Enshrining human,

transhuman and posthuman

self agency through Property Rights

law and statute

Presented by Morris Folke Johnson To :

Colloquium on the Law of Futuristic Persons10 December 2011

Terasem Island, Second Life

Speaking Note 1 My proposition is that a proactive stance should be

taken so that what those who wish to move human evolution along can do so without diverting time, and resources to ask line-item permission from any other human or social, cultural, theistic or governmental jurisdiction or construct. There are a wide range of implications enabled by successful application of “Property Rights” to support human self-directed evolution in all of its manifest forms. I am going to some use language which may bring forth some strong discussion….Please in advance let me make apology to those whose sensitivity I may offend.

Definition

“Self-agency: a developmentally based transformation in conceptualizing self as a purposeful agent capable of shaping motives, actions, and future possibilities.”

“Research in Nursing & Health, 2003, 26, 20–29”

Speaking Note 2

• I had a hard time deciding on a term to cover self-ownership in a way that applies to humans, transhumans, posthumans or any type of cybernetic or digital construct and especially to medicine in all its forms preventative, regenerative, crisis-management and palliative.

• What I did was find a search term which seemed to bring up scholarly papers covering the derivatives of self-ownership of one’s body.

History-Religion “God gave us self agency, self agency that allows us to make our own decisions - good and bad. Through a lot of the bills that the church has obviously been supporting and spearheading - like the liquor laws, they are trying to control that legal self- agency we have been given. All this shows is fear and the need to be in control. If God was truly a part of the church, then they wouldn't have this fear and need to be in control.”

http://www.abc4.com/content/news/top%20stories/story/The-secret-untold-story-behind-Utahs-new-liquor/zTDj3R5_qkClr_IPeUKQnA.cspx?rss=20

Speaking Note 3• Religions in large measure attempt to justify the taking away

of the capacity to make many decisions about our bodies through interpretations of scripture writings.

• Property Rights are removed from the individual and in the extreme tolerate “honor killing” of children and family members by some religious cultures.

• Capital punishment imposes upon individuals the condition that if they destroy the rights of others to enjoy their own bodies they will in turn be stripped of this ownership by the state or some third party society agrees to delegate this function to.

• The killing of “un believers” in the middle ages or “Witches” at Salem are all instances where self-ownership was stripped by others without justification by or permission of the person whose body was being damaged.

History-Culture

“The disenfranchisement of the individual is reinforced by caste and gender constructions that have historically created a loss of self-agency for women and lower castes”“Purifying the earthly body of God: religion and ecology in Hindu India By Lance E. Nelson …. Pg. 124 “

Speaking Note 4 Be it women as second-class citizens, slavery of one

class or nationality by another, or apartheid , or treatment of gay/lesbian/bi-trans-sexuals or the treatment of Jewish persons by the German 3rd Reich, we have a history overflowing with person’s debasing the rights of others to enjoy their most prized possession their own bodies without just cause. Perhaps laws against rape also detail how one person may not interfere with the enjoyment or use by another person of their own body.

History- Medicine• “How the patient-doctor

relationship affects self-agency…• Patients are often more successful at

self-advocacy if the particular problem they are describing also connects to some aspect protected under the "Patient Bill of Rights." However, self-advocacy can also resolve other situations, such as differences of opinion between the patient and doctor, or personality conflicts, or even minor problems in delivery of health care.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-advocacy

Speaking Note 5

The history of medicine delegating doctors, regulators and other third parties to interfere with the chemicals, therapies, devices a person may direct to have control over to control their own body functions has changed but is still does essentially the same thing…third parties exhibit control over the use you wish to make of your own body. In balance the citizen of today does have more capacity to take back this control than ever before…however the cost in time , effort and money reduces the degree to which we actually control our body when dealing with healthcare issues.

Current Views

“A growing body of research has documented the contributing role of self-efficacy beliefs in self development, adaptation, and change at different phases of the life course”

“Role of Affective Self-Regulatory Efficacy in Diverse Spheres of Psychosocial Functioning” Child Development, May/June 2003, Volume 74, Number 3, Pages 769–782

Speaking Note 6

Academic literature has collected a lot of valuable material to enrich our discussion.

Self-Agency VS Ownership “Women are, therefore, entitled to

independent land rights solely on the basis of having rights as humans. Likewise, the interdependence principle refers to the fact that rights are interconnected with each other, so that the fulfillment of one right is tightly connected to the fulfillment of other rights. From this perspective, the fulfillment of the rights to political participation, and to an adequate living, (just to mention some examples), would be tightly connected to the right to land.”

“Gender & Development Vol. 16, No. 1, March 2008 pgs. 55-71”

Speaking Note 7

There does appear to be a logic track to justify tightly-held personal ownership rights as part of an already accepted system of rights.

Human Rights in a Posthuman World

• “We can view appearance discrimination cases in the workplace as presenting the question of how and when the law will permit the co-modification of worker's bodies VS

• …by treating the human body as non co-modifiable, and treating everything else as property, we sufficiently protect human rights and dignity from the threats posed by property rights”

• “Conference Papers -- Law & Society; 2008 Annual Meeting, p1, 0p.”

http://my.news.yahoo.com/woman-gets-100-silicone-injections-to-have-the-world-s-biggest-lips.html

Speaking Note 8 Legally minded persons do recognize that property rights

may be used by individuals to back their perceived rights to modify their bodies. Yes something as demure as the right for someone to wear to work and in public places tattoos, display cosmetically reshaped bodies as a method of self-expression is a discussion area where general agreement in much of the world stands behind the freedom to choose how to modify your own body…..irregardless of prior, present or future intent for personal uses of such modifications… If in due course this also enables one to create personal gain , wealth, power and such , this “co-modification” would be supported by the application of “Property Rights”.

Human Rights in a Post Human World: Critical

Essays/Discussion

“Focusing on the human right to development, the author examines why the UN Declaration on the Human Right to Development has not attracted more attention and goes on to highlight the work of Arjun Sengupta and its implications for the human right to development. It goes on to examine how in the current world scenario the 'emancipatory potential' of human rights may be carried forward “

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Law/PublicInternationalLaw/InternationalHumanRights/?view=usa&ci=9780198061762

Speaking Note 9

While we all think first of our own jurisdictions , the global jurisdiction is the final goal of any crystallization of a Human Right.

Why choose Property Rights ……as opposed to Human

Rights? “transhumanists do not accept that there is any

"essential natural essence to being human" that must be respected, an essence that I believe we must hold on trust, un-tampered with, for future generations. It is difficult to define what constitutes this essence, without referring to a soul or at least a "human spirit" - the latter of which does not require any religious belief, but does require that we see ourselves as more than just machines. The fact that at least a large majority of transhumanists are atheists and they do see humans as machines might explain, in part, why they believe no such respect is required“

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/transhumanism_the_dangers_of_creating_humanity_2.0/

Speaking Note 10Those who oppose the idea of self directed modification to drive directed evolution of everything from your “Omics” to various levels of organelle substitution or addition to cybernetic modifications to transloading or uploading into a digital substrate with or without subsequent downloading to a cybernetic or organic construct may use quite a variety of arguments and forums to sway social, cultural and political constructs to crystallize opposing views into “LAWS”. Property Rights may be the simplest method for individuals to decouple their activity from the force or effect of those who would for a wide range of motives choose to derail the aforementioned activities.

Short-Term Derivative Deliverables

• Baby Step Example…Unregulated Access to personal medical information… “Should Patients Get Direct Access to Their Laboratory Test Results? An Answer With Many Questions… “

• http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/early/2011/11/22/jama.2011.1797.full

• At Humanity+Harvard in June 2010 I presented a piece with details of a globally distributed open-source broad scoped medical interactive database…. Self-agency or Self-ownership of your own body would greatly reduce the capacity of third parties to discourage such an enterprise

• http://www.slideshare.net/lifespan.pharma.inc/humanity2010-june13d1-s2ver2transcriptednoted

• “ Third parties invoke the fear of “loss of privacy” and infringe on your ownership Rights over your free choice to use your medical data in a manner of your own choosing….Morris Johnson 10 Dec 2011 “

Speaking Note 11

What we have had for most of recorded history is a system which controls individuals in a manner which has all the defining aspects of ownership. True self-ownership can have some immediate short term consequences….YES, disruptive in some aspects but ABSOLUTELY EMPOWERING in other aspects.

Looking for Testable Law

USA….Human Tissue Bill …. section 32 ‘establishes that property rights are created where there has been “an application of human skill” to controlled material’

• ROHAN HARDCASTLE, Law and the Human Body: Property Rights, Ownership and Control, Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2007, Hardback, 210 pp., £40.00

Speaking Note 12

This statement may indeed cover the issue…..humans with sufficient skill and sophistication to apply knowledge to “controlled material” AKA one’s own body may have an already established justification to have “property rights” to this body.

Speaking Note 13

To begin discussion I present 5 token test situations covering a variety of scenarios.

Potential Test case situation #1:

Person who is diagnosed terminal with <90 days life decides to order his live body be deanimated and put into cryogenic stasis 10 days later, in hopes that a body in that state would have a greater chance of successful reanimation of an undamaged consciousness in some biological, cybernetic or synthetic digital life-form…

Potential Test case situation #2:

• Woman wishes to have her placenta cooled and frozen after delivering a child and does so. …. Woman bequests placenta to her child in her will and dies shortly after in a car accident.

• Child has need for stem cells derived from the tissue 10 years later to grow a new limb.

Potential Test case situation #3:

-person reads journal papers and self diagnoses a lead to a treatment not within the scope of standard approved therapies ….a very limited number of replicated successes exist….the person procures all the required services without asking for ethics or regulatory body approval, simply asserting right to manage his body as if it were any other piece of personal property….

Potential Test case situation #4:

A person wishes to consume a pharmaceutical substance not approved by regulators of his country or admissible for importation to his country asserts right to acquire , transport and consume said substance to alter in a manner purported to enhance the normal capabilities of his neurological function asserting right to alter his personal property in a manner of his own choosing and within the scope of his own personal comfort level for risk aversion.

Potential Test case Situation #5:

Person wills his assets to be managed by a computer program which he terms an artificial general intelligence which he has satisfied has captured enough of his mindfiles so as to act on his behalf as if it were he……The AGI immediately upon his death orders his body frozen and asserts the right to act as his custodian until a reanimation procedure can be carried out….under what conditions can property rights be transferred to others

Issues• Qualifications for person to assume complete unrestricted self-agency/ownership…age, intellectual capacity, knowledge/education ….tests of ownership…..•When does diminished capacity/infirmity result in relinquishment or transfer of said ownership to a custodian or other third party?•When does criminal activity result in loss of self-agency to a third party?

Speaking Note 14

This is by no means an exhaustive list of issues related to our discussion of Property Rights over your body, but is meant to facilitate the detailing of such a list.

Issues• What is the appropriate

function for regulators such as FDA, DEA when third parties cease to have the capacity to interfere with the rights an individual gains when they gain legal recognition of self agency and self ownership over their own bodies?

• What other changes to current law are natural derivatives of personal property rights that recognize self-ownership of one’s body?

Speaking Note 15

Making “Disruptive Change” constructive is the task.

The Scope of The Paradigm shift

When Singularity University speaks of changes that may impact the lives of a billion persons in less than 10 years I immediately think of the enshrinement in law and statute of personal property rights that include the ownership of own your own body.

Speaking Note 16• I really believe that simple recognition of the

ownership of one’s body by the resident consciousness may by itself have one of those 10^9<10 types of impacts on the world as we know it.

• This recognition then marginalizes the arguments to and against the other means to this end.

• The bottom line is that when you control the discussion you are in much better than if you are responding to the arguments of others, who by setting the area for discussion thereby lessening your chances of winning such an argument.

To Contact Me:• On Second Life: MorrisFolkeJohnson• Email-

lifespan.pharma.inc@gmail.com• To download a copy from the Web:• http://www.slideshare.com/

lifespan.pharma.inc

• Phone/FAX- 306-447-4944• Cell/mobile 701-240-9411• Snail Mail: SW34-01-16-W2nd meridian, Rd 707

South, Box 10, Beaubier, Saskatchewan, Canada, S0C-0H0

I invite your opinions of what might be all the derivatives and deliverables of self-ownership.