21 September 2009

Liberation Biology ~ Let's Redefine "Normal"...

Thanks to IEET for posting Natasha Vita-More's Nano’s Neo Normal where she points out...
"In the book, Liberation Biology, Ronald Bailey writes, "What if a biomedical researcher discovered that our lives were being cut short because every human being was infected in the womb by a disease organism that eventually wears down the human immune system's ability to protect us?" (Bailey 2005, p. 49) In other words, would a person whose immune system starts declining after puberty, and finally gives up before 123, be normal? This statement largely sums up my transhumanist view that "normal" is misunderstood. The physiological (cognitive and the somatic) state of human existence "normality" ought to be a state of enhancement."
Improvement and enhancement should be "normal"; by contrast, the norm of "stagnation" should be decidedly "abnormal".

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