Redesigning Humans Scientists have been fascinated with trying to change our bodies for years. Think about this, if they could make us tougher we might be better able to travel in space and explore planets which are more hazardous to our health than our own. This idea has been going on for a very long time, far longer than the space race has been taking place. I remember when I was hearing about ways we might be able to improve our bodies someday, when I was just a young boy. That my friends was a very long time ago. Stories were written about this and some were showing the benefits of this, while others showed how things could go wrong. One I remember talked about increasing the lung capacity of humans so they would be able to breathe in thinner air without oxygen equipment. It seems some of us already have a better capacity to breathe thin air than others. I remember when a story broke about a man who rode his bicycle to Mount Everest, got off and climbed the mountain without any equipment except for his gear which did not include oxygen. You just can’t make up stories like this. Improving human bodies has been the dream of science, but like some stories predict it could go wrong. Human enhancement has also become an ethical problem. Where does the point come when we have improved ourselves so much, we are no longer human? There are different ways to improve our bodies. One way is to use devices to do it. Another is by changing our DNA and still another is with drugs and maybe even improved organs. We have become much more proficient at some of these things and there could be secret projects going on right now as I am typing this article which are already working at improving soldiers and such. I have read things which I cannot substantiate as being true, but since they are supposedly secret and the people who talk about them claim to be whistleblowers, we only know what we are told. One way which is under investigation is by using drugs. It is said some countries are testing drugs for use with the military. These drugs are said to be able to keep humans marching and fighting for days without getting tired. Another part of this is they may not feel pain when wounded. It has been said these experiments go back to World War II. Supposedly the German army was testing this stuff. I wouldn’t be surprised, because the Nazis did a lot of human testing on unfortunate subjects without regard for their lives or the pain they were put through, they were monsters. What many of us are yet to realize is there are already drugs available on the open market to enhance us. Take the smart pill for example. They are from a new family of supplements called Nootropics. They are supposed to improve your memory and increase your brain power. Anyone can buy them. Whether they are safe or not seems to depend on who you ask. Some say they are great and others say if you take too many and stop you go into withdrawal. We have all seen what steroids can do and how they have been banned in sporting events. While they build muscle many side effects have been reported such as heart attacks and strokes among many others. Another way to try and make our bodies better is by building better organs. We now have the ability to create organs, but we are just at the beginning of this process. There seems to be a couple of ways of doing this. One is growing organs in the lab and another is growing them in animals such as pigs which seem to be closely related to humans. The problem with these procedures right now is powerful drugs must be taken for the rest of a person’s life if they had an organ transplant. One scientist thinks if we could improve pig organs it will allow humans to live longer and have better lives since these organs would be better than what nature gave us. Pig biology is close to human and because of this there could come a day with antirejection drugs will not be needed. A few lab grown organs have been transplanted in humans. A urinary bladder has been used along with lab grown muscle, blood vessels and skin. So far all is well. How they will hold up in the future is not known, but hopefully they will continue to work and perhaps they will be able to be improved to also make them better and more efficient than our own natural equipment. There are plenty of devices being created to improve humans. One of my favorites is the exoskeleton. These devices give humans far more ability to perform certain tasks which an ordinary soldier could never do. When I was in the military, we had to do a twenty-mile hike through sand with a heavy pack on our backs and believe me even though I made it, many others didn’t, I was really tired. Wearing an exoskeleton changes all of this. It gives the wearer the ability to move much faster, carry far more weight and still not be tired since the exoskeleton is doing all the work. It turns a soldier into a superman. The United States is not the only country with promising exoskeleton technology. The experts claim China has an exoskeleton just as good as ours. The thing I find really interesting about the U.S. exoskeleton is the fact you can take it off and it becomes a robot which follows your instructions. This could save your life in a combat situation. Lastly another way scientists are thinking about improving humans is by altering our DNA. There is a lot of talk about that. A scientist recently announced he was able to increase DNA’s four base letters by adding four synthetic ones which act the same as DNA’s base letters. The natural letters are G, C, A and T which refer to guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine. The synthetic chemicals will be able to store information the same as the natural ones. Scientists have been trying to add more pairs of chemicals since the 1980s but have only recently succeeded. This is important, because this may allow them to create a designer body for us. Besides allowing science to alter us, this is a huge breakthrough in data storage as DNA can store far more data than anything available today. Will we be redesigned in the future and will this redesign take place in conjunction with what we need to perform our particular jobs more efficiently?
|
