wtf no to all of them in the first second, seriously bad deals

even the 'losing a limb one' which sounds good at first, but then you realise the average person has very small chance of losing a limb... and even if you did at about 50, it wouldn't be worth the quality of life you lost in the years leading up, in which you'd be treated like a leper because you are 'green and scaly'

"Be able to breath under water but no longer be able to breath normal air, and have webbed hands and feet?" .. the point is? Basically 'would you become a person-fish' er.......... you do know there is such a thing as scuba diving? Or even snorkling if you don't want to take ages kitting up?

for the second section, I would have immortality at the cost of a family member yeah. there's some right mofos on one side

to the gender thing... i'd do that cause within the next hundred years there'll probably be some foolproof way to change genders. what's 100 years compared to the rest of your never ending life?

no to species....... dunno why anyone would bestial creeps

to the third section.. i don't even get the third section. why would you want to :S

nvm

Interesting responses. I have asked these questions of several people through the years, and thought maybe asking some people that I don't know would give different results than from those I have known for a while.

On the Genetic Modification section, I chose random animal types and traits from those animals as "Side Effects" of splicing their genes with yours. Though I forgot the Night visions "Slitted Irises" which may have altered some peoples responses. It did in one instance with a girl I knew who loved cats.

Cat, Gorilla, Reptile, Fish, Bird, Sea Turtle

The Brain Transplant one was based off a video I watched many years ago where they kept a monkeys brain alive by splicing it to another monkey, thus proving it is possible to keep a brain alive and attach it to another body, but they stopped the research as it is considered unethical. But what if it wasn't?

The last was just idle curiosity based on watching to much Ghost in a shell.

No to all "you gain a superpower, but look like a freak of nature" questions. Causing the death of a family member is just sick. The rest I would consider, I'd need more information. I might move into a fresh lab grown body or a machine, but I don't want to inhabit a dead body of another person. It could lead to all sorts of nasty complications.

They all sound like terrible ideas.

The one about getting rid of a family member is just sick to think of.

If that was all, I would actually consider some cybernetic implants (non-critical of course)

But no, I'm referring to the "you are an abomination and now I'm going to blow you up to cleanse society from your filth" kind of fundamentalists.

No to all of them.

Half baked tinkering with genetics is a really bad idea, and unnaturally extending one's life is more hassle than it's worth.

So you don't believe in modern medicine? Not much natural about the vast majority of applied biomedical science.

Medicine is making the most of what we have, maximizing how long the body can survive.

Transferring our consciousness/transferring our brain, whether into an organic or mechanical host is an unnatural extension.

I think you're splitting hairs. A "natural" human wouldn't live nearly as long as a modern first-world society human. Dialysis, various other machineries, and various medications are an absolute NECESSITY for many people to not just stay alive, but even function in a living manner.

Note: I'm not saying that transferring consciousness is natural or even necessarily something I agree with, but that modern medicine is definitely not something that can be called "natural" (nor is it bad).

For the ancient Greeks you were an old man if you reached forty.

For the vast majority of our history this was the case and infant mortality was at an abysmally high rate.

No, I much prefer our modern unnatural lifestyle, or as Terry Pratchett puts it: I prefer my meat cooked and I don't like sleeping in trees.

I'm not even close to splitting hairs. Those machines and medicines are still working wihin the limitations of human biology. Sure, we can fight off death, make ourselves better able to withstand illness and aging, but at the end of the day, medicine can't stop the human body breaking down.

And what exactly are you defining as "natural" here? I'm talking about the limitations of human biology, which is as natural as it gets relevant to the topic. What do you consider "natural" in this context?

If you're talking about the limitations of human biology, then you're talking about something that's not well defined. Those limitations differ wildly by a person's genes and luck of the draw on how long their important cell's tails are. For example, if a medication were found that quadrupled the life of each cell or made the tail of cells last longer, would that be natural? If so there would be a huge discrepancy in what's a natural life from one time to the next.

The only reasonable definition of "natural" is how well a person would live if they lived a non-advanced life. It's fair, well measured, and more or less consistent once outliers of unnatural deaths are removed. No matter the advances, this value stays the same.

Medicine stops the human body breaking down on a regular basis. If making a distinction between natural defined as what happens in nature opposed to what man creates, then there is nothing natural even about a splint in case of a broken bone, let alone a vaccin.

Its a catch-22 situation really. Either nothing we do is natural, since humanity has been actively trying to get as far away from nature as possible since the stone age and the invention of cooking. (Can't blame humanity, nature is ghastly. Everyone who has ever spent a night in a small tent knows this.) Or everything we do is natural because it is a consequence of the mind of a natural creature who is making use of his understanding of natural processes. So, either everything ranging from cookery and the clothes with a percentage of artificial fibers and the ceramic joint replacements are unnatural, or they are all natural.

My sentiment goes with the latter really since I see no reason to philosphically divorce us from nature.

that is not correct...

Heart Transplants, Lung Transplants, Blood Transfusions, the removal of Gallstones, Pace Makers, the removal of Tumors, Surgery to fix Internal Bleeding, radiation treatments, respirators...
These are all medical procedures or treatments that go against the way the human body naturally develops and decays.....

I prefer the technique distinction: Using that distinction, certain aspects of human life are natural, others are dervived from ourselves. Once more, humans aren't the only ones that are capable of technique/technology. All distinct and recognized use of tools by animals where the tool is formed and maintained would also count as non-natural.

Not so much for me.
(some) Medicine may not be natural, but it's quite different than altering DNA. I would hardly call it splitting hairs.
Modern medicine is a toolbox, used to work on existing species. the other is creating an entirely new species.
worlds apart, really.

It's a mixture VS a solution type of thing.

-The use of medicine is pretty similar to ingesting something. It enters your system, does what it does and passes through. More so than food, I would say (which becomes part of your biomass). So medicine may not be natural in most cases, but it is not changing YOU into something that's un-natural, anymore than eating more protein can help you gain muscle mass.

-Transplants and prosthetics need to be accepted by your body. They are building blocks to replace parts that you don't have, an organ or a replacement limb, or bone. but would you consider them to fundamentally change who you are other than the fact that you still live, or can walk- in any other way than the quality of life you are able to live? Other than psychologically, you are pretty much the same person- the same organism. I'ts just that is not you, but the replacement parts doing the work that you require them to do.

But we are at a tipping point with even "medicine", i think, before it gets out of hand. Bluntly, we are birthing too many new children, while extending our lifespans in such leaps and bounds. Science, politics and the economics have a lot of catching up to do, or it could svck pretty bad, pretty soon.


But I gotta say, all of the trans/post-shuman options are like a solution. it is no longer separate parts combined to form a whole. it is its own whole; a new thing, one that i don't believe can really ever taken apart afterwards... THey could be considered evolutionary tools, but they differ from traditional medical tools in that they do actually change you- at you;re very core structure. You are no longer a human, and if you're even able to reproduce, your children will never be either.



That's fine if everyone else wants to go that route; i see some of these things happening at some point. But it's just not for me. I don't really even care to go to the doctor all that much as is.

Gene therapy is an approved medical treatment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glybera

Humans have been creating new species through breeding, cross-polinating, and graphing since we left our hunter-gatherer way ofl iving. Now we do it with greater precision and with more science and now even to ourselves.

Only in people's minds, not in practice.

If I transplant my brain into the opposite gender and animal, do I live for the extra duration of the body's life? Is yes, then yeah I would. It'd be pretty cool to experience being a guy then a girl. It'd be ever cooler to be able to transplant my brain into an eagle or shark or something and live in the habitat.

Wow, this is great news. I no longer have to worry about renal failure I guess, since a single dialysis treatement will cure me of it for life . What you say is true for some really basic medications, but not for the vast majority of medications. In fact, it's true for less medications than you may think. Your body grows tolerances to various medications because of this fact. Especially when dealing with modern medicines (congenital conditions, geriatrics, plastic surgery etc) they are continuous things.

Funny thing: people said the same thing about transplants in the past. Also your body does reject transplants (unless from an identical twin) to various degress, leading to the necessity of immunosurpressants following the transplant for varying periods of times and constant follow-ups to check for rejection.

Actually, that's not true.

Average age of death was 40 because the infant mortality rate was so high. If you somehow managed to survive being a kid, you actually had a decent chance at living into a fairly old age.

Actually, life expectancy is (or at least is supposed to be) a constantly recalculated statistic for your expected remaining years. For those that live in advlthood, as you say, their life expectancy was higher (it was also a lot less than 40 for at birth: in the 20s), but even in advlthood life expectancy was still only in the 50s-60s.

Life expectancy at birth in the US is something like in the 70s, but once you get into late advlthood your life expectancy is once again longer: into the 80s and 90s

Which is why you don't see this massive die-off when you get into your 70s It's also why geriatric medicine is such a big field now compared to before.

In the end: our lives are still significantly longer. Whether you use at-birth life expectancy or the much better readjusted statistic of advlthood life expectancy.

I always thought that people that lived in ancient/medieval times were entirely capable of living to be seventy or eighty, but often died at the age of thirty or forty due to the many diseases and lack of medical knowledge compared to today.

No to all of those. Change one of those powers to time travel and I'll consider it.

I will do the extended life thing if i was like 60 years old..