Multiplicity (1996)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRqMLNrZtg4 600 400] References

Cox White, B. & Jollimore, T. (2008) Multiplicity: A Study of Cloning and Personal Identity” In Shapshay, S. (Ed) Bioethics Through Film, Johns Hopkins University Press.

I, Robot (2004)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLlHerOMXSI 600 400] References

Coleman, S. & Hanley, R. (2008) Homo Sapiens, Robots and Persons in I Robot and Bicentennial Man” In Shapshay, S. (Ed) Bioethics Through Film, Johns Hopkins University Press.

The Cider House Rules (1999)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxJr09u10co 600 400] References

Arp, R. (2008) “‘I Give Them What they Want—Either an Orphan or an Abortion’: The Cider House Rules and the Abortion Issue” In Shapshay, S. (Ed) Bioethics Through Film, Johns Hopkins University Press.

Mar Adentro (2004)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxXb_YZ-CQI 600 400]

Transhuman minds? Is cognitive enhancement a human right? (London, 11 March, 2008)

Transhuman minds? Is cognitive enhancement a human right? Tuesday 11th March 2008, 3-6pm

The Royal Society of Medicine, London W1G 0AE

The development of cognitive enhancement has meant the phrase "give your brain a boost" now brings with it a range of connotations which have never been experienced thus far in human history. The convergence of nano-, bio- and information technology with cognitive science promises many interesting forms of cognitive enhancement. Neurobiology is expanding our understanding of how the brain works in association with neural systems and information technology is providing vastly improved signal processing capabilities for use in neurobiological research. Accompanying such advances, cognitive neuroscience is pushing back the traditional boundaries of cognitive psychology to broaden understanding with regard to the interaction between brain structure, function and cognition.

The prospect of being able to enhance human cognition presents a nexus of questions associated with future ambitions, hopes and concerns. Should individuals be allowed the freedom and the right to decide for themselves how best to use enhancement technologies? Is government intervention and regulation required in order for both individuals and society to thrive through the use of enhancement technologies? Or does the very notion of human essence prohibit enhancement in all its forms?

BioCentre invites you to an assessment of what cognitive enhancement promises and how best to harness its potential informed by leading specialists in the field.

Speakers will include:

Professor Ruud ter Meulen Professor of Ethics in Medicine, University of Bristol

Dr. Anders Sandberg James Martin Research Fellow, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University

Dr. Daniela Cerqui Social and Cultural anthropologist, University of Lausanne, Switzerland

Dr. Donald Fitzmaurice (tbc) Director of ePlanet Ventures, former Professor of Nanotechnology, University College Dublin

The discussion will be chaired by Professor Nigel M de S Cameron, Executive Chairman of BioCentre: Centre for Bioethics & Public Policy.

RSVPs are required. Please include your name and the organisation that you represent in your response. There is no charge for the event.

To RSVP:

e: info@bioethics.ac.uk / t: 0207 227 4706

LESS REMOTE: The Futures of Space Exploration: an Arts & Humanities Symposium

Invited lecture in Sept:LESS REMOTEThe Futures of Space Exploration: an Arts & Humanities Symposium

30 September - 1 October 2008 2008 International Astronautical Congress, SEC, Glasgow, Scotland

Abstract Submission Deadline: 11 March 2008 (approx. 300 words and short bio)

For further information, please go to: http://www.lessremote.org

or contact: Flis Holland E-mail: info@lessremote.org +44 (0)114 242 3244

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

LESS REMOTE The Futures of Space Exploration: an Arts & Humanities Symposium

An international symposium to run parallel to the 2008 International Astronautical Congress (IAC).

This symposium will offer a forum in which specialists from many disciplines will be invited to consider the future of space exploration in the context of our current understanding of social, economic and technological imperatives. One of the aims of the symposium is to foster a dialogue and exchange between the cultural and space communities.

Speakers from the arts & humanities and space science & engineering communities will present keynote lectures on space exploration and its possible futures. Papers are also invited from the broad constituency of interest among artists, cultural analysts and historians that has examined the wider implications of the scientific exploration of space for the better part of a century.

(For more information on the 2008 IAC, please visit www.iac2008.co.uk)

Practitioners, scholars and postgraduates in any relevant discipline are invited to submit abstracts that explore the following strands:

Cultures and Space Highlighting the multiplicity of cosmologies that currently hold sway in the world, and considering the consequences of a tacit consensus on the range of opportunities for future space exploration.

The Introspective Urge Focusing on humankind’s image of itself as a determinant of space technology, and the impact of a changing self-image – for example as a consequence of ubiquitous global communications - on future space science.

Leaving a Trace Technical and ethical debate on the impact we have already had on the local solar system, and how our views will affect the possible future of space science and engineering.

Living Space Consideration of the continuity between the needs of humans on earth and the possible demands of spacefarers in remote and often hostile environments.

Organised by Flis Holland and The Arts Catalyst, in association with Leonardo, OLATS and the University of Plymouth. Co-sponsored by IAA Commission VI.

Advisory Committee: Flis Holland (Chair), Nicola Triscott & Rob La Frenais (The Arts Catalyst), Annick Bureaud (Leonardo / OLATS), Stephen Dick (IAA Commission VI), Roger Malina (IAA Commission VI), Michael Punt (Leonardo), Sundar Sarukkai (Centre for Philosophy, Indian National Institute of Advanced Studies)

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

An abstract (300 words max) and a short bio (200 words max) must be submitted by 11 March 2008, via email to abstracts@lessremote.org

A poster session will also take place during the symposium. Please indicate on your application if a poster presentation is acceptable.

Submissions accepted and presented at the conference will be published in the IAC conference proceedings.

Inside the mind of a marathon runner (2008)

Inside the mind of a marathon runner (2008)

Miah, A. (2008) Inside the mind of a marathon runner, Nature, 454, 583-4.

 

UNCUT VERSION

Murakami and Me: Reading, Writing and Running.

 

These are three words I did not expect to encounter alongside each other with much passion. I grew up playing sports and I expected to have a physically active career, though long-distance running was not supposed to feature in that prospect. Yet, today I am nearer to being a runner than I have ever been and equally as near to being a reader and writer. However, of these three, it was running that came to me last and the hardest. So, had I encountered Murakami’s book one month before the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, I would have struggled to keep up with him. As it is, I have the fortune to have encountered it now, nearly four years – or one Olympiad - after Athens, during which I have learned to enjoy running.

 

The Athens Olympics was a turning point in my athletic career for one simple reason. Actually, before I go any further I should note that I was not competing as an athlete in Athens, more disrupting proceedings, but that is not what I want to talk about. After I returned home from the Games, something changed. I decided to start taking a Beclometasone diproprionate inhaler to treat my asthma. My physician had been prescribing this to me since I was a teenager, but I had never taken it, as I objected to being permanently medicated for a mild and reasonably well-controlled condition.

 

Until then, my asthma had been predictable and, to that extent, managed. Whenever I started to exercise, I would become short of breath and around five minutes into it, I would take my Salbutamol reliever (technically doping, if not prescribed). Once I had my fix, I would be able to continue, in some limited fashion. However, even with this boost, I would not cope particularly well with endurance events, like long-distance running. So, I was literally transformed when, within one month of taking my preventive inhaler, I could run for over one hour without taking a deep breath or needing any additional medication.

 

This is not so different from how it felt when I started reading Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, though I began reading it while convinced that he and I were different: he was human and I am a cyborg.  When I run, I think about the fact that this should not be possible, I feel like I am defying nature and this motivates me. I feel ‘better than well’ (Elliot, 2003; Kramer 1994).

 

When I read I expect some kind of revelation. It is unreasonable, I know, but there it is; unavoidable and absolute. I brought this expectation to Murakami when receiving his memoir and there was a lot to expect. I had to confront my own anxieties about running, writing and philosophy, each of which cease to be in turmoil with each other. When he started running he was approximately the same age I am now.

 

Nature asked me to consider Murakami’s memoir in the context of my expertise on the ethics of biotechnological enhancements. If I were paranoid, I could imagine that my critics colluded to present me with a text that would irrevocably persuade me to the value of remaining un-enhanced by technology. After all, the experience of a long distance runner – international novelist or not – is typically an existential encounter, where performance is experienced as narrative first and competition second. However, what struck me about Murakami was his ability to reconcile these two dimensions. As a runner, he speaks of his body in mechanical terms, attributing autonomy to each body part, thereby invoking the prospect of intelligent biology. His muscles talk to him, plead with him and (sometimes) work with him. His relationship with various parts of his body is an exemplar of Cartesian dualism.

 

It is evident that Murakami’s primary mode of performance enhancement is training and, both critics and advocates of further human-technology integration should pause to reflect on that for a moment. However, in addition to this, Murakami celebrates technological support in various other ways. For example, he coats his body in Vaseline before donning a wetsuit at the start of a triathlon. This makes him more efficient at the switchover from swim to cycle, when he must remove the suit again. He uses a feather light bicycle to optimize his speed and explains how competitive cycling is not just the same as riding a bicycle for leisure. Thus, generating power on the up-peddle motion transforms the muscle group required to cycle. His running shoes are ultra light too and well padded, but not enough to prevent the knee damage, which he encountered after his 62-mile ultramarathon in Japan. In any case, Murakami is at ease with the prospect of the long-term damage that accrues from his running. At times, he speaks of it as a necessary inevitability and not a wholly negative consequence of the pursuit. However, I am sure he would not choose such pain or, at least, we know from his memoir that, whereas ‘Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional’.

 

Running provides nourishment for Murakami’s writing; it allows him space – literally a void – that he sees as a necessary encounter with nothingness to balance the verbose life he leads. Rather like mountaineers, he runs because some, unknown force compels him – his legs need to run, he says. Readers who hope to understand Murakami through this memoir might feel unsatisfied after reading. He presents his life only insofar as it relates to running. There are no great mysteries revealed about his writing, where it comes from, what has inspired it, or what his books meant to him throughout the years. However, as its title suggests and as he intimates along the way, this is not really a memoir of Murakami’s life, but of his life as a runner. The text functions as a book in its own right as well as a polemic about why his life – books and running – cannot be treated separately. Those fans expecting more will realize that there is no other memoir for Murakami, save for this one, at least no other worthwhile one. Moreover, we would probably estimate correctly in concluding that this is Murakami at his most intimate.

 

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is a delightful and engaging book about what kind of man Murakami is, not about what he has done. It is written by a humble, self-effacing author who struggles with the idea of writing about himself, finding his fortunes to be a matter of unlikely chance. We learn some of these details as the story progresses and Murakami is particularly well qualified to write about himself, perhaps more than most of us. For, besides being his subject, he really has a strong sense of his own identity, his goals and expectations.

 

I doubt that human enhancement technologies would have improved Murakami’s enjoyment of running. However, after only 1 ultramarathon, around 25 marathons, countless half-marathons and triathlons, I’m just not sure that he is as serious a runner as he leads us to believe.

 

References

 

ELLIOTT, C. (2003) Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream, New York and London, W.W. Norton & Company.

 

KRAMER, P. (1994) Listening to Prozac, London, Fourth Estate.

Engineering Greater Resilience or Radical Transhuman Enhancement (2008)

Engineering Greater Resilience or Radical Transhuman Enhancement (2008)

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Miah, A. (2008) Engineering Greater Resilience or Radical Transhuman Enhancement,Studies in Ethics, Law and Technology, 2(1), 1-18.

 

"Previous analyses of the distinction between therapy and enhancement interventions can be grouped into two types of encounter. The first group focuses  on debates about whether certain forms of therapy lead to a range of possible  enhancements. The form of these debates is of a ‘slippery slope’, of which there  are various forms (Burg 1991; McNamee 2005; Resnik 1994). A second type of  encounter focuses on whether we should be preoccupied at all with the distinction  between the two and these debates are mostly responses to claims that therapeutic  interventions, taken to their logical end, also embrace a commitment to what we  currently imagine as enhancements (Daniels 2000; Resnik 2000). These tend to  focus on holding the line on therapeutic interventions, even if there seems some  flexibility for the concept to allow some forms of enhancement. Each of these  debates draws from discussions about rule making or line drawing within medical  law and ethics.

Also for each, there is considerable lack of detail given to the  various forms that either therapy or enhancement could take.  This paper proposes a typology of human enhancements in order to make  more rigorous and grounded the discussions in this area. On this basis, I consider  that there are certain forms of human enhancement that should not feature in  applied bioethical debates, particularly those of the second and third type of radical transhuman enhancement (interventions that are outside of the range of  human functions and outside of all biological functioning). This type of enhancement often features in discussions about human enhancements, but they  do not characterize instances of enhancement that bear much relation to the  contemporary concerns of those who argue on behalf of human enhancements.  Rather, they indicate broad philosophical problems associated with the limitless  pursuit of good health, which are discussions that have concerned philosophers  for centuries.

Importantly, this conclusion calls for a restrictive use of science  fiction narratives within bioethics, through which one might explain the  immediate and probable implications of human enhancement. For instance, within  the third category of human enhancements discussions about ‘immortality’ should  be treated differently from contemporary debates about extending healthspan and  lifespan. The argument that the end goal of extending life span will be  immortality, is too great a stretch of contemporary bioethical imaginations, as are  its derivative discussions about the importance of death to give meaning to life.  This is not to reject the value of such philosophical investigations, which have a  crucial place in or moral deliberations, as outlined in Campbell (2003). Indeed,  one might argue that the level of debate about such profound matters has  reinvigorated bioethics.

However, such extrapolation from current biogerontology  to discussions of immortality should be limited. The prospect of living to even  200 years old is considerably different from the prospect of immortality and it is  the former bracket of probability that should concern us.  After proposing this typology, I explored the limits of ethical justifications  for medical therapy to elucidate whether and how justifications for human  enhancements might differ. I conclude that the core concern of relieving suffering  that arises form health-related biological dysfunction enables similar arguments to  be made on behalf of enhancement, as for therapy. However, even accepting this  possibility, I have explained a number of obstructions that are necessary to  overcome before such interventions can be considered feasible from a medical  perspective. Perhaps the main obstacle is overcoming the challenge of developing  enhancement interventions for use with healthy people.

In this case, the objection  that such actions would violate the traditional medical ethical principle of doing  no harm remains robust at the point of innovation. Taken together, these  obstructions are far from negligible. Moreover, one might advance the idea that a  great majority of present-day forms of human enhancement reflect the more  modest end of the typology, as forms of engineering greater resilience, rather  than their being radical transhuman enhancements. For instance, providing beta  blockers to students to assist revision for exams, falls into this category and this  case is often used to appeal to the prevalence of human enhancements in society  already. Alternatively, the often-cited case of cosmetic surgical intervention  seems, at most, located within Category 2, as a contested modification (ie.  somewhat subject to aesthetic appreciation).

Finally, it cannot be assumed that the moral justifications advanced to  support one form of human enhancement will have the same persuasive force  when applied to others. As I indicated at the outset of this paper, the arguments to  support interventions that alter contested traits will find different substantive  objections compared with extending human capabilities or even engineering  greater resilience. In an era where these obstructions are met, the case for pursing  human enhancements generally and without limitation is considerably  strengthened, though this does not negate the need for consideration of what  precisely is improved by any given enhancement."

A Deep Blue Grasshopper: Playing Games with Artificial Intelligence (2008)

A Deep Blue Grasshopper: Playing Games with Artificial Intelligence (2008)

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Miah, A. (2008) A Deep Blue Grasshopper: Playing Games with Artificial Intelligence. In Hales, Benjamin.Philosophy Looks at Chess, Open Court Press.  

"what would it mean if a computer could play soccer effec- tively? What kind of claim about intelligence could be made? Chess seems to lack a number of the types of the decisions that face a soccer player and, for this reason, I suggest tests for human intelli- gence must develop into other kinds of games, which have the advantage of being mixed-space—both real and yet closed. Crucially, understanding the sociohistorical development of chess as a test for intelligence informs this proposal. Indeed, it is pre- cisely the presence of a sociocultural context that allows chess to appear as a persuasive test for intelligence. However, it is neces- sary to develop a test that involves a broader range of decision- making actions. Thus, my thesis is that chess is the wrong kind of game to test for intelligence, rather than a criticism of game play- ing generally as our form of measurement. Chess is certainly the right kind of test since it is gamelike, but it is not the kind of game that can reveal whether a machine has humanlike intelligence. Other kinds of games, such as those that more closely approximate sportlike games, where creativity and spontaneity adopt a more complex variation, are more useful to study. Within such activities, opportunities for nonlinear decision-making and deviance from preconceived strategic patterns exist. The temporal element of such activities demands of its players a different kind of knowledge than does chess playing."

Ethical Considerations of Human Performance Optimisation (2008)

Ethical Considerations of Human Performance Optimisation (2008)

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Miah, A. (2008) Section Introduction: Ethical Considerations of Human Performance Optimisation. In Taylor, N.A.S., Groeller, H. & McLennan, P.L. ‘Physiological Bases of Human Performance During Work and Exercise, Elsevier.

 

At the beginning of the twenty-first century the ethics of performance are being pulled in two directions. The first of these embodies the spirit of the amateur athlete – itself an account of the broader social values ascribed to physical culture – which arose in the late nineteenth century and flourished in the early twentieth century (Hoberman 1992). The other beckons humanity towards a less familiar era, which is rooted in the democratisation of technology and where the human condition is treated as an unfinished biological entity.

These two eras are united by their mutual appreciation for performative excellence; the difficulty is that they differ in how they define and evaluate this term. For the former, technology compromises and overshadows the natural achievements of individuals, though at times allows for a more representative appraisal of ability. In this case, we might think of a shoe as a technology that eliminates the relative fragility of the ankle joint and foot structure, which has the effect of revealing which people can cover a given distance in the fastest time. However, even in this simple category, distinctions must be made about how different types of shoe optimise performance for quite different activities. Thus, a climber’s crampon also reveals specific kinds of skills that are deemed to be valuable to climbers. Without the technology, it would not be possible to test such specific skills. For the latter category, technology constitutes the natural athlete and it becomes all the more necessary to utilise as people approach their natural limits. On this view, one might consider what should be done to improve upon the relative strength of the ankle, as other physiological capacities are strengthened within an individual.

It is common within debates about the ethics of human performance optimisation to isolate specific social groupings through which to explore the problems it raises. Indeed, most notable in undertaking such isolationism is within elite sport. Yet, crucial to understanding these debates is the consideration of how the values that are deeemed to be at stake with regard to doping extend beyond sport or, more generally, how the values of sport are also constituted by broader social values. While it is convenient to discuss sports as separate from society and even identify examples that support this claim – for example, the legitimisation of violence – there are broader elements that cannot be so neatly described. These include the legitimate use of biomedical technology. The ethics of scientific research and medical practice is particularly complicated today, as a wider range of enhancement technologies is made available to people outside of sport, for use either in work or leisure (United States President's Council on Bioethics 2003). In this context, one might ask whether the rules of anti-doping will still be relevant in an era where non-athletes are modifying themselves through numerous forms of technology (Kayser, Mauron & Miah 2005, Savulescu 2004).

Over the last ten years, human enhancement technologies have begun to compromise the boundaries of health care. Moreover, the consumption of body modifications to fit lifestyle choices, rather than to resolve specific health needs, has grown considerably as a commercial market. One might include cosmetic dental work, surgical procedures, the ambiguous prescription of mind-altering pharmaceuticals, nanotechnology or even the development of science that  promises the extension of life, such as biogerontology, as indications of this shift towards a biocultural model for understanding health (Morris 2000). Indeed, current parlance is to discuss the implications of 'NBIC' technologies, which comprise nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science (Roco and Bainbridge 2002). One of the principal questions that confronts the ethics and administration of such technologies is not simply whether it is possible to make a conceptual distinction between therapy, non-therapy (which would seem to accommodate the notion of optimisation) and enhancement, but whether the moral distinctions between these terms will continue to matter; for they are already being transgressed.

A useful indication of how the performance cultures of work and exercise collide is the recent emergence of a genetic test for performance capacity (Genetic Technologies Limited 2004). This test has been criticised by a number of scientists but, nevertheless, has been made available despite the absence of certainty over its reliability and meaningfulness. While policy makers will undoubtedly offer formal guidance over the appropriate use of this technology, it is necessary to take into account that regulative frameworks do not determine the social significance of artifacts or the range of social meanings that might be ascribed to them. Indeed, Nelkin and Lindee (1995) offer this argument most eloquently when observing that the cultural significance and meanings attached to the concept of genes extends far beyond what responsible scientists would advocate.

The blurred boundaries between the two value systems outlined at the start of this introduction are made even more apparent by discussions about optimisation through nutrition. Indeed, the prospect of functional foods which are engineered to optimise the performative capacities of nutritional substances begs the question as to whether it will remain possible to make a meaningful distinction between doping technologies and technologies that optimise performance. The chapters in this section and others throughout this volume (eg. Chapter 8, Goldspink) imply a number of ethical questions that concern the distinction between optimisation and enhancement. For example, Goldspink (Chapter 8) undertakes the familiar scientific gesture of characterising the application of medical, therapeutic technologies to enhancement practices as a 'threat' to the meaning of sport and health care. Yet, he also recognises the difficulty of characterising therapy in the context of elite sport where, for instance, much of the scientific knowledge aims to enhance the recovery process when injured. In his case study on gene transfer, Goldspink notes that it will be very difficult to isolate a specific intervention as exclusively therapeutic. Once introduced, it might not be therapeutically sound (or possible) to switch off the genetic intervention that enabled the therapeutic effect. To this extent, while the World Anti-Doping Agency (2003) indicates that gene therapy will not be denied to athletes, it is difficult to foresee how this policy will be applied in any meaningful way. Indeed, it is likely that any therapeutic intervention using either nano- or genetic- technology would need to take place at the presymptomatic stage. Thus, even the therapeutic use of such technology involves the need to re-think such concepts as health, aging and disease.

So understood, the supposed threat from technologies that enhance performance is multi-faceted, but perhaps indistinguishable from the effects of technologies that optimise performance. It encompasses the possibly dehumanising effects of too much technology, the possibility of maintaining social justice, the prospect of harm, but also the value of preserving a competitive environment where individuals can expect minimal medical interference. It also involves the concern that the commercial model of medicine could compromise the care of professionals -- a worry that is often advanced in relation to elite sports where the decision of team physicians is compromised by coaches who are under pressure to make decisions that will optimise the likelihood of competitive success (Murray 1984).

A number of the chapters in this volume also draw attention to the complexity of engineering biology. They also remind us that characterising technology as distinct from biology is difficult. For instance, Noakes' Chapter on what is known about the performance effects of hyrdation explains how one might consider water as a technological artifact that is no less complex than, say, the science of performance genetics. Indeed, the salient  point seems to involve our appreciation of the inter-relatedness of biological systems.  While a systems-based theory of biological processes might not apply equally to all kinds of modifications – not all forms of performance modification are equally complex – the claim of complexity, from which ethical concerns about safety derive, seem central to the ethical resistance to enhancement.

These chapters also reinforce the need for ethical analyses to take into account the non-functional elements of performative culture. For instance, Chapter 34 indicates how some athletes use prohibited substances and methods to improve their aesthetic appearance, which most likely has no performance benefit. Indeed, recognising the athlete as a body located within a visual culture, rather than merely a performing body, is crucial to understanding the value system underpinning enhancement practices in work and exercise. They also raise a question about which people should be culpable for ethical transgressions in sport. Often, it seems that there is little sympathy for athletes who test positive for a prohibited substance. However, Chapter 36 indicates that the regulatory structure for nutritional supplements is inadequate, which limits an athlete's capacity to ensure they do not break the rules. This requires that responsibility for enabling an ethical culture is shared across a number of stakeholders.

Finally, one might suggest that one of the central values of elite performance practices, such as sport, music, or dance, is the demonstrable capacity to extend what is previously assumed about the limits of humanity. As such, if society expects individuals to break world records or extend creative genius, then technologies that transcend mere optimisation will become a necessity. In the near future, we might not see the engineering of pianists with six fingers on each hand, as depicted in the science fiction film GATACA (Nicol 1997) who are able to play divine new compositions. Nevertheless, it is pertinent to scrutinize the moral concern that arises from such a prospect as conceptually similar achievements are already undertaken via body modification.

 

 

 

References

 

Genetic Technologies Limited 2004 Your Genetic Sports Advantage™. Available online: http://www.genetictechnologies.com.au [Accessed: 8 July, 2006].

 

Hoberman JM 1992 Mortal Engines: The Science of Performance and the Dehumanization of Sport (Reprinted 2001, the Blackburn Press). The Free Press, New York.

 

Kayser BA, Mauron & Miah A 2005 Legalisation of Performance-Enhancing Drugs. The Lancet 366 (Supplement on Medicine and Sport): 21.

 

Morris DB 2000 How to Speak Postmodern: Medicine, Illness, and Cultural Change. Hastings Center Report 30(6): 7-16.

 

Murray TH 1984 Divided Loyalties in Sports Medicine. The Physician and Sportsmedicine 13(8): 134-140.

 

Nelkin D and Lindee MS 1995 The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon. W H Freeman & Co, New York

 

Niccol A (Writer and Director) 1997 Gattaca.

 

Roco MC and Bainbridge WS (eds) 2002 Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science. National Science Foundation, Arlington, Virginia.

 

Savulescu J  Foddy B & Clayton M 2004 Why We Should Allow Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sport. British Journal of Sports Medicine 38: 666-670.

 

The U.S. President's Council on Bioethics 2003 Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness

 

World Anti-Doping Agency 2003 International Standard for the Prohibited List 2004: http://www.wada-ama.org/docs/web/standards_harmonization/code/list_standard_2004.pdf.

 

 

The Body, Health and Illness (2008)

The Body, Health and Illness (2008)

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Miah, A. & Rich, E. (2009) The Body, Health and Illness. In: Albertazzi, D. & Cobley, P. The Media: An Introduction (Third Edition). Pearson.

 "The disciplinary boundaries of social studies on the body, health and illness are widely dispersed and no less so when inquiring into the subject of media representations. So much research from a range of disciplines seeps into this area that it can be difficult to draw meaningful boundaries around it. Such issues as disability, eating disorders, sexually transmitted diseases, mental disorder, cosmetic surgery, drug cultures and much more, all fall within this area of concern. Moreover, debates in other areas of media inquiry are often explained through a health related lens. For instance, discussions about computer games are repeatedly subjected to health-related discourses over whether their use leads to an increasingly sedentary, young population – a claim that is not borne out in the literature. The breadth of this subject prompts us to consider how to limit the study of media representations of health, illness and the body, when each and every action we undertake can be interpreted through this conceptual lens."

We are the media (2008)

Miah, A. Garcia, B. & Zhihui, T. (2008) We Are the Media: Alternative Voices and Non-Accredited Media at the Olympic Games. In Dayan, D. & Price, M. Owning the Olympics: Narratives of the New China. University of Michigan Press pp.320-345.  

"Narratives about the Olympics arise largely from the stories filed by the mass of journalists—press and broadcasters—who attend the Games and spew forth accounts of what occurs on and off the competition ground. Who those journalists are, what they do, how they are channeled through the Olympics world—each of these factors has implications for what is represented and what the billions around the globe see and read. As such, the issue of defining who is a journalist, what rights they have, and how they are served and managed is crucial, since it will play an important role in determining control of the platform. Yet it is increasingly understood/assumed that the concept of “the journalist” has changed and, with it, the management tasks of the Olympics and its host cities. Our newly expanded concept of the journalist has nevertheless resulted in more than increased demand for media guidance, information and facilities. It will likely have important implications for what is covered and how. In this essay, we look at the processes of change in journalism, using the accreditation process at the Olympics as a lens. We also examine the challenges and opportunities this presents to the construction of narrative(s) about and the management of the Games."

Human Futures @ FACT launch

Yann MarussichLast night was the launch of the Human Futures exhibit SK-interfaces at FACT. It was really extraordinary and nice to see some friends come over for the event. The highlight was the performance of http://www.yannmarussich.ch 'Blue Remix'. Photos are in my Flickr photoset. this image is of his assistant and I was moved by the care and attention this man gave to the whole process. Made me wish i could take better photographs.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVSPw1XrRK0]

SK-interfaces, Liverpool

The launch exhibit of FACT's Human Futures programme was fantastic. Friends came up from London, Orlan was hanging around and we saw a wonderful performance by live artist, titled 'Blue Remix', which was the highlight of the evening.