Mountain climbing amputee Hugh Herr asks whether there will come a time when bionics will become so appealing that people will opt for amputation.
He argues that with his specific prosthetics he has clear advantages over his rivals.
As the UK Guardian reports:
Herr has a seductive backstory, which begins with prodigious talent as a young mountain climber. He was lucky to survive a traumatic accident on Mount Washington in January 1982 in which he suffered severe frostbite and had both legs amputated below the knee.
The same stamina and tenacity that made him an exceptional climber also made him dismiss the doctor’s verdict that he would never climb again, so his narrative goes.
Within weeks of having his first prostheses fitted, Herr was climbing again and in a workshop augmenting his very basic prostheses. He developed a bladed device that could wedge itself into smaller crevices than a human foot, welded a crampon to a prosthesis so that he could climb frozen routes up mountains, and even made prostheses much longer than his natural leg length, which meant he could reach holds able-bodied climbers couldn’t stretch to.
“At the beginning of that year society said I was broken. One year later I had surpassed my pre-amputation climbing abilities and done climbs no climber had ever done. I had augmented my body within 12 months, so much so that a few competitors were threatening to cut off their own legs.”
Herr's argument is summarised here:
'Given cosmetic surgery now, how would we feel about going under the knife for an arguably more justifiable benefit? This raises some intensely challenging issues about whether we will see a far more profound human digital divide, already hinted at in sci-fi countless times: the augmented, and the unaugmented.
In this view of the body as a biological machine, the parts that don’t work can be replaced, improved, remodelled.
The brain is extraordinarily complex, but its functionalities and specificities are being mapped. Eventually electronics, tapping the body’s neural network, will be able to override what we currently consider disabilities.
“We have to go beyond what nature intended, a future where technology and what it is to be human are blurred. A new nature that will give us new bodies and where disability is no more,” he said.
Depression, diabetes, paralysis, Parkinson’s disease, brain injuries, migraine, anxiety, tinnitus, sleep disorders, multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia – all these conditions could be eliminated, in Herr’s world. That is the promise.
But it is a promise dependent on huge resources and cost and on a centre of technological expertise that gives the west yet more advantage and privilege, a conversation a thousand times removed from the poverty and disadvantage of the developing world.
As Kerr says: “Remove technology and I am imprisoned. All I can do is crawl. But with it I am free.”
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This raises several interesting questions, for instance: If individual autonomy is to be respected and the individual feels they can achieve more with a prosthetic limb (and can afford it), is there a valid argument against allowing them to undergo such a procedure?
Normally we associate health care with medical professionals restoring health and returning function to a prior state. However there are ares of health care that focus primarily on health enhancement - cosmetic surgery and some dental procedures for instance. Is amputation/bionics really any different?
What does Herr's personal story and prediction say about 'disability'? What impact might Hurr's prediction have on those already living with an amputation? Would all amputee share his perspective?
Lots of questions...
Should purposeful amputation of a 'healthy' limb be allowed?
What do you think?
Image source
It is proposed that amputation of healthy limbs, for individuals who can pay for treatment, should be allowed