the increasing power and popularity of cybernetic-enhancement technologies, could lead society to view healthy individuals as yet unenhanced as “disabled.”[xxxii] We are approaching a time now “where the (physically) disabled may prove more abled” and where normal healthy individuals may all want prostheses.[xxxiii]

We do not consider the functionality of our bodies as they are today to be impairment. Additionally, the Americans with Disabilities Act does not define “impairment” or even consider the possibility of ordinary human capacities can be impairments.[xxxiv] Scholars have argued that one of the crucial debates of the twenty-first century will be whether and to what extent we should use technology to meaningfully enhance human functionality.[xxxv] Spectators generally divide the debate over the future of human enhancement into two groups: “bioconservativism” and “transhumanism.”[xxxvi]

On the antienhancement side, bioconservatives state that the human body is good enough as it is and the use of human-enhancement technology to meddle with its mechanisms is unethical.[xxxvii] This movement advocates the argument that use of human-enhancement technologies is cheating at life, similar to how steroid use in athletics is cheating at the Olympics.[xxxviii]

Opposed to the bioconservative ideal is a movement calling itself “transhumanism,” a term one author defined as “overcoming human limitations through reason, science, and technology.”[xxxix] Transhumanists advocate the protection of every human individual's right to use or refuse enhancement technology.[xl] As with bioconservatives, transhumanists will define the coming debate on the future of human augmentation.[xli]

The ADA and its recent amendments reflect Congress's current view of disability and of the body: the baseline “able” person is the average, functioning human with all original parts intact, and no addition s or modifications are relevant in the eyes of the law to the determination of whether someone is disabled.[xlii] In the near future, advancement in neuroscience and robotics may give rise to an updated division between the disabled, the abled, and the “better abled,” as both disabled and healthy humans increasingly choose to replace or augment their limbs, organs, and even parts of their brains with mechanical upgrades.[xliii]

The possible use of Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) in the future goes beyond restoration and enhancement of existing human functionality; it is possible for a BCI to literally add new functions.[xliv] Scientists are working on devices that can create new senses.[xlv] For example, Intel is developing a robotic hand that can sense objects before it touches them by using a magnetic field in a way that imitates the sensory perception of sharks.[xlvi] Cortical implants could one day permit users to see beyond the currently visible spectrum of light.[xlvii] Professor Kevin Warwick was able to use a neuroelectric device implanted into the median nerve of his wrist to guide himself around a room blindfolded, using only the electrical feedback from an ultrasonic range-finding sensor mounted on a hat.[xlviii] NASA even has a research subcommittee called the Extension of the Human Senses Group.[xlix]

Even nanotechnology, the influence of matter at the scale of billionths of meters, may enable the most sweeping technology enhancement.[l] Some examples of nanotechnology enhancements include “roboblood” (the total replacement of all red and white blood cells with billions of nanobots), the replacement of individual neurons, and highly integrated Brain Computer Interfaces capable of projecting full-immersion virtual reality from within an individual’s nervous system.[li]

Upgrades to Human Body Parts

Increasingly more Americans are living with various mechanical devices implanted in their bodies, many which are necessary to sustain their lives.[lii] Modern medical science regard the human body like a machine where when parts wear out, we can replace them.[liii]

Joints and Internal Organs

Joint replacement has become very common where an estimated one million joint-replacement surgeries occurred in the United States in 2008 alone.[liv] Joint-replacement surgeries are one of the simplest examples of what modern medical technology can do to exchange or augment human body parts.[lv] Current implantable medical devices vary from machined-carbon heart valves and drug injectors to pacemakers.[lvi] Even now, doctors can update new pacemakers wirelessly through the Internet.[lvii]

Modern medical science can also replace the functions of vital organs.[lviii] The importance of even such a routine thing as a kidney-dialysis machine today illustrates the beginning of new era of mechanical medical devices.[lix] A dialysis patient's case is symbolic of a new age of modern medicine where, by all established criteria from the past, that patient would be fated to die because of their condition but now their stability can be preserved through implementation of new medical technology.[lx]

The superiority and function of replacement limbs have advanced considerably over the past few decades, where now a flourishing spectrum of new control techniques spurred on by military injuries and diabetic amputations have emerged.[lxi] Prosthetic limbs once limited patients to awkward and poorly operating replacements assembled from wood and metal.[lxii] Even recent manufacturing developments were rudimentary devices being quite limited due to the fact that the wearer had to use a difficult system of pulleys and levers to manipulate the prosthetic.[lxiii] Addition of motors did not relieve the problems because wearers had to knowingly run each motor individually.[lxiv] Today’s robotic prosthetics are now reaching levels equivalent to human functionality and, most importantly, prosthetic users can now operate their limbs by mere thought alone.[lxv]

Presently, of the most advanced prosthetics some implement a method called “targeted muscle reinnervation”, otherwise known as a myoelectric interface.[lxvi] An example of such a myoelectric prosthetic is the “Luke Arm” which features eighteen points of movement and weighs 3.6 kilograms, which is about the same weight of an actual human arm.[lxvii] With a customary control system of buttons and levers, doctors can also install the arm by redirecting the nerves that would have gone to that patient's arm into the muscles of their chest.[lxviii] Doctors can then assign these nerves to the prosthetic.[lxix] The electric impulses sent from the brain to control the patient's actual but missing arm are accordingly redirected to the Luke Arm, which is capable of accomplishing many ordinary tasks.[lxx] Soldiers who received this arm stated, “[t]he difference is I'm not really thinking about it. . . . I kind of just do it.”[lxxi] Researchers working on the Luke Arm have also advanced methods to deliver a sensory feedback to the arm’s operator.[lxxii] When scientists are able to improve this interface further, such advanced prosthetics like the Luke Arm would not be far off from being stronger and more capable of operating fine motor function than an arm of an ordinary human.[lxxiii]

One artificial arm under development validates how such devices can be superior to human arms in certain ways.[lxxiv] It can lift weights that people would have trouble with and which the arm only tires when its batteries run out.[lxxv] While possibilities such as these seem like science fiction, since the pace of technological innovation has become much faster now than it has ever been these possibilities have become more likely to be a reality within a few decades.[lxxvi] Technology profits from what inventor and computer scientist Ray Kurzweil termed the “Law of Accelerating Returns,” which defines the exponentially accelerating pace of technological development.[lxxvii] As of today, computers double in price performance approximately yearly.[lxxviii] As modern prosthetics and implants have microprocessors built into them, they directly profit from this acceleration in technological development which brings an increase in miniaturization of parts and a decreased in computer cost.[lxxix]

Brain Implants and Brain Computer Interfaces

Implanted medical devices have even progressed to the most multifaceted human organ: the brain.[lxxx] Over 30,000 people worldwide have deep-brain electrical stimulation implants, an implant for a technique where electrodes generate scripted pulses of electricity to produce specific neural firing patterns.[lxxxi] These implants mainly serve to treat Parkinson's disease, but companies are assertive for government approval to use such devices to treat other conditions such as epilepsy, Tourette's syndrome, pain, and depression.[lxxxii] Today’s deep-brain implants download updated information wirelessly through the patient’s skull.[lxxxiii]

One of the most significant expansions in brain equipment is the BCI, a device that can communicate sensory information and receive instructions directly to and from the brain.[lxxxiv] BCI devices vary from non-invasive, such as calculating signals from an EEG skullcap, to the quite invasive implanted devices which are inside the skull.[lxxxv] In general, the more invasive methods provide greater precision and dependability.[lxxxvi] One of the major funders of BCI research is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (“DARPA”), the U.S. military's primary research and development organization.[lxxxvii] DARPA recently invested twenty-four million dollars in numerous BCI technologies.[lxxxviii]

BCI Is are applicable to as nearly any matter which is sought to be enhanced. Cochlear implants are among such BCIs and have helped over one hundred thousand people who were once totally deaf to now hear.[lxxxix] For application with the blind, neuroelectric implants in the eye or visual cortex can help to provide vision.[xc]

 BCI technology is the crucial element for effective control of prosthetic limbs and now scientists have reliably demonstrated a monkey's ability to control an external mechanical limb with its brain alone.[xci] Invasive-human-BCI experiments include devices like BrainGate, which has successfully enabled an almost totally paralyzed patient to control a general user interface cursor on a computer screen to performing tasks which could be accomplished with use of a mouse.[xcii] BCIs have even aided patients with conditions affecting their speech ability to communicate and even in some cases return to work at their jobs.[xciii]

Many obstacles to BCI development remain, such as scar tissue development at the site of electrodes and difficulties in connecting the interface to individual neurons, but several recent discoveries may meaningfully remove these obstacles.[xciv] In October of 2008 scientists announced the development of a “roving” electrode brain implant that seeks out and can link directly with individual neurons.[xcv] Such new technology can drastically improve accuracy of BCIs electrical signal.[xcvi] As well, development of electrodes which are covered in carbon nanotubes has decreased the likelihood of development of scar-tissue problems in the brain.[xcvii] Researchers have now successfully grown human-nerve cells into a functioning electric circuit that could become an access or barrier interface between the brain and the electronics in a prosthetic limb.[xcviii] Recent progresses in the resolution of new brain-scanning technologies vital to BCI development has developed considerably.[xcix]

The Future of Law

     Law involves itself in the regulating of human conduct which in its pursuit often attempts to limit and encourage certain behavior.[c] The basis of human legal behavior is based in the comparison between experience and expectation.[ci] A deviation from these ingrained expectations lead to negative responses, a perception of injustice, and moral reproach from society.[cii] When behavior meets with societal expectations endogenous opiates are released by the human brain.[ciii]

     With the integration of new technology with that of the human body biotechnology pushes societal expectations to their limit. The law must be wary of advances in such technology due to the threat that as biotechnology continues to press on, we will soon be able to artificially create opiate rewards for favorable behavior.[civ] Presently these opiate rewards can be induced pharmaceutically.[cv] Through adaptation of a brain computer interface such pharmaceuticals could possibly be administered to a human brain to induce conformism with societal expectations. As well, by modifying human biology, biotechnology could construct genotypes with enhanced or depressed legal tendencies.[cvi]

In order to protect fundamental human rights the law must grow and adapt to the coming threats. Congress will need to deliberate upon cybernetic-enhancement technologies through the same processes and institutions it has applied to other fields of advanced technology.[cvii] Many such institutions have already directly considered the issues that come with of human enhancement.[cviii] One such institution is the President's Council on Bioethics which has examined the moral issues human enhancement raises, though a majority of its focus was on genetic and pharmalogical enhancement.[cix] Congress has explicitly addressed that nanotechnology could dramatically enhance human functionality in the 21st Century Nano-Technology Research and Development Act, which established ethics panels to analyze the relevant questions.[cx]

Where Congress has yet to shift its view to take emerging technology into account, the Supreme Court has begun to apply new measures in determining cases involving human augmentation. The Supreme Court in Sutton v. United Air Lines, Inc. held that courts must take mitigating measures, like medication or mechanical devices, into account when determining if someone is disabled under the ADA.[cxi]

 A question central to the debates around human enhancement is how to determine whether a particular technology is restoring human function or enhancing that function.[cxii] Upon us is a fundamental change in how humanity lives its life and how human rights are to be defined in this new technological age. The law must rise to this change and facilitate an efficient transition to not only prevent this emerging field from abuse but to regulate and control the change so that the most good can be made from it.

Conclusion

Without the confines of evolution by natural selection, the bounds of human development will continue to leap forward limitlessly bringing forth fundamental changes in the perception of humanity. Human augmentation is a ripe ground for legislation as new advances in brain computer interfaces and prosthesis are already being developed and perfected. Law and technology must walk hand in hand as we move into this new age of human development.

A redefining of what it means to be disabled will come as prosthesis and other corrective technology advance beyond what is considered normal functionality. This will hinge around at what point those with human augmentation will be considered better abled than those who were born “normal.”

 By understanding human behavior behind our evolutionary history and appreciating the origins of our sense of justice, we can apply new technology to produce proficient legal expectations, prudently tailored