In 1946, the WHO has redefined the concept of health, abandoning its focus on treatment of ailments in favour of the more abstract idea of unbounded wellbeing: “It is a state of complete physical, social and mental well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. (WHO) This vague directive combined with the associated potential for commercial exploitation has extended the scope of wellbeing to transhumanism and eugenics without normative justification or informed consent (a patient can rarely be as informed as a specialist, and a specialist in an emerging technology cannot predict all its effects).
From a crude utilitarian perspective a great amount of wellbeing for a few could possibly justify taking away some wellbeing from many, or vice versa. In any case, a transhuman subject is not just changed for the better or for the worse but is typically made dependent on lifelong technological oversight and assistance. An implant may be rejected and require correction, removal or replacement; the problem is then amplified and requires ever more drastic intervention. Once a natural organ or part thereof is removed, it may not be possible to replace it with the like but only with a technological construct, and with every such intervention the deficiency, the metaphorical hole in the coherent living whole, grows bigger. The slippery slope is built into this process, precisely because of its irreversible, degenerative effect on the natural organic functionality.
According to Jean-François Mattei, “medicine no longer leads to reparation but to augmentation.” Every foreign object, be it a toxic metal hip implant or transvaginal mesh, is essentially at odds with the biological coherence of a living organism, because it is neither living nor biologically coherent. It performs a function but it does so rigidly, not in harmony with life but often against it, and at best despite of it.
The transhumanist tendency in modern medicine is not a coincidence; modern medicine is essentially transhumanist. That’s just how it works, by means of technological intrusion, suppression of symptoms and body modification. Take antibiotics for example – these are intended to bypass the immune system altogether and annihilate all microbial activity within the organism, just to kill one or two kinds of pathogen. It works exceptionally well in light of that aim, but it also weakens the defence system of the organism for the future, since most of the microbial life is essential to its healthy functioning. The greater our reliance on this radical approach the more dependent we becomes on it. This is not to say that western medicine does not ‘save lives’ or ‘extend lives’ in many cases; the more difficult claim to defend is that western medicine saves or extend lives on average, and even if it does it is entirely uncertain that it is the best approach to health and healing that we are currently capable of. The monopolising-effect that the western medical establishment has on resources, scientific literature, technology, legislation and public opinion is certainly a major factor in preventing better approaches from ever developing. Dissenting voices and suppression of alternative approaches are merciless and indiscriminately silenced, ensuring effective monopoly over what counts as the ‘science’ of health.
The key justificatory challenge for transhumanism, according to McNamee & Edwards, is “to show that all of what are described as transhumanist enhancements are imbued with positive normative force and are not merely technological extensions of libertarianism, whose conception of the good is merely an extension of individual choice and consumption” (Transhumanism, medical technology and slippery slopes. Journal of Medical Ethics, 2006). The monopolising capacity of the medical establishment is precisely what stands in the way of unbiassed response to such a challenge. As Baudrillard once declared, “The scandal is not so much the offence against life (nobody cares) as the attack on the network, on medicine and the technological apparatus of survival, which must first take care of its own survival.” (Fatal Theories. Routledge, 2009. p18)
Considering that submitting to some aspects of transhumanist medicine (for example vaccines) is increasingly presented not as a choice but as a legally or economically enforcable ‘responsibility’ that either entirely bypasses informed consent (in a growing number of jurisdictions) or penalises noncompliance economically, this creates asymmetry of power and a threat to body-autonomy – the hallmark of eugenics. According to Habermas “this kind of social dependence, which is irreversible because it was established by ascription, is foreign to the reciprocal and symmetrical relations of mutual recognition proper to a moral and legal community of free and equal persons.” (Habermas, Jurgen. The Future of Human Nature. Polity Press, 2003. p65) Where body-autonomy is denied, trust and good-faith essential to deliberative democracy become impossible.
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I’d never seen orthodox medicine in this context before but you’re exactly right. It IS an extension of the transhumanist philosophy which is just another re-labelling of social Darwinism/ biology i.e. eugenics. I didn’t make that connection oddly enough – not explicitly. That same “monopolising force” always acts as a trenchant gatekeeper and has been supremely effective at padlocking human potential and once again, subverting it under cover of “progress.”
Maybe that’s why transgenderism is the natural path to so many who due to chemical, psychological and now social programming latch onto the more existential or postmodern aspects of this perceived esoteric androgyny as justification.
Transhumanism is another deeply flawed ontological expression of our collective shadow side that encourages pathological dependence and the reductive bottling of consciousness. (It reminds me of some of the episodes from ‘Black Mirror’ series. Have you seen it?) Whether its SJW angstivism or consumerism, its all the same source, flipping non-linear, creative endeavour into its opposite.
Thanks for the contemplation…Never enough time in the day.
The behavioural connection between transgenderism and transhumanism did not occur to me before you mentioned it, but it does make sense. Trans-anything seems to be in fashion… which, on one interpretation, suggests fundamental dissatisfaction with what one really is, on another, an unlimited potential for distortion and subversion of identities and values.
Yes, I found Black Mirror consistently impressive from season to season. The last season’s episode Metalhead was what nightmares are made of.