CANCER VICTIM GETS NEW PROSTHETIC EAR GROWN FROM HER OWN TISSUE
As you might have gathered by now, I have been more than a bit skeptical in my evaluations of the "promise" held out by the new transhumanist technologies: nano-technology, genetic engineering, robotics, implants, and so on. But not all the developments are necessarily bad. Here is a very interesting story from ABC News that I had to pass along:
Doctors Grow New Ear on Cancer Victim's Arm
The implications of this technology for medicine, and indeed, for what it means to be human, are immense, for as my co-author Dr. Scott de Hart and I pointed out in Transhumanism: A Grimoire of Alchemical Agendas, the ability to literally grow a heart valve, for example, to replace another, from the patient's own tissue, or, for that matter, to grow whole organs such as a liver, kidney, eye, lung, or heart, would solve at one stroke - so the reasoning goes - the major organ transplant problem: the potential that a tissue will be rejected by the host body.
But therein lies, perhaps, a danger in the great promise, and the danger is, I am bold to suggest, a spiritual one. Imagine that this capability were eventually extended to the whole body in all its parts and functions. As one part wore out, it is simply replaced by another grown from one's own tissue. And then, in the ultimate manifestation of this transformative principle, one would perhaps not even have to do this, but merely repair and replace cells in tissue on an ongoing operational basis, say, perhaps, with combinational technologies of nanotechnology and genetics.
One would, as the transhumanists are already foreseeing, end up with a kind of virtual immortality, or rather, longevity, leading to the possibility of lives of hundreds, or perhaps even thousands, of years (and yet again, modern science appears to be arriving at capabilities to achieve the life spans spoken of in ancient texts). What would the psychological, sociological, and cultural consequences be? Such technologies would initially be available to the very rich... so imagine a society where the same elites running the world today, would have hundreds of years in which to work, rather than, at best, 70-90.
There are, as we aver in the transhumanism book, a variety of scenarios being contemplated, but rest assured, with this one human ear on one human arm, we have taken a step forward - a big one - into one of those futures.
See you on the flip side.
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Joe,
Your dead on the money with this post Dr. Farrell!
My daughter is a million dollar baby for she has had two liver transplants 17 yrs. ago. (she’s now 27) Each one cost aprox. 300 grand ( not included – her first ten yrs. of medical treatments but her SSI medical coveraged paid for it. (and I might add an “Overwhelming support from the Local Community in the form of a 30 grand Trust Fund to help with outside expenses”).
Sick babies sometimes bring out the best in people. ( I sometimes feel guilty when I hear 40 million people cant even get elementary health care coverage yet a lower class smuck’s daughter gets such a piece of the pie?)
It’s just not Fair but who am I to Protest! Soon Rationed Care will be on Its Way. Better than the “present” but take one guess who gets stuck with it?
Certainly not any of Rockerfellers’ KinForks! OPPs, I made a freudian slip of the finger! I meant Kin-Folks. Rockerfellor is the fork and three guesses who gets FORKED , ha ,ha! ( Somebody in high places spying on your website might not like this tattle-telling and bring trouble into my life but SO WHAT!)
When has trouble ever left?
The Show must go on but I am very weary of thinking of a class of people living lets be mild in our estimates just 150 yrs. The advantages they would have for learning over lets say some ghetto residents forced to eat the crap served in a ghetto and dies at fifty?
The above paragraph reminds me of a watered-down version in one of Star-Trek episodes where the miners(masses) were then given a form of gas mask (by the good guys – Kirk and his lot) to prevent the Stulification or Retardation associated with working down there. As usually for Star Trek — the assumption was soon they would overthrow the sic — Good People living above them in some Stratosphere somewhere? (Bevely Hills maybe, ha, ha!)
Baloney — drink enough coke-a-cola (the real thing) and eat the crap dished out long enough (not too long) and join the poor dumb slave-like miners on that imaginary (is it really?) Planet and instead of reading — See Johnny run or Sally skip rope we will be seeing IQ’s heading South in a Big Hurry!
I’ll end this discussion and say the Scientists will have “House Advantage!”
paul de gagne, hope your ‘million dollar baby’ is doing well. Money well spent.
Now, if I remember correctly the trekkers were not supposed to interfere with other civilizations, unless of course the script writers and producer wanted to instill a message into the minds of their audience. Shucks, that does not really occur on our TV or in the movies, does it? Your Star Trek analysis is priceless and I enjoy your other humor as well.
Thanks for the compliment Nidster but I ‘still wont follow you anywhere.”
I seem to faintly remember some documentary on TV of course about some younger researcher up in one of those fancy, old Universities in England coming up with a Cell Theory of Aging. The Cell is supposed to get all ‘worn out” cleansing the pollutants or debree in the cell that it just breaks down and “Conks Out!”
What I think I remember from this slieght mention in the documentary was some clue but the commentor wasn’t very specific and I was only paying half attention while the telescreen was on? ( it makes me wonder how ‘death and sensuality’ are possibly related but that is another matter.)
So — “Go get the gene(s) that tells itself it ‘had it” and have this gene replicate itself or find it’s replacement —- just like what might happen to your job (place in it) if you still got one (I hope not but then again sometimes good-luck isn’t always a kick upstairs? Its a kick into successful entropenuryship status ‘or’ their evil intentions backfires? It does happen more than people might realize although it probably sounds like the optimistic bull shit one hears at funerals …?)
Don’t interfee — swell and a good reminder of “objectivity” which I appreciate Nidster. As the recent Howard Zinn might say, “You cant be Neutral on a Runaway Ship!” (Fine detail there – Nidster!)
Shucks. Do people still use that word. Reminds me of GOMER ROCKPILE or I mean Gomer Pyle. He sure could bring the house down singing!
Have a nice -after the hurricane’ day U-ALL! ( Riding the Southeast Expressway into Boston the morning after the storm, I saw that the gale winds blew a few of the billboards apart. One of them had the word “Honest” written in big bold letters (advertising some drink I think)
Well the canvas sign was flapping the day after the storm in shreads.
A fine ‘omen’ of the time we live in where “Honesty is in Shreds, ha, ha!”
I goof on that quote from Zinn? The word was “Train” not ship but I was thinking about something else? Pardon the error! (as for my daughter, she is not doing so well – medically but she has ‘faith’ which suits her just fine and does her much good unlike her father who has belief and no faith whatsoever—- I think we’re all a bunch of Doubting Thomas(es) here and i say Rightly-So!
Thanks for the expression of concern.
Shucks, is not a widely used word. Good analogy to compare it to the character, Gomer Pyle (Jim Nabors) who had a great voice and could fill any room with his voice. Anyway, I suppose I have revealed myself to be a person living in the back-country.
I caught your message regarding the meaning that one does not remain neutral when headed down the path of destruction/ruin. So thanks for contributing to the swirl of opinions being expressed here because it is a valued opinion and i thought it deserved some praise.
Hope all goes well for you and your daughter. You may want to connect into her source of faith because it can do you a world of good as some of us who post around these here parts can attest to its positive benefits since we are not devoid of faith.
Nidster,
Your kind of correct?
Studies or Para-normal Reseach about people praying for sick people have been done but I think they didn’t call it that (probably a theological name) and anyway stuff like that doesn’t get published. Usually or Generally only the deceptive stuff does.
The Rhine Institute is so underfunded (if their still even around for it’s been a great while since I explored that avenue) but just across the street from the Rhine is a great big mansion with a 2 and a half million dollar budget for Skeptics out to prove everything wrong about PSI except the actual scientific results.
Strange! Some of these new kids on the block most certainly don’t want people to know something!!!!!
Now compare the Rhine with two places actually studying for the Public the possible negative side effects of Frankenfoods and one gets the same impression. (Nah – just a coincidence someone might say?)
Most unmarketable toxins are are first, candy coated then sold in beautiful wrapper.
“The woodon floors shine so virtuously they reflect the cartoon like cartoon-like portraits of prime ministers, bewigged judges and viceroys. Along the gleaming white, hushed corridors, the walls are hung with Aboriginal art; one painting after another as in a monolithic gallery, divorced from their origins, the brutal irony. The poorest, sickest, most incarcerated people on earth provide a facade for those who oversee the theft of their land and its plunder.”
What a perfect quote for this and other “benefits” coming down the peoverbial pipeline. The “pipeline” should be for 100% of society, benefiting all. But we know, only a select few will benefit at the expense of the rest of us. We are the “Aboriginals” under the thumb of a criminalized syndicate that rules over us. Until we uproot that system with one that “endemically” benefits 100% of society: the above analysis by Dr. Farrell is an approbiate viewpoint.
We must change the “present” so that our “future” is not our/(their) “past”.
I agree with Dr. Ferrell’s bold assertion that the spiritual consequence of this transhumanist technology is meant to forever change what it means to be human. The so-called elites strive to reach immortality, or at least longevity, in order to extend their lives, and in their own twisted thinking, establish once and forever their rightful reign as gods over the so-called lower classes.
Compare an old house in upcoming, upscale Harlem being “gutted/renovated” and then sold for over a million and a half. We’re being gutted by transhumanism! I think Joe has the right idea? We’re being told to move for a few months to a nice neighborhood called Cyberspace (why not?) while they sic ‘fix’ this house so we will have a better place to live. Truth is probably we’re living in the dam house while their gutting and repairing it. Too messy for my tastes!
Maybe even Human Beings (homo sapiens sapiens) are what is being gutted and not the shitty old house with its stable outer structures?
Bingo!!!