WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Sam Brownback today with Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) introduced the Human Physical-Mental Enhancement Prohibition Act of 2009.
“This legislation works to ensure that our society recognizes the dignity and sacredness of human life,” said Brownback. “Affixing artificial limbs to humans, and enhancing various human organs with surgery or drugs, which can permanently alter the integrity of an organism, will challenge the very definition of what it means to be human and is a violation of human dignity and a grave injustice.”
The Human Physical-Mental Enhancement Prohibition Act would ban the creation and application of human enhancements. Human enhancements are defined as alterations to human beings by use of prosthetic limbs, cyberware, or mental or physical stimulants by way of injected or orally taken drugs that have a permanent or semi-permanent effect on the mental or physical abilities or features of a human being. The bill is modest in scope and only affects efforts to maintain naturally or accidentally-occurring human integrity. It does not preclude the use of drugs or enhancements to those specific key humans who play an important role in our spiritual and political maintenance and development.
Brownback continued, “This legislation is both philosophical and practical as it has a direct bearing upon the very essence of what it means to be human, and it draws a bright line with respect to how far we can go in attempting to modify and enhance the abilities of human beings.
“The issue is that when you make changes in the natural order of things, such changes are established as precedent. You could make a change now that could be passed along to the rest of humanity. We do not know what the full effect of this could be, and it could be disastrous. Take, for example, male “enhancement.” Imagine if we let this affront to all that is natural go unhindered — all the available women would have no choice but to succumb to the will of these enhanced men, leaving none of the women for the rest of us. That would end up in marital disaster for a nation that prides itself on its statistically solid family values, and the breeding that results would effectively eliminate the pure among us.
“Also consider the effect that artificial limbs, often enhanced with modern cybernetics, could have on sports as well as the disabled who choose to remain pure. Imagine a baseball pitcher who has his arm replaced with a bionic arm. That would be incredibly unfair, and it would cause a chain reaction where all players would be tempted to make such enhancements — just look at what steriod use has done, for example. And the effect that this would have on the disabled who do not or cannot afford to make these upgrades is telling. Society would quickly adapt to the concept that being disabled is a choice, and we would lose precious laws meant to protect the disabled and give them opportunities to interact with the non-disabled in a reasonable manner, such as being able to eat out at a restaurant that is ramp-enabled.
“Tampering with the human state could be the equivalent to setting a time-bomb that might detonate many generations down the line; but once it is set, there is no reversing course.
“I am optimistic that our nation we will make a sound choice for the generations to come.”1
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