Or would thou give me wings to fly....
Dr Joe Rosen is not a quack. He works at the acclaimed Dartmouth Medical Centre, and has been a scientific advisor to Nasa. He is fond of making statements such as: "Human wings will be here. Mark my words." He believes in all seriousness that within five years he will be able to graft wings on to a human being's body. This is possible because our brains adapt to create neural maps for new body parts. When we have a limb amputated, our neural map of that limb gradually fades away; and if we gain a body part, our neural map expands accordingly. "If I were to give you wings, you would develop, literally, a winged brain. Our bodies change our brains, and our brains are infinitely mouldable," Rosen has said. Surgical techniques already in existence can be used to stretch torso fat and rejig rib bones to create a wing. Although no human would be able to fly, they would resemble angels and have full sensation in their new hanging, boned flaps of flesh. Rosen has designed blueprints. This is the new world of radical plastic surgery, where Rosen is Moses. He would not be content to settle merely for wings either. He has been working on cochlear implants to enhance human hearing (a procedure which the US military has shown interest in, raising as it does the prospect of super-human soldiers), and even tails. In a conference speech last year, Rosen asked: "Why do we only value the average? Why are plastic surgeons dedicated only to restoring our current notions of the conventional, as opposed to letting people explore, if they want, the possibilities?" He says it is only our "Judaeo-Christian conservatism" that is holding us back. If the medical-ethics board allowed it, Rosen insists he would carry out these procedures. And, as the case of Severino Antinori, the Italian doctor hell-bent on cloning a human, shows, once the technology and the will to experiment exist, it is very hard for even the most overwhelming ethical qualms to block these actions. Sooner or later, Rosen's plans will be put into action: just like the mouse with an ear on his back, one day soon a winged human will force us to re-examine the fundamentals of human life.
posted by Sharon @ Wednesday, September 14, 2005
0 Squeals from backstage
