Brain implants & mind reading

is that you cannot simply infer from his case that we are becoming posthuman. I am very suspicious of those who will point to the use of radical technology and pose the question 'what next?', imagining all sorts of superhuman as the next step. Matt Nagle is paralysed from the neck down and made headlines this week for being "the first person to have controlled an artificial limb using a device chornically implanted into hi brain" (Meet the Mind Readers, The Guardian). I am personally excited about the prospects of this technology and certainly wonder 'what next?', but we cannot talk about this case as a transhuman or posthuman innovation. The biggest obstacle to that this kind of technology remains intimately connected to therapeutic medicine. Until the applications are genuinely non-therapeutic, we cannot claim to have become posthuman.

Hitler and the Pope

Last night, it was announced that the Pope, John Paul II, was preparing to die. We left the media to play it out, setting the video to record the entire evening, seeking that moment of catastrophe that only the news presenter can now convey to us. It was not clear how much time he had left, but the news would suggest only hours, as they continue to do today. It is now around 6pm and the coverage has become considerably more measured and expectant, though it is likely that he will continue for another night. After setting the video, we proceeded out to the cinema, where we watched the long-awaited German film, The Downfall. It tells the story of Adolf Hitler’s final days, as the war is about to end. As I was watching the portrayal of this historic figure, I could not help but compare the life and character of this man with the contrasting greatness of John Paul II. While a comparison of this kind might appear to be grossly untasteful, there does seem to be something meaningful about their different iconic status. There seems first something terribly interesting about Downfall. The film maintains a dignified encounter with the terror and grade of this figure and one finds compelled by his vision. There also seems something very authentic about its having been made by a German production company, which further reinforces its importance as a statement about how far we have come in dealing with this forgettable past.

To this extent, the fading of the Pope is similarly moving for me, an agnostic at best. One feels the need for people to gather and reclaim some sense of the spiritual and non-trivial celebrity whose character – for better or worse – is based on something sincere and real. This is what they both represent. This is why Hitler’s Downfall is reminiscent of the Pope’s death and both are played-out through their respective fictional spaces - for the Pope BBC News 24, for Hitler, The Downfall.

Is blood spinning ethical?

WADA President Richard Pound recently commented on 'blood spinning', the technique of removing platelets from the blood (the cells that assist the process of healing) and reinjecting them into an injured part of the body to speed up the process of recovery. The English football team Chelsea is using this practice, but it seems likely that they will for much longer. UK Sport has already raised questions about whether it should be considered a form of doping. Yet, it is precisely this kind of application that is tricky for WADA and for the medical profession. Certainly, it could be construed as the application of a medical intervention for a performance purpose, but this purpose is perhaps not obvious, nor can it be taken in isolation, since the technique promotes recovery.

Quoted in AFP: "It sounds like blood manipulation of some sort to me. But I would need to talk to our scientific department to get all the background," said Richard Pound."

Link to article in This Sporting Life

Hitler and the Pope

Last night, it was announced that the Pope, John Paul II, was preparing to die. We left the media to play it out, setting the video to record the entire evening, seeking that moment of catastrophe that only the news presenter can now convey to us. It was not clear how much time he had left, but the news would suggest only hours, as they continue to do today. It is now around 6pm and the coverage has become considerably more measured and expectant, though it is likely that he will continue for another night. After setting the video, we proceeded out to the cinema, where we watched the long-awaited German film, The Downfall. It tells the story of Adolf Hitler’s final days, as the war is about to end. As I was watching the portrayal of this historic figure, I could not help but compare the life and character of this man with the contrasting greatness of John Paul II. While a comparison of this kind might appear to be grossly untasteful, there does seem to be something meaningful about their different iconic status. There seems first something terribly interesting about Downfall. The film maintains a dignified encounter with the terror and grade of this figure and one finds compelled by his vision. There also seems something very authentic about its having been made by a German production company, which further reinforces its importance as a statement about how far we have come in dealing with this forgettable past.

To this extent, the fading of the Pope is similarly moving for me, an agnostic at best. One feels the need for people to gather and reclaim some sense of the spiritual and non-trivial celebrity whose character – for better or worse – is based on something sincere and real. This is what they both represent. This is why Hitler’s Downfall is reminiscent of the Pope’s death and both are played-out through their respective fictional spaces - for the Pope BBC News 24, for Hitler, The Downfall.

The Liminal Body

An exhibition that brings together a range of my interests - posthuman, Olympic, body modification. Seems it was from the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games

The Liminal Body 8 September - 15 October, 2000

Tue - Sun: 11.00am - 6.00pm Galleries One and Two

Jon Baturin Farrell & Parkin Sue Fox Dieter Huber Bill Jacobson Diana Thorneycroft

Curated by Alasdair Foster

At a time when the eyes of the world is glued to images of the body pressed to its athletic extreme, the Australian Centre for Photography presents an exhibition that explores other corporeal limits through the provocative and uncompromising work of seven photo-artists from Australia, Austria, Canada, UK and USA.

The Olympic Games play out the apollonian tradition of a healthy mind/spirit housed within, and finding physical representation through the fit healthy functioning body. As a political event the Olympics take this tradition and applies it to the state - the healthy body, striving for supremacy in the sporting arena becomes an emblem of state identity and a metaphor for spiritual (and political) wellbeing (if not ascendancy).

The Liminal Body explores the bacchic obverse of the apollonian Olympic paradigm - looking to other equally (perhaps more) human limits. The body on the brink of life/death; the dysfunctional body; the visceral reality of flesh and blood; the corporal as it shades into the spiritual; the sensate as it merges into the virtua

From medieval medical machinery to virtual 'genital modification'; from the cadaver to the spiritual; from the catharsis of nightmare to the control of meaning: The Liminal Body presents challenging work that imaginatively explores the limits of human bodily experience.

The Symposium Death Dysfunction and the Olympic Ideal further explored these issues.

One-Day Symposium Death Dysfunction and The Olympic Ideal

A Symposium complementing the exhibition The Liminal Body presented by the Australian Centre for Photography and the University of New South Wales at the College of Fine Arts 9th September 2000 Venue

Lecture Theatre E block University of New South Wales at the College of Fine Arts, Paddington Enter off Selwyn Street

Program

Set against the background of the Sydney Olympics and taking a radical and provocative alternative approach to physical extremity, this one-day symposium will explore the challenging issues raised by the work of the seven artists showing in the ACP exhibition The Liminal Body. With an international, cross-disciplinary panel of speakers, subjects addressed will range from Rabelais's Gargantua to postmodern health neuroses; from the mortician's slab to the priest's alter; from the visceral to the virtual.

Following the keynote presentation the day will be divided into three sessions:

* Malady and Viscerality * Dissolution and Spirituality * Phantasm and Virtuality

Abstracts

Keynote

Dr. Kit Messham-Muir (Australia) No Gold for Gargantua

My presentation will begin with a brief excerpt from the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald about a race involving Ian Thorpe and Michael Klim. The story reads like a piece of erotic fiction - it's very funny. Then I'll briefly talk about the way in which the City of Sydney itself is being promoted to the world as a classically ideal 'body' - which is efficient, pushed to its capacity, times and homogeneous - physically and psychologically. From that I'll lead into the classical tradition of this body and compare it with the more heterogeneous notions of the body in medieval culture as seen through the novels of François Rabelais. While the Western Enlightenment philosophy that followed reimposed a notion of the body more aligned with that of Classicism, this model of a problematised 'Rabelaisian' body has made something of resurgence with this faltering of grand narratives of modernity. I'll finish by looking briefly at the ways in which this notion of the body has been dealt with in recent art such as that of Andres Serrano, Patricia Piccinini, Adam Cullen (in his pre-Archibald career) and the artists showing in The Liminal Body.

Kit Messham-Muir is a lecturer in Art History and Theory at the College of Fine Arts, University of NSW. He has a PhD in Art History and Theory from the University of NSW and a Bachelor of Visual Arts first class from Sydney College of the Arts. He lectures on a wide range of cultural subjects including pornography, grunge and the loser aesthetic.

Session One: Malady and Viscerality

Jon Baturin (Canada) Myths about Ends

Hope and the 'ideology of care' define my philosophic position. The ideas behind the works I produce arise from observations of a world in turmoil. We see the breakdown of systems or ideas (the body / philosophical ideologies / societal justice) through processes of corruption, negligence, or decay. There is also a dominant reference to bodily dysfunction throughout the work. Life sometimes deals us some cruel blows. In some cases we cease to be healthy. In others we cease to be idealistic. Most difficult of all - we (or those whom we love) live and die tragically. "Enemies Within" uses chaos and flesh. "The Myths cycle" acknowledges chaos, fear & flesh. The resulting combination of portraits, figures and medical imagery produces discomforting juxtapositions. However neither the subjects nor the anatomical representations are themselves unaesthetic. There is an unsettling kind of beauty. There is dignity. And there is hope.

Jon Baturin is an artist and Associate Professor and Program Director Photography & Explorations at York University, Canada. He has a Master of Fines Arts from Glasgow School of Art (Scotland), an advance diploma in photography and print media from the Emily Carr College of Art, Vancouver and a BA in psychology and sociology from the University of Victoria, Canada. He has exhibited widely overseas and curated a number of exhibitions in Canada and Europe. His critical writings have been published in North America and Europe.

Victoria Ryan (Australia) The Art of Living Well: A Hypochondriac's Guide

In recent years the Olympic ideal of eternal youth has been given scientific credibility by futurists who argue that we will soon see the last mortal generation. In keeping with such predictions, utopian medical narratives no longer represent aging and death as inevitable, but as diseases to be cured, through technological intervention and the erasure of visible signs of degeneration. Thus, the 'art of living well' emerges in popular health advice as a series of (im)possible, strategies for cheating death and staying young.

Victoria Ryan is currently completing a PhD at the School of Art History and Theory, University of NSW at the College of Fines Arts (COFA) entitled The Anatomy Lesson: Photography, Eugenics and Physical Culture in Australia 1900-1950. She has worked as a lecturer and tutor at COFA since 1996. Her research interests include public health photography, medical illustration, popular health advice, organ transplants and aesthetic surgery.

Michael Wardell (Australia) Ailment, argot, and artifice in the work of Farrell & Parkin

This talk will give a very brief outline of the development of Farrell & Parkin's work from Film Noir 1985 to Traces of the Flood 1999/2000. It will concentrate on the two themes that have dominated the work of the 1990's; that of secret language and that of sickness. It will discuss their extensive use of fiction and artifice to explore notions of strength/weakness, beauty/horror, sickness/health, benefaction/torture etc.

Curatorial Services Coordinator at the Art Gallery of New South Wales since 1998. Previously Director of Michael Wardell Gallery (13 Verity Street), 1986-97, a curator at The Australian National Gallery, Canberra, 1978-1986 and at Monash University Gallery, Melbourne, 1976-1978. Farrell & Parkin were represented in Victoria by Michael Wardell Gallery 1994-97.

He has curated numerous exhibitions including Photography: The Last Ten Years. Australian National Gallery at Australian National University, 1980, Iskustvo: Recent Soviet Paintings, Linden Gallery & 13 Verity Street (followed by Regional tour) 1990 and (with Tony Bond) Ken Unsworth, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998. He also curated the photography exhibition My City of Sydney, which is currently showing at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He has written numerous articles and catalogue essays including Farrell & Parkin: Black Room. Encontros Da Imagem. 10 Anos. Associação Cultural de Fotografia e Cinema de Braga. Portugal, 1996, and has lectured extensively throughout Australia.

Session Two: Dissolution and Spirituality

Rebecca Scott Bray (Australia) Sensing Death: The chiaroscuro of touch in the mortuary photography of Sue Fox

This talk engages with the mortuary photography of British artist Sue Fox. Fox's images melt flashes of death and fragments of texture into a language for viewing death that is resonant with the artist's meditation and Buddhist faith. How long is our dying, how deep is our life? What questions are posed by the flesh: of the viewer, of the dead body? Moving these bodies into gallery spaces, and therefore public consideration, Sue Fox presents the viewer with an accumulation of decompositions. Here, photography releases the image as a chant, as the artist states "of what is, what was ... a song".

Rebecca Scott Bray is completing a PhD in the Department of Criminology at the University of Melbourne. She has a Master of Criminology from the Faculty of Law at the University of Sydney and a BA with honours from the Australian National University. She has presented a number of papers on law, culture and the imagination at conferences in Australia, USA and UK.

Kirk Huffman (UK/USA) Malakula and Kaggaba: The 'Living Dead' and the 'Dead Living'

This illustrated presentation will contrast the attitudes to death in two specific and far spread cultures: the people of southern Malakula Island in Vanuatu and the "last surviving pre-Colombian civilisation", the Kaggaba (also known as the Kogi) of Colombia. Based upon his research in Vanuatu from 1973 - 2000 and his trip to Colombia in 1992, Kirk Huffman will outline the attitudes to the body and to death in these two cultures, setting them against their individual cosmologies. The southern Malakulans believe that the dead live among them as 'travelling spirits'. They smoke the bodies of deceased males shortly after death and eventually over-model the skulls to honour the likenesses of the departed as a way of representing that closeness. The Kaggaba live high on a vast mountain in northern Colombia which they believe to be the heart of the world. Their whole social order is focused upon supporting their Sun Priests in their spiritual rites, which they believe sustain all life throughout the world. The Kaggaba believe that what we call 'life' is a form of death and that it is only when one passes from this world that one truly lives. Consequently when their priests reach the age of 90 years and their work is considered to be over, they can ask to be buried alive and so move into the new and more real life to which they aspire.

Kirk Huffman is an anthropologist/ethnologist and currently Visiting Fellow in the Anthropology Division of the Australian Museum. He was Curator at the National Museum of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, Vanuatu from 1977-89 and continues to hold that position in an honorary capacity. He studied Social Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistoric Archaeology at the Universities of Newcastle, Oxford and Cambridge in England from 1966-77 receiving a BA Hons in Anthropology and a Postgraduate Diploma in Ethnology. He has advised on the making of 36 anthropological television documentaries including David Attenborough's 'Man blong kastom' [BBC2/PBS 1975]. He was one of the authors and editors of Arts of Vanuatu [Crawford House Press 1996]. Mr Huffman will be leaving again for Vanuatu and Southern Malakula shortly after this lecture.

Alasdair Foster (Australia) Songs of Sentient Beings

This presentation will trace the development of Bill Jacobson's work during the 90s, from the earlier works addressing his intense sense of loss as AIDS and HIV began to take friends and community from him [Interim Portraits] to the more resigned images of his later work [Thought Series]. I will go on to explore his attempt to create a visual equivalent for the fading of substance and the more hopeful evoking of a notion of the 'trace'.

Alasdair Foster is the director of the Australian Centre for Photography and the curator of The Liminal Body. He has a BSc in physics, history of science and modern theatre from the University of Edinburgh. He was the founding director of Fotofeis, the international biennale of photo-based arts in Scotland and curator of the seminal exhibition, Behold the Man that toured Europe and North America. He has a background in film, commercial and art photography, art criticism and publishing.

Session Three: Phantasm and Virtuality

Diana Thorneycroft (Canada) The Body: Its Lesson and Camouflage

I work in total darkness. I lock the aperture of my camera open and using only a torch I illuminate my body, the props and environment I have prepared for each private performance. What is recorded on film is always a surprise as my body has a language of its own, a language that my conscious mind does not always speak let alone fully comprehend. My discussion will focus on the body, its expression of suffering and the darker aspects of the unconscious mind that have been fundamental to my work for many years.

Diana Thorneycroft is an artist and Adjunct Professor at the University of Manitoba, Canada. She has an MA in Art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BA Hons in Fine Arts from the University of Manitoba. She has exhibited widely internationally and her work has featured in a number of documentaries on CBC TV.

Maurice Whelan (Australia) Psychoanalysis and The Creative Imagination

This paper explores the need for self-representation through play, dreams, art and through emotional contact with fellow human beings. It will address the place of the creative imagination as a transformative agent within the practice of psychoanalysis. In exploring these ideas I will demonstrate how my thinking draws inspiration both from the psychoanalytic body of knowledge and from literature.

Maurice Whelan studied philosophy, theology and sociology in Ireland. He trained as a social worker in England and worked as a field social worker and as a psychiatric social worker in Child Guidance. He has an MA in Criminology and Social Policy. He trained as a psychoanalyst in London and is member of the British and Australian Psychoanalytic Societies. Since 1992 he has lived and worked in Sydney. His book Mistress of Her Own Thoughts was published in July by Rebus press.

Dieter Huber (Austria) Body Unlimited

In his cycle KLONES (1994-1999) Dieter Huber worked on options for genetic engineering and questions of manipulation in general. In connection with social context, gender, political statement, technology and art history he developed metaphorical computer-aided images. In selected works the artist will illustrate his operating method and question the future of the human being in time of 'life sciences'.

Dieter Huber is an artist living and working in Salzburg, Austria. He studied stage and costume design at the Mozarteum University, Salzburg. He has exhibited regularly in Europe in over 25 solo and 40 group exhibitions and his work is the subject of several monographs.

Live Internet links to artist Sue Fox in the UK and Farrell & Parkin in China will further extend the discussion.

The Symposium will be formally launched by Little Johnny (formerly Pauline Pantsdown, aka Simon Hunt) taking time from his gruelling millennial Olympic program to bestow a prime ministerial blessing on the event "and perhaps a small apology".

Symposium coordinated by Alasdair Foster (ACP) and Lynne Roberts Goodwin and Peter McNeil (UNSW at COFA) Internet coordinator Ricky Cox

Image Credits:

• Dieter Huber, Klone #31, 1994-95 • Sue Fox, Untitled, 1997 • Diana Thorneycroft, Untitled (bridle), 1998 • Farrell & Parkin, After the Flood, 2000 • Jon Baturin, Enemies Within #2, 1992 • Bill Jacobson, Song of Sentient Beings #1612, 1995 Courtesy of Julie Saul Gallery, New York

link to site

Lotions & Potions: The Quest for Performance Enhancement

A symposium at DeSales University in the USA takes place today discussing the use of steroids in sport. It is hosted by the Bioethics Society and offers the following outline. Bioethics Society to discuss steroid use, Tuesday, March 29

"With opening day just around the corner, the U.S. House of Representatives recently took a mighty swing at Major League Baseball's efforts to eradicate steroid use. Another pitch now comes from the Baranzano Society on bioethics. This regional association will sponsor the forum, "Lotions & Potions: The Quest for Performance Enhancement" from 7:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Tuesday, March 29, in the Labuda Center for the Performing Arts at DeSales. The program will feature a panel of experts in health, science and business, who will discuss the facts and fictions of performance enhancing drugs. The event is open to the public free of charge.

The Congressional hearings shone a national spotlight on baseball players and the prevalence of steroid use in record-breaking performances. Yet use of steroids appears to be rampant, even among amateur athletes and young people, in general. A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention points to a 300 percent increase in the last ten years, with more than 500,000 high school students claiming to have tried steroids.

In addition, according to Rep. Tom Davis, a survey by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the University of Michigan found that "the perception among high school students that steroids are harmful has dropped from 71 percent in 1992, to 56 percent in 2004." Yet, anabolic steroids are regulated as illegal controlled substances.

During the round table discussion at DeSales, the panel of experts will address the health ramifications, ethical dilemmas, and social consequences of using pharmacological advances to enhance personal performance. The panelists include: Dr. Jay Hoffman, professor of health at The College of New Jersey and vice-president of the National Strength and Conditioning Association, who will report on his meetings with professional baseball coaches during spring training. Also, Richard Bartolacci, founder and president of JBN Enterprises, who will address the issue from the viewpoint of the sports and nutrition supplement industry, and Father Douglas Burns, OSFS, director of the Sport & Exercise Science program at DeSales, who will speak on the subject in terms of sport ethics."

link to site

WADA's Play True - Gene Doping

The first 2005 issue of WADA's magazine 'Play True' is all about Gene Doping. WADA President Richard Pound leads the publication, identifying that 'gene therapy represents an exciting and promising step forward in medical research, but its use to enhnace athletic ability is as wrong as any type of traditional doping'. It is not the first time that the magazine has discussed gene doping, but the profile in this issue is significant. WADA have set-up a gene doping panel, which includes H. Lee Sweeney, Olivier Rabin (WADA Science Director) and Theodore Freidmann, among others.

Pound emphasises the need for regulatory frameworks in gene transfer technology and Thomas H. Murray (The Hastings Center and WADA Ethics and Education) provides an ethical analysis of the issue.

On Detection: The issue includes a couple of main points about detection. It first identifies that many athletes have a 'false sense of security about wheher gene doping can be detected'. It goes on to state that 'It might be difficult to see that a particular gene has been added to the body, but there will be consequences to that addition that can be seen and measured'. They conclude 'Bottom line? Detection is possible and probable', but there are no tests yet.

Posthuman law in the human world

details of a seminar due to take place on Tuesday 12 April, 20054-6pm, Venue: TBA, South Building, Coleraine Campus, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland

Professor Sandra Braman Department of Communication, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Abstract

'Posthuman Law in the Human World'

The assumption that the law is made by humans for humans no longer holds: Increasingly, the subject of policy is the information infrastructure itself, machinic rather than social values play ever-more important roles in decision-making, and laws and regulations for human society are being supplemented, supplanted, and superceded by machinic decision-making. The transformation of the legal system wrought by such changes is so profound that it may be said that we are entering a period of posthuman law. These trends are likely to be exacerbated in future as ubiquitous embedded computing at the nanotechnological level destroys any meaningful distinction between the "information infrastructure" and the material environment. They will in turn force reconsideration of distinctions among the "natural," the "human," and the "machinic". And they raise quite new questions about what it might mean to effectively participate in decision-making about the conditions of our individual and social lives.

Bio

Sandra Braman has been studying the macro-level effects of the use of digital technologies and their policy implications since the mid-1980s. Current work includes Change of State: An Introduction to Information Policy (in press, MIT Press) and the recent edited volumes Communication Researchers and Policy-makers (2003, MIT Press), The Emergent Global Information Policy Regime (2004, Palgrave Macmillan) and The Meta-technologies of Information: Biotechnology and Communication (2004, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates). With Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation support, Braman has been working on problems associated with the effort to bring the research and communication policy communities more closely together. She has published over four dozen scholarly journal articles, book chapters, and books; served as book review editor of the Journal of Communication; and is former Chair of the Communication Law & Policy Division of the International Communication Association. Braman currently sits on the editorial boards of six scholarly journals; is a Fulbright Senior Specialist; and has been appointed a fellow of the Educause Center for Applied Research, a think tank focused on IT and higher education. During 1997-1998 Braman designed and implemented the first graduate-level program in telecommunication and information policy on the African continent, for the University of South Africa. Currently Professor of Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Braman earned her PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1988 and previously served as Reese Phifer Professor at the University of Alabama, Henry Rutgers Research Fellow at Rutgers University, Research Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois-Urbana, and the Silha Fellow of Media Law and Ethics at the University of Minnesota.

To attend contact:

Digital Media and Digital Culture Seminar Series Centre for Media Research, University of Ulster Coleraine Campus, Northern Ireland

For futher information, expressions of interest and inquiries, please contact:

Ned Rossiter Senior Lecturer in Media Studies (Digital Media) Centre for Media Research University of Ulster Cromore Road Coleraine Northern Ireland BT52 1SA

email: n.rossiter@ulster.ac.uk tel.+44 (0)28 7032 3275

Superhumans, mutants and monsters

Superhumans, Mutants and Monsters: Gene Doping, Bioethics and the Posthuman GameUniversity of Toronto, Canada.

I just got back from UoT, where i gave a presentation on this topic. I wanted to talk a bit about how posthumanism is evolving as a body of literature and how it relates to competing ideas on transhumanism and cyborgology.

It always suprises me (pleasantly) at how different people approach this subject. The cover of GMA has written the content for many of my talks on this subject. This week conversations got into the subject of 'feline' modifications and the possible colonial interpretations of enhancement. For example, could we think about the discourse of posthumanism as similar to how people of certain races might have been characterised as savage or other. Alternatively, does the morphed human with cheetah tell us anything about the gendered nature of enhancement? What kind of animal would we like to look more like and what does thi reveal about our values and assumptions about beauty?

Interesting lines i think. If you would like to view the presentation click here (microsoft powerpoint needed, best on Mac OSX and office 2004)

Modafinil and cognitive enhancements

Kaufman, K. R. and R. Gerner (2005). "Modafinil in sports: ethical considerations." Br J Sports Med 39(4): 241-244. Kaufman and Gerner discuss the case of modafinil, asking whether athletes should be sanctioned for this use. The article provides a clear exposition of how the rules of anti-doping apply to the case of Kelli White, who claimed her use of modafinil was therapeutic for narcolepsy. However, due to her failing to file this condition when submitting her doping tests, exemption could not be granted. The authors consider whether this substance is an indication of further doping in sport, since it is unlikely that many cases of athletes with narcolepsy should arise in elite sports, due to the rarity of the condition.

Questions concerning cognitive enhnacements in sports have not been given much attention in the literature. There is considerable scope to question the way in which enhancement is defined in sports by examining these issues. The role of cognitive function in sport is not so easily quantified for performances, since it is not possible to connect specific movements with specific cognitive capacities.

Nevertheless, it is possible to identify a range of activities for which cognitive enhancements are essential and, thus, there WADA believes that there are good reasons to require the World Chess Federation to develop an anti-doping policy.

Bioethics and Human Excellence

Details of a bioethics symposium where performance enhancement makes the programme. Ethics Symposium: Bioethics and Human Excellence Centennial Celebration Event Southwest Missouri State University Friday and Saturday, March 4-5, 2005 Plaster Student Union Theatre

Organized by

College of Humanities and Public Affairs Pamela R. Sailors, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Head, Department of Philosophy Robert P. Jones, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Religious Studies

Select proceedings being considered for a special edition of Philosophy and Public Affairs

The session on performance and sport included the following papers:

Session II: Bioethics and Human Enhancement: Superior Performance

4:00-6:15 p.m.

Speakers:

Courtney S. Campbell, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, Director, Program for Ethics, Science, and the Environment, Oregon State University

Mark A. Holowchak, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, Kutztown University, former professional powerlifter

Topics:

Permanent medical implants in the body (bionics)

Sport and the Superior Athlete: Different ways of Enhancing Performance (equipment, training, native powers)

Targeting Specific Deficiencies of Old Age: Muscle Enhancement, Memory Enhancement

Moderator: Jeff Nash, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, SMSU

link to more info

Genetic tests for Rugby team

Dennis, C. (2005). "Rugby team converts to give gene tests a try." Nature 34: 260. Carina Dennis writes in Nature about an Australian rugby league team which aims to use genetic tests to stream-line training methods. The article quotes someone from the Australian Law Reforms Commission, whose report 'Essentially Yours' deals with this subject at some length. Australia seems to be taking a leading role in thinking through these issues. Ron Trent's work at the University of Sydney is central to this research and he claims that we still do not know enough about genes for this purpose. Issues of privacy and discrimination are central to this topic. Will genetically risky athletes be prevented from participation? Will young children who dont fit the profile be excluded? Will sports authorities have the legal power to demand genetic info from athletes?

Culture Machine 2005 - Biopolitics

. Contents to the 2005 volume:

CULTURE MACHINE 7 (2005) Biopolitics

Edited by Melinda Cooper, Andrew Goffey and Anna Munster

Editorial Biopolitics, For Now

Eugene Thacker Nomos, Nosos and Bios

Hannah Landecker Living Differently in Time: Plasticity, Temporality and Cellular Biotechnologies

Bifo Biopolitics and Connective Mutation

Kane Race Recreational States: Drugs and the Sovereignty of Consumption

Julian Reid with Keith Farquhar Immanent War, Immaterial Terror...

Luciana Parisi and Steve Goodman The Affect of Nanoterror

Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts Big Pigs, Small Wings: On Genohype and Artistic Autonomy

Anna Munster Why Is Bioart Not Terrorism?: Some Critical Nodes in the Networks of Informatic Life

Andrew Murphie Differential Life, Perception and the Nervous Elements: Whitehead, Bergson and Virno on the Technics of Living

Maria Hynes Rethinking Reductionism

HFL to lead gene doping research

Quote from UK Sport link "The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has announced a major research award of $400,000 (£212,000) to HFL – one of the UK’s WADA-accredited laboratories. The funding will support a three-year programme managed by HFL which aims to develop suitable detection methods for gene doping.

WADA defines gene doping as "the non-therapeutic use of genes, genetic elements and/or cells that have the capacity to enhance athletic performance". The practice is banned under the WADA list of prohibited substances or methods, although there is currently no way in which it can be detected.

With the support of WADA funding, HFL will manage a consortium of scientific experts on gene doping from Nottingham Trent University and the Royal Free Hospital in London. "As soon as new technology becomes available, it is subject to abuse by those who have no interest in fair competition," said David Hall, Chief Executive Officer of HFL. "This funding will help us to develop methods of detecting gene manipulation."

The potential threat of gene doping has been long recognised by WADA, which has devoted a significant share of its research funds finding a solution to the problem. This concentrated effort is back by John Scott, Director of Drug-Free Sport at UK Sport. "Gene therapy is a major medical breakthrough which could transform the lives of many people who suffer from muscle wasting diseases," he said. "However, it is also a dream come true for an athlete wishing to cheat, particularly while it remains undetectable.

"The development of such a detection method is key in protecting the integrity of sport, and it is testimony to the expertise at our disposal that British scientists are at the forefront on this research."

In addition, HFL has been awarded up to £800,000 by the Horserace Betting Levy Board (HBLB) to investigate gene doping specifically for the horseracing industry"

It is great that the UK is moving on this. I met Ian Gibson MP in July 2004 to discuss the state of anti-doping in the UK. He agreed that this issue needs to be placed on the political agenda. This is one indication that some wheels are turning but where's the ethical framework for the strategy? Detect-test is only part of the system.

Biosemiotics: the new challenge

CFPs... Biosemiotics: the new challenge 23 March 2005

Biosemiotics has been responsible for the acceleration of semiotics’ impetus in the last decade.

Biosemiotics promises to transform biology; it poses a challenge to aspects of Darwinian orthodoxy; it re-orientates the study of the sign; and, arguably above all, it precipitates a major re-thinking of the human subject.

‘Biosemiotics: the new challenge’ is a one-day international symposium run by the Communications and Subjectivity Research Group at London Metropolitan University in conjunction with the journal, Subject Matters. It is the first event of its kind in Britain to be devoted exclusively to biosemiotics.

The symposium will feature the molecular biologist, Jesper Hoffmeyer (Denmark), the cybernetician, Søren Brier (Denmark) and, from botany, the semiotician, Kalevi Kull (Estonia). Each will deliver papers aimed at a humanities audience addressing, in particular, biosemiotics’ consequences for the theory of the subject.

Price of entry to the symposium: £18-00.

To book or gain further information, email subjectmatters@londonmet.ac.uk

Doping & the Child: Ethics for the Most Vulnerable Group (2005)

Miah, A. (2005) Doping & the Child: Ethics for the Most Vulnerable Group, The Lancet [Sept 10, vol.366, 874-876.].

"On April 1, 2005, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published a policy statement on the use of performance-enhancing substances.¹ The statement questions several assumptions about the so-called drug war in sports and how it might be won. It argues for a more restrictive ethical framework that takes into account the most vulnerable group it affects—namely, children. The proposal calls for greater responsibility from health-care professionals by drawing attention to the wider concerns about care in public health that surround the use of performance-enhancing substances: “A significant number of adolescents who are not involved in competitive athletics use performance-enhancing substances.”¹

Framing the drug war in sport as a public-health issue has received renewed support in recent months. In the USA, the debates about the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative and unknown designer steroids have led to further political support to tackle the problem of doping. In his 2004 State of the Union Address, President George W Bush spoke of the danger of steroids in sports and the need for sports organisers to “take the lead and send the right signal” to young people.² Moreover, the congressional hearings on Major League Baseball have reinforced the political momentum on tackling substance abuse. The prospect of drug-testing protocols for sports programmes in US high-schools is a further indication of this momentum. However, the AAP is doubtful that such a strategy would be effective: “Drug testing and legal sanctions are intended to be deterrents but have little effect on most children and adolescents involved in sports.”¹

The AAP statement reinforces the poorly defined role of health-care professionals within sports. Whilst the AAP is unequivocal about the health-care providers’ responsibility—health, not performance—the statement does not grapple with the challenges faced by professionals working with athletes, nor does it address how the integrity of a physician’s judgment might be protected within that environment. A sports physician might struggle over deciding whether the athlete/patient is entitled to reparative care, if its purpose is to return them to competition. Are the athlete’s interests best served by fixing them for competition, or by advising them to rest?

Yet this complexity might suggest a reconsideration of how a physician relates to the athlete, a special kind of patient perhaps. One might argue that greater ethical limits must be placed on the use of medicine in sport and athletes’ autonomy, because an athlete’s decisions might be influenced considerably by the pressures to perform, especially when so much is often at stake for an athlete in every major performance. This coercive environment can inhibit an athlete’s autonomous choice to reject the use of performance-enhancing substances. When treating minors, this problem is exacerbated and the AAP claims that anti-doping policy needs to reconsider its priorities, placing the potential and real harm to children at its centre

The AAP statement identifies that anti-doping policy does not distinguish between different kinds of user, which poses big challenges to the world of elite sport. Moreover, it indicates a need for greater collaboration between drug companies and anti-doping authorities, because the latter rely on the former to know what new products might be arriving on the market that athletes could obtain. Knowledge of new products is essential to ensure that new methods of detection are developed with a good lead on the cheats. However, the financial incentive for drug companies is limited, because they make money from muscle boosting of athletes. Similarly, whilst more rigorous links with scientific and medical research would be of great assistance to the world of sport, non-sport scientists do not have much of an interest in sport unless the funding relates to some greater medical insight; so their incentive is also limited

Nevertheless the statement beckons a re-definition of anti-doping strategies, which should take into account the wide range of performance-altering technologies available to athletes, beyond the lists of banned substances. For example, the latest scandal is the ethics of “blood spinning”, a form of blood manipulation, which has been proposed by Chelsea soccer club physician Dr Bryan English, as a method of promoting “rehabilitation” when injured.³ Similarly, the use of hypobaric chambers to simulate higher altitudes and allow an athlete to train harder remains legal for the moment, but it is under review by the World Anti-Doping Agency.⁴

The message from the AAP places a broader requirement on anti-doping strategies to be made publicly accountable and subject to greater ethical scrutiny. A significant part of this strategy aims to promote ethical debate. The AAP notes that health-care professionals cannot discourage misuse merely by scare tactics or denying known performance-enhancing effects of banned substances. Rather, education must engage young people with the morality of sport, promoting public engagement with ethics. Whilst young people might fully understand the health risks of substance abuse, cultivating a moral view on science and medicine does not arise solely from having facts about health risks. "

From Anti-Doping to a ‘Performance Policy’: Sport Technology, Being Human and Doing Ethics (2005)

Miah, A. (2005) From Anti-Doping to a ‘Performance Policy’: Sport Technology, Being Human and Doing Ethics, European Journal of Sport Science, 5(1): 51-57 [ISSN: 1746-1391].

"the approach to performance enhancing technologies in sports should be far broader than is currently considered within anti-doping policy. Indeed, I have argued that the current approach exhibits considerable limitations, which, because of their incoherent ethical foundation, do not lend themselves to a successful or accepted policy. I have attempted to identify a number of taken-for-granted assumptions about what constitutes improvement in relation to policy, ethics, and performance. I suggest that one of the enduring problems with ethical arguments about science and technology in sport has to do with the limited breadth of discussions, which is only exaggerated in policy-making on these issues. Indeed, Houlihan (1999) recognises that, at no point since its inception, has the policy discourse surrounding anti-doping re-questioned the basic values of sport (and athletes) that it is trying to protect. While there are relatively few applied ethical issues that have clear conclusions for all ethicists and philosophers, sport appears to have made its conclusions about performance enhancement without first coming to terms with the complexity of the issue. By reformulating performance enhancement in sport and the ethical discussions arising from it, there is a better prospect for achieving a coherent theory of sporting values."

Genetics, Cyberspace and Bioethics: Why Not a Public Engagement with Ethics? (2005)

Miah, A. (2005) Genetics, Cyberspace and Bioethics: Why Not a Public Engagement with Ethics? Public Understanding of Science 14(4), 409-421.

"while some critics of media representations of science have argued for less “wacky science” (Hargreaves et al., 2003: 49) in news reporting, there is merit in thinking through the ethics of science by considering “wacky” prospects. An important way in which the ethical implications are made meaningful in various cultural texts (film, television, literature, news) is through the use of metaphor or the analogizing of science fiction to science fact (Brem and Anijar, 2003). As Christidou, Dimopoulos and Koulaidis’ (2004) study of metaphor in scientific journalism indicates, “social representations evoked by the use of metaphors about science and technology in the press and popular scientific magazines contribute to the upheaval of the cultural authority of the corresponding field, hence playing a significant role in the maintenance of the social autonomy and integrity of the technoscientific profession” (p. 359). As well, critical to scientific journalism have been its linguistic aspects. Condit (1999) and Liakopoulos (2002) note how the use of metaphor has been essential to discourses on genetic technology, with such terms as “blueprint,” “book of life,” “Pandora’s box,” “Frankenstein,” and “playing God” all appearing as key descriptors about what is implied by the development of new genetic technology.

Thus, scientific communication relies on the use of metaphor to create meaning, though this is often criticized—particularly by philosophers, bioethicists and scientists. For example, when discussing genetic technology, people often imagine this technology as “playing God,” without giving much consideration of the content of that metaphor. Yet, very little has been discussed about how mediatized scientific metaphors inform the understanding of ethics (Liakopoulos, 2002; Condit, 1999). This is an oversight in the literature, particularly since the use of metaphor is crucial to science, which itself relies on metaphor as part of its theoretical and conceptual landscape (Pickering, 1999). In part, it is understandable that these metaphors often incite frustration for scientists about how their work is communicated. After all, part of the problem with the lack of inquiry into the use of metaphor within public discussions about science—which is highlighted by re-framing  he PUoS as the PEwE—has to do with wondering what kinds of metaphors are appropriate to use. Is the use of gene transfer technology really like “playing God”? Is the human genome really the “book of life”?

Being able to answer these sorts of questions could help develop a more effective engagement with the salient aspects of science. It is not necessary for the non-expert to understand the specifics of particle physics or molecular biology. It is not particularly important that people understand that DNA looks something like a twisted double helix. Indeed, most scientists do not really have an in-depth knowledge of anything beyond their specialization, so the aspirations for public understanding must be capped somewhere. This cap should be on being able to make sense of these innovations in the context of a broad range of social values and priorities, or what might more typically be described as an understanding of social justice.

Through developing a Public Engagement with Ethics, further work must be done to develop new ways of conceptualizing and communicating science and medicine. The use of metaphor is a rich way of making science meaningful, yet we rely too much on metaphors from past eras, such as the frequently cited “Frankenstein” myth, which continues to overwhelm the public consciousness on genetics (Turney, 1998). Criticisms are often made about such examples, since they simplify the implications of science significantly. Yet, it is these texts that inform the non-expert’s understanding of science and they constitute imaginative articulations of how the future might develop if such technology is accepted. However, new analogies and new metaphors are needed and the media (and literature) must play a crucial role in this development. There is a need to move towards a public “engagement” with ethics, which can be achieved through developing a PEwE.

When considering this in the context of other media forms, Petersen (2002) identifies that print journalism fails to engage with the finer details of moral debate. For example, when considering the press coverage surrounding the birth of Dolly the sheep, Petersen notes that: “Those news stories that drew attention to threats to ‘identity’, ‘individuality’ or ‘human dignity’, or to the ‘moral unacceptability’ of human cloning, offered little or no analysis of ‘what it means to be human’ or what exactly was morally objectionable about human cloning” (p. 86). By utilizing computer-mediated communications and promoting informed dialogue, it is possible to circumvent the criticisms of “expert” discourses in science and technology. Furthermore, this proposal takes into account recommendations from the UK’s Wellcome Trust and recent discussions within bioethics, which call for the integration of social science and ethical inquiry (Haimes, 2002; Hedgecoe, 2004).

These proposals imply the need to reconsider public engagement/understanding strategies by integrating ethical development as part of the educational/communicative model. This might entail the formal introduction of moral reasoning skills as part of a national curriculum, or could even emerge out of principles developed through philosophical counseling. Yet, it is also worthwhile considering the less-formal mechanisms that can offer opportunities to create ethical engagement with science, perhaps through the programming of science festivals, which can encompass the broader community of cultural industries in the processing of science."

Legalisation of performance-enhancing drugs (2005)

Miah, A. (with Keyser, B. & Mauron, A.) (2005) Legalisation of performance-enhancing drugs. The Lancet, Special Supplement on Sport & Medicine, Dec, 366, S21.  

"The rules of sport define a level playing field on which athletes compete. Antidoping policies exist, in theory, to encourage fair play. However, we belive they are un- founded, dangerous, and excessively costly.

The need for rules in sports cannot be dismissed. But the anchoring of today’s antidoping regulations in the notion of fair play is misguided, since other factors that affect performance—eg, biological and environmental factors—are unchecked. Getting help from one’s genes is acceptable, for example, whereas use of performance- enhancing drugs is not, despite the fact that both types of advantage are undeserved. Prevailing sports ethics is unconcerned with this contradiction.

Another ethical foundation for antidoping concerns the athlete’s health. Antidoping control is judged necessary to prevent damage from doping. However, sport is dange- rous even if no drugs are taken—playing soccer comes with high risks for knee and ankle problems, for instance, and boxing can lead to brain damage. To compre- hensively assess any increase in risk afforded by the use of drugs or technology, every performance-enhancing method needs to be studied. Such work cannot be done while use of performance-enhancing drugs is illegal. We believe that rather than drive doping underground, use of drugs should be permitted under medical supervision.

Legalisation of the use of drugs in sport might even have some advantages. The boundary between the thera- peutic and ergogenic—ie, performance enhancing—use of drugs is blurred at present and poses difficult questions for the controlling bodies of antidoping practice and for sports doctors. The antidoping rules often lead to complicated and costly administrative and medical follow-up to ascertain whether drugs taken by athletes are legitimate therapeutic agents or illicit.

If doping was allowed, would there be an increase in the rate of death and chronic illeness among athletes? Would athletes have a shorter lifespan than the general population? Would there be more examples like the widespread use of drugs in the former East-German republic? We do not think so. Only a small proportion of the population engages in elite sports. Furthermore, legalisation of doping, we believe, would encourage more sensible, informed use of drugs in amateur sport, leading to an overall decline in the rate of health problems associated with doping. Finally, by allowing medically supervised doping, the drugs used could be assessed for a clearer view of what is dangerous and what is not.

The role of the doctor is to preserve their patients’ best interests with respect to present and future health. A sports doctor has to fulfil this role while maintaining the athlete’s performance at as high a level as possible. As such, as long as the first condition is met, any intervention proven safe, pharmacological or otherwise,

should be justified, irrespective of whether or not it is ergogenic. A doctor who tries to enhance the performance of their athlete should not be punished for the use of pharmacological aids, but should be held accountable for any ill effects. Rather than speculate on antidoping test procedures, resources should be invested into protecting the integrity of doctors who make such judgements.

Acknowledging the importance of rules in sports, which might even include the prohibition of doping, is, in itself, not problematic. However, a problem arises when the application of these rules is beset with diminishing returns: escalating costs and questionable effectiveness. The ethical foundation of prohibiting the use of ergogenic substances in sports is weak. As the cost of antidoping control rises year on year, ethical objections are raised that are, in our view, weightier than the ethical arguments advanced for antidoping. In the competition between increasingly sophisticated doping—eg, gene transfer—and antidoping technology, there will never be a clear winner. Consequently, such a futile but expensive strategy is difficult to defend."

Hybrid Identities in Digital Media

Call for papers... Hybrid Identities in Digital Media Vol 11, no 4, Winter 2005

Digital bodies, virtual characters, man-machine hybrids, simulated 'humans', androids, and cyborgs

Guest-edited by Kerstin Mey and Yvonne Spielmann

The focus of the special issue:

While digitally constructed identities have entered the popular media environment through fiction film, television, and computer games, where they have homogenising effects on the viewer/user that do not encourage them to question or critically look at the cultural concept of 'hybridity', we find that in experimental fields of creative practices (arts, youth cultures, and other groups) the challenge lies in the articulation of individual features that are appropriate to specific needs and express – through diversity – reflections on the hybrid, increasingly interactive and virtual production in digital media. The common interest here seems to lie in the expression of virtual selves that abandon the pre-fabricated products of cinema, television, computer games, and so on.

We encourage a discussion of the following: In what way does the construction of hybrid identities in digital media arts and cultural practices have an effect on:

* new role models (of behaviour, action) * innovative ways of identification (participation, interaction, communication) * new ways of collaborative experience (through multiple user interfaces, MUDs) * novel ways of self-reflection (of role models, ethic/gender/social patterns) * new ways of self-representation (public/private spaces).

Copy deadline for refereed research articles: 1 April 2005

All proposals, inquiries and submissions for this special issue to:

Yvonne Spielmann Braunschweig School of Art Institute of Media Research Johannes-Selenka-Platz 1 38118 Braunschweig Germany tel: +49 (0)531 2810728 fax: +49 (0)531 2810713 email: spielmann@medien-peb.uni-siegen.de

Kerstin Mey School of Art and Design University of Belfast York Street Belfast BT15 1ED Northern Ireland, UK tel: +44 (0)28 9026 7258 fax: +44 (0)28 9026 7310 email: k.mey@ulster.ac.uk

Submission details: Two hard copies and one electronic copy (Macintosh Word compatible) of all articles should be sent to the guest editors with the following information attached separately: name, institution and address for correspondence, telephone, fax and email address. Papers should be typed on one side of the sheet with endnotes in accordance with the MLA style sheet. Authors should also enclose a 50 word biography and an abstract.