E. Christian Brugger on transhumanism and Captain America

The problem of "Transhumanism" is so critically important to understand, and so poorly understood, that I think the topic deserves more than a single column. I therefore address it here and in my next ZENIT bioethics briefs.

You might have seen the feel-good movie Captain America. It takes place during World War II. A patriotic fine arts student from New York City named Steve Rogers wants to enlist in the army. But the army won't take him because he's too scrawny. The recruiters tell him that they're doing him a favor by rejecting his application.

One of his interviews is overheard by a brilliant German scientist, now working for the Americans, named Abraham Erskine. Dr. Erskine is impressed by Rogers' tenacity and thinks he might make a good candidate for a secret military project named Operation Rebirth, intended to transform the bodies of U.S. soldiers into super-human fighting machines.

Rogers eagerly accepts the invitation to become the first U.S. test subject. He's strapped to a gurney and sealed in a pressurized chamber. He's injected with "Super Soldier Serum" and exposed to an almost lethal burst of "Vita-Rays," which activate and stabilize his biochemistry. The once scrawny adolescent emerges from the chamber with a physique like Arnold Schwarzenegger, in possession of a lean, muscular, maximally efficient -- indeed, practically perfect -- body.

Fortunately, Rogers also possesses unusually -- indeed unworldly -- sincerity, self-sacrifice and courage. As "Captain America" -- so dubbed by his superiors -- he goes on to perform deeds of heroism, which will delight all but the most cynical of audiences.

Although we find ourselves firmly on the side of Captain America in the movie, the comic book scenario raises one of the most intense debates facing the future of biotechnology, and indeed, of humanity: should we use science to make ourselves more-than-human, in the words of the president's Council on Bioethics, "better than well"?