Transhumanism: Entering an Era of Bodyhacking and Radical Human Modification

This book surveys the distinctions that underlie the unbound potential and existential risks of life expansion and radical modifications posed by a transhuman world. Humanness is in flux as human bodies are being hacked and altered in their quest for super wellness, super intelligence and super longevity. Now is the time to discuss how best to think about dealing with bodies that have been hacked to exceed natural physical limits or more technically, species typical functioning. Enter the advent of transhumanism to take uncertainty by the horns. According to transhumanists, death is unnecessary and medical conventions undermine the possibility to radically evolve. To biohackers, there is no need to wait to explore the risks that conventional medicine dares not. This book is of interest to anyone interested in tapping into this growing movement of modifying the human body as it is right now.

Dr. Emma Tumilty is feminist bioethicist and Assistant Professor& Associate Director of Graduate Studies in the Institute for Bioethics and Health Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Her interests include research ethics, translational medicine, and innovation, as well as health justice and access. She sees biohacking and related activities such as open medicine, SynBio, biopunk practices, etc. as offering exciting opportunities for discussion how science and medicine are done and by who. Her interest in transhumanism is focused on those seeking to disrupt the status quo with human+technology exploration – the crip technoscience writers, feminist technomaterialists, afrofuturists, etc. who imagine different communities, morphological freedoms, and futures facilitated by technological integration. She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Empirical Research in Human Subjects Research and the journal: Progress in Community Health Partnerships, as well as the BookReview Editor for the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics. She has published widely in research ethics, bioethics generally, and health service research.

Michele Battle-Fisher is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine and an Adjunct Instructor at Temple University Lewis Katz School of Medicine. She is the author of Application of Systems Thinking to Health Policy and Public Health Ethics: Public Health and Private Illness (Springer), a 2016 Doody's Core Title selection. She is a systems science & public health researcher as well as bioethicist. Her scholarship ranges from public health/health disparities to systems science/complexity theory and their application to health. Her academic scholarship has been published in systems science, bioethics, humanities and communication studies peer-reviewed journals and academic outlets. She is a member of The Bertalanffy Centerfor the Study of Systems Science (BCSSS). She is also a Research Scholar at the Ronin Institute. She was a speaker at TEDxDartmouth 2018 where she discussed the "Paradigm Shift" of the Health Systems Science curriculum in health and clinical medicine. She was a Visiting Scholar at the Hastings Center.