Building a Superhuman: Stem Cell Advances Are Leading to Dangers and Ethical Problems Few Have Considered

October 6, 2014

(National Post) – A key problem, as McGill genetic ethicist Bartha Knoppers said this week, is that medical ethics is ill-equipped to contain or thwart the rise of these “luxury” applications of stem cell science, which already loom in the popular imagination. Put together, the trends of stem cell technologies for beauty, strength and resilience point to a new era of human enhancement, not by integration with computers, but by exploitation of the genome’s eternally replicating power. They herald the age of stem cell superheroes, but also monsters and freaks.