Part 5 – Implications for societyLife extension. People are living longer, putting stress on health, social and economic
systems.^38 Human augmentation may exacerbate this issue by helping people to live
even longer or it may alleviate pressure by improving health and productivity in old age.
Most industrialised societies will face this challenge in the coming decades and Japan is
at the forefront. Japan’s strategy has been to focus investment on medical technologies
such as regenerative medicine and cell therapy and to keep the elderly in the workforce,
reducing pressure on health and social care – the areas where human augmentation
could have a significant impact. Even if significant life extension remains elusive, it is likely
that human augmentation will increase the number of years lived in good health, with
huge implications for society.^39 Societies may seek to gainfully employ the elderly, but this
could impact on the young and jobless; will the elderly be seen to take more than their
‘fair share’ of resources and opportunities?
Self-optimisation
Diffusion of human augmentation technology will increase societal interest in
self-optimisation and/or enhancement, particularly in a world of increasing individualism
and competitiveness.^40 DIY biohacking is a form of self-enhancement that has been
practiced since the 1990s but the availability of increasingly sophisticated technology
such as clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) ‘home
kits’ will be a huge regulatory and safety challenge. Potentially, anyone with the right
knowledge and tools could modify their DNA with attendant risks to themselves and
others. The cosmetic surgery industry could also be highly disrupted by human
augmentation and issues around safety and aftercare could be concerning. Some
believe ‘designer babies’ are likely within the next 30 years. Individually driven efforts to
push the ethical and technical limits of human augmentation in this way could lead to
hyper-competition within societies and spawn a black-market trade in human
augmentation with the attendant safety and security risks.
38 World Health Organization, (2018), ‘Ageing and Health’.
39 Wheeler, H. E. and Kim, S. K., (2011), Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B Biological
Sciences, ‘Genetics and genomics of human ageing’.
40 Santos, H. C., et al., (2017), Sage Journals, ‘Global Increases in Individualism’.
Societies may seek to gainfully employ the elderly, but this could impact on
the young and jobless