Giving super powers, how do you do that ethically?

The human body is one of nature’s many wonders, but it can always be better. How can we ethically give the human body superpowers?

Getting super powers, the silent wish of many people

According to some believers, the human body is perfect. In reality, our body, while it functions just fine most of the time, is not always exactly the way we want it to be. That also explains the popularity of stories and movies about superheroes, who have extraordinary physical abilities.

For example, it would be very nice to have eyes as sharp as an eagle, to run as fast as a cheetah or to hear as well as a dog. This is possible if we connect special devices to our bodies. For example, consider a hearing aid. The hearing aid ensures that people with hearing impairment can hear better, but you can of course also use a hearing aid to enable someone with normal hearing to hear extremely well.

Ethical aspects of super powers and physical changes

But, as always, at some point you hit a gray area. For example, there are physical improvements that few people will object to. Consider, for example, the aforementioned hearing aid, the pacemaker or an insulin pump.

But what if we significantly increase people’s physical abilities, or if we give people super abilities that they didn’t have before? How far can you go before human integrity has changed so much that you can no longer speak of a human being?

At the moment, for example, there are already heated discussions about people’s biological sex changing because they feel more like a woman or a man. Many female athletes feel discriminated against, because transgender people often win sports competitions because of a larger body with much more muscles.

These are important ethical questions to think about because our technology is very good today and we can now do things that were unthinkable just a few years ago.

Changes, which also mean new restrictions

One of the ethical problems that you can think of, for example, are changes to your body that make you no longer able to do certain things, or that shorten your lifespan, for example. Think about the problems with bodybuilders and their abuse of anabolic steroids, but times ten.

A sensible restriction would be to subject any physical change that is irreversible to a very strict ethical review. You can take off a hearing aid, but reversing super hearing is much less easy. That, while super hearing naturally means that you are much more affected by ambient sounds.

Changes that give people an unfair advantage

Doping is a major problem in sports. But it’s just the tip of the iceberg when you look at the possibilities that artificial bodily reinforcement brings. Consider, for example, using an artificial red blood cell, which can carry three times as much oxygen as natural red blood cells.

Such an athlete is much less likely to run out of breath and, of course, all competitors are completely out. The first cyclists who had hidden a motor in their bicycle, so-called motorcycle doping, have already been caught. The mechanical doping of the future could, for example, consist of artificial muscles or a brain implant that switches off signals of pain and fatigue – with potentially fatal consequences for the athlete.

Superpowers that give the rich an advantage over the poor

Not everyone will have enough money to give themselves super powers. At present, the rich in the Netherlands already have better health than the poor. They live many years longer and their body is also in better condition. If the rich can also rebuild their bodies, or even become immortal, then a new caste system will emerge.

A small group of the very rich will then rule over a large group of disenfranchised poor, who will at best be kept alive through food banks.

The splitting of man into different human species

If the physical changes in people are very drastic, and are also recorded in the DNA, new human species are in fact created. For example, you can think of mermaids, who can only live under water, people who can live on Mars or perhaps a kind of super-soldiers with very high speed and superhuman responsiveness.

Or perhaps a human species adapted to life in a zero gravity environment. In effect, this means that we are splitting our species into all sorts of new species, which may also start thinking in a completely different way.

What limits do we place on expanding human possibilities?

In short, it’s a wise idea to think carefully about what we want from increasing human capabilities and giving people supernormal abilities. We have speed limits for cars. You can therefore also very well imagine that you will lay down maximum muscle strength and maximum reaction speed in the law.

We don’t know what the future will bring, and we can largely determine it ourselves. That is why it is useful to start thinking about this now, before technology catches up with us.