Is This A Good Idea : Science Channel

December 13, 2011

I've already written in this blog about various aspects of the transhumanist movement, whose adherents believe that it's time for humans to begin taking an active hand in their own evolution. Transhumanists want us to modify and/or augment our meat bodies to make them last longer, work better and have new capabilities. Here's a 2009 post that I wrote on upgrading our humdrum hides by replacing them with synthetic "smart" skin, imbedded with a network of nanobots and sensors. I've also written about powered exoskeletons and the notion of augmenting your intellect by downloading data directly to your brain.

Such improvements might make us more durable, powerful and knowledgeable, but they wouldn't necessarily be enough to significantly improve human existence on Earth -- or even to save us from the increasingly dire consequences of our own misdeeds and character flaws. Turning ourselves into Steve Austin-like bionic hybrids isn't going to rid our species of egotism, greed, indifference to others' plight, distrust, and reluctance to work together and make sacrifices to solve collective problems.

That's why I was so intrigued when I read a recent New Scientist article on cognitive-enhancing drugs that mentioned an upcoming study in Germany being conducted by Anders Sandberg of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute. Sandberg plans to study a range of different substances to test their powers at what transhumanists call "moral enhancement." To quote Sandberg:

Once we have figured out how morality works as an emotional and mental system, there might be ways of improving it.

Synthetic Oxytocin to Enhance Empathy

One of the substances that Sandberg intends to study is produced by the body itself -- oxytocin, a nine amino acid peptide that is synthesized in our neurons a s well as in the ovaries and testes. Oxytocin plays an important role in human reproduction, including enhancing the contraction of uterine smooth muscle during birth and afterward stimulating the release of mothers' milk to nourish infants. But in recent years, researchers have also discovered that it seems to have emotional and behavioral effects as well, by helping to turn on the parental urge to bond with, nurture and protect the young. In studies, researchers have also discovered that subjects who take doses of oxytocin experience heightened feelings of empathy toward others and are more willing to trust them. In one study published in the online scientific journal PLoSOne in 2010, subjects who received a dose of oxytocin were 80 percent more generous than a control group in splitting a sum of money with another person. In another study, subjects given oxytocin made 48 percent higher donations to the Red Cross than counterparts who hadn't received a dose.

Polarized view of crystals of the hormone Oxytocin.

Here's a recent article from the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper, in which Paul Zak, director of the Center for Neuroeconomics at Claremont Graduate University in California, describes oxytocin as the "molecule of social connection" that binds together families, communities and societies. To drive home his point, at a recent appearance at a TED conference, Zak spritzed the backstage staff with a spray containing the chemical and reportedly induced a spontaneous outbreak of group hugs.

This sort of stuff has earned oxytocin the nickname of "the cuddle drug." But it's not the only chemical that seems to cause humans to behave better. In a 2010 study, Harvard researchers found that giving subjects a medication that enhanced their levels of serotonin, a hormone that facilitates neural transmissions in the brain, made them more likely to regard actions that harmed other people as wrong.

A New Drug to Curb Human Self-Centeredness, Cravings and Sloth

Assuming that scientists eventually are able to develop a drug or drugs that cause people to behave better toward one another, what then? It's easy to imagine a scenario in which violent criminals or other menaces are locked up and compelled to take big doses -- a solution that parallels the behavior-altering brain surgery that converted bad guys to good guys in the Doc Savage comic books of the 1930s and 1940s. But it's not necessarily lawbreakers who are causing the world's problems, but rather basic human self-centeredness, cravings and sloth. What if governments compelled both elected officials and the citizenry to take a morality-enhancing pharmaceutical regimen -- or simply put doses of the drugs into the water supply, in the manner that fluoride is added to curb tooth decay?

That sort of extreme social engineering just might be what it takes to jolt our society out of its present political paralysis, in which partisans seem unable to agree upon any solution that might benefit the other side. But it also could mean eradicating free will and perhaps even individual identity and worth, leading us to become less human and more like a column of South American army ants, whose members instinctively form bridges over crevices in the jungle floor with their own bodies so that the rest of the army can keep marching. And without free will, does morality even exist? I'm sure some of you Ayn Rand fans out there are already envisioning the fictional dystopia she depicted in her 1939 novel Anthem, in which the word "ego" has been outlawed. But I hated being forced to read Rand's ponderous prose in high school English class, so instead I'll evoke two other visionaries -- the pop-song seers Zager and Evans, who sang in the 1969 hit "In the Year 2525":

In the year 3535,
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do or say
Is in the pill you took today

There's also the question of what might happen if the morality-inducing drugs work better on most, but not all of us. After all, research, including a just-published study by University of Oregon researchers, indicates that personal sensitivity to oxytocin seems to be genetic and varies from person to person. Would we be creating a scenario in which the masses would be ruled by a few genetic mutants who were immune to the drugs and thus free to pursue their own self-interest, megalomania or hatreds?

So what do you think? Express your opinion below. And as a bonus, here's a YouTube clip of Zager and Evans lip-syncing "In the Year 2525" on a TV program.