Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/1138
inability to stop steroid and other performance enhancement in major league baseball in the u.s. The societal consensus is that we do not want our athletes to do steroids or human growth hormone or any other drugs that enhance their athletic performance. The acceptance of human enhancements in sports will be a long time coming. In the meantime, we're likely to witness another unwinnable "war" attempting to stop people from doing what they are inevitably, eventually going to do. As miah observed, the acceptance of personal enhancement "has been far from smooth… but equally the desire to enhance has become more apparent, as evidenced by the number of ways in which we seek to alter our bodies and minds." As our conversations moved from sports and into the more general subject of human enhancement, I discovered that miah's enthusiasms are pretty much limitless and his knowledge is encyclopedic. mention that you're looking for an image of an enhanced eye, miah's got one. Want a woman that could be a poster girl for the beauty of enhancement, with prosthetic legs and a body and face you wouldn't believe? miah has the information and images. "We are very keen on exploring dimensions of our identity though biological modifi cations. We've done this in the past through tattoo, piercing, scarifi cation even. There's a long list and each of these mechanisms has been about marking oneself out culturally and socially." remember that story about the selective memory deletion in mice a few months back? (If not, Google it. Crazy cool.) Ask miah about it and he'll refer you to his article on eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. (Do you remember that movie? Or was it selectively deleted?) His article, like that fi lm, really brings home the situation, and the nuances of memory deletion. It's a good read, not just a journal article. "…the moral narrative of eternal sunshine is ambiguous in many respects, since it confronts our uncertainty about how best to overcome diffi culties in life…. After watching eternal sunshine, while one is left feeling that the best solution to dealing with human suffering already resides within our learned capacities, there is also a sense in which leaving this merely for time to heal is inadequate and that we are quite right for seeking more effective, effi cient and gentle means. The diffi culty, though, is that eternal sunshine portrays memory deletion as anything but gentle." Lastly, as malcom Gladwell would say, miah is a Connector "with a special gift for bringing the world together." Aside from his intellectual eclecticism, making connections between art and science and a broad mix of disciplines, he knows a lot of people: science fi ction writers, philosophers, designers, artists, scientists, academics, people from sports and architecture. Andy miah sees the value in bringing people together in a collaborative manner and having them work on ideas about the future. He believes that the artist and the scientist, working together, can create a truly benefi cial relationship, envisioning a future that is enhanced, in the deepest and best sense of the word. Kristi scott has a master of Arts in Liberal studies, interns with the Institute for ethics & emerging Technologies, is a freelance writer, and mother of three. The acceptance of personal enhancement "has been far from smooth… but equally the desire to enhance has become more apparent." resOurCes Andy miah www.andymiah.net Oscar Pistorius http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Pistorius Guardian New science Writing http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2009/ mar/01/simon-singh-chris-french-pz-myers-andy- miah-new-science-writing