HALF JACKED: THE CREATION OF HOMO CAELESTIS
HALF JACKED
THE CREATION OF HOMO CAELESTIS
How will the world change? Will you be ready to adapt and avoid future shock?
Sometimes, we have a hard enough time planning out one year let alone seeing ourselves and how we will survive in 10 years.
We are integrating so quickly into a technological hyper-reality that the simulation is far more real than the mediocrity of the real.
Everything is so intensified that our minds and bodies will need upgrades in order to sustain the kind of environment we are told is evolving incrementally.
In order to do this, we may have to face the option of radically changing our genetic make-up, reproductive methods that will ensure our offspring will be able to adapt to a harsher environment, whether here on Earth or in space or face voluntary human extinction.
Einstein warned us that a worldwide crisis is the pretext for extinction. Every crisis we try to over-analyze, every weather event that becomes a political climate crisis, every argument about sustainability, every warning about the geophysical outlook of the planet, any geo-engineering, and any modification to water and food sources add up to nothing more than proverbial band aids used to cover up the inevitable apoplexy.
The human experience seems to be a fight against toxicity, physically, mentally and spiritually.
We can manufacture all sorts of “what ifs,” but we may want to watch the “what nows” that indicate the only hope we have is to grow in knowledge and shatter old myths that seem to cloud our development.
The truth is that today all we see is the corrupt technocracy pledging to create a fragmented utopia in the face of scarcity. It appears they are running against the clock. It is as if they are aware that changes need to come soon or else the fate of the planet will soon be revealed and then there will be a consensus panic.
They know it is time to seize the keys that will open up the doorway to another dimension. It may also be necessary to leave the cradle that gave us birth and send into space a new kind of humanity; pioneers that are ready to sail into the cosmos to show us there may be hope amongst the stars and on the various planets and moons that we have looked at through telescopes and learned about in school.
Through the political channels, science has become an organized system of ignorance fueled by deep pockets that will hijack our well-being and demand that we change to fit their standard of living and technocratic morality.
If we choose not to follow their whims, they will warn us of great dangers ahead they cannot avert and so we will brace ourselves and risk whatever is necessary to survive, including, leaving our planet and become cosmic refugees.
We will have to then make the decision to willingly leave behind in our history a record of nothing more than geological damage, environmental waste, and the culling of human material seen as collateral damage.
We will be forced to think that those who survive will be the only ones fit for survival.
Sixteen years ago, Stephen Hawking spoke at a conference about how he believes humans have entered a new stage of evolution. Although it has taken Homo Sapiens several million years to evolve from the apes, the useful information in our DNA has probably changed by only a few million bits.
So the rate of biological evolution in humans, Stephen Hawking points out in his, Life in the Universe lecture, is about a bit a year. We have sped up our evolution with the use of drugs, bodily enhancements and technology. The human we will see in the not too distant future, according to Hawking will be an advanced human, maybe even something that has a semblance to humanity without being human.
We are now entering a new phase of what Hawking calls “self designed evolution,” in which we will be able to change and improve our DNA.
At first these changes will be confined to the repair of genetic defects, like cystic fibrosis, and muscular dystrophy. These are controlled by single genes, and so are fairly easy to identify. We will be able to correct other qualities, such as intelligence, however these qualities are probably controlled by a large number of genes.
It will be much more difficult to find them, and work out the relations between them. Nevertheless, Hawking is sure that during the next century, people will discover how to modify both intelligence and instincts like aggression.
Stephen Hawking also stated that to avoid extinction mankind must also prepare for the possibility of leaving behind this planet. With the advent of successful space launches by private companies and proposals by private companies to start building space stations on the moon and Mars, the sky is no longer the limit anymore.
New laws are being passed in order to define exo-business practices and mining operations on the moon, mars, and various asteroids.
Stephen Hawking concluded that in order for mankind to stretch out to into cosmos, we will have to modify our bodies. Hawking believes that we will have to employ intelligent machines based on mechanical and electronic components, rather than macromolecules, which could eventually replace DNA based life, just as DNA may have replaced an earlier form of life.
Transhumanism has always been the artificially intelligent elephant in the room with how this can be done. However, those with a penchant for a more natural approach have decided that genetic engineering should be priority if we are planning to spend any long periods of time in an extra-terrestrial environment.
Many parts of our cardiovascular system, including the heart, are influenced by gravity. On Earth, for example, the veins in our legs work against gravity to get blood back to the heart. Without gravity, the heart and blood vessels change – and the longer the flight, the more severe the changes.
Skeletal muscles have the ability to adapt to different purposes and the different loads placed on them, a quality known as plasticity. But like inactivity, space flight leads to loss of both skeletal muscle mass and strength.
On Earth, the effects of gravity and mechanical loading are needed to maintain our bones. In space, this doesn’t happen. Bone normally undergoes continual remodeling and two types of cells are involved: osteoblasts make and regulate the bone matrix and osteoclasts these absorb bone matrix.
During spaceflight, however, the balance of these two processes is altered which leads to reduced bone mineral density. Research shows that a 3.5% loss of bone occurs after 16 to 28 weeks of spaceflight, 97% of which is in weight-bearing bones, such as the pelvis and legs.
The immune system, which protects the body against disease, is also affected. There are a number of variables which contribute to this, including radiation, microgravity, stress, isolation and alterations in the circadian rhythm, the 24-hour cycle of sleep and wakefulness that we follow on Earth.
Also, while in space, you will have to interact with microbes that pass around in close quarters. These microbes are passed from you to other crew members, they pass into your food, your environment and these can alter immune response, which may lead to challenging situations and increase the potential for infections among those who are with you as well as contamination of extra-terrestrial sites.
I am sure that these hindrances will be addressed by science. Big business can promise you a three hour tour in space, but if by chance the world is headed for an early grave, we will have to take measures to modify our bodies or perhaps conceive modified children.
The first genetically-modified human embryos could be created in Britain within weeks according to the scientists who are about to learn whether their research proposal has been approved by the fertility watchdog.
Although it will be illegal to allow the embryos to live beyond 14 days and be implanted into the womb, the researchers accepted that the research could one day lead to the birth of the first GM babies should the existing ban be lifted for medical reasons or for reasons that could lead to eventual creation of space babies.
These new humans readied for treks into space will be called Homo Caelestis, a term made popular by the book, Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future, by Dougal Dixon.
The theme of the book is a hypothetical exploration of the possibilities of the future evolution of humans. It discusses a future time when modified human beings will be a byproduct of genetic engineering. This genetic engineering will be used in order for human kind to adjust to a magnetic pole shift, and to colonize space.
One of the methods used in reality to modify human beings and embryos is germ line editing.
Germ line editing has been revolutionized by the development over the past three years of a technique known as Crispr-Cas9, which allows “edits” to the DNA genome from very small to the extremely large.
Growing an edited embryo into a fully-fledged adult human wouldn’t just remove a health problem, or, in the dystopian future model, create an augmented human for long-term space travel. It would leave lasting changes that are passed on; something that many scientists say is desirable in the case of awful health problems, but much more questionable in the case of enhancements.
Ever since genome-editing technology CRISPR/Cas9 emerged a couple of years ago, scientists had been predicting that it wouldn’t be long before it was used to correct defects in the genes of humans, including those in the “germ line” cells of sperm, eggs and embryos, which are passed down the generations.
In short, Crispr promises to eliminate many inherited diseases for good from affected families, but some scientists in Britain were appalled by the Chinese research, arguing that it overstepped the ethical boundary separating good scientific practice from badly-conceived experimentation of dubious ethical standard.
In Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, society is rigidly split into five castes determined through embryonic modification. Much of the consternation surrounding the idea of “designer babies” is that germ line editing could make Huxley’s dystopian vision of the future a reality.
“The fear is that germ line engineering is a path toward a dystopia of super people and designer babies for those who can afford it,” Antonio Regalado wrote in Technology Review. “Why not design a highly intelligent group of people who could be tomorrow’s leaders and scientists?”
At the moment, the prospect of a world populated by genetically modified humans is barely remaining only in the pages of science fiction. The study of the genetics of intelligence itself remains in its infancy, with the artificial improvement of human intelligence looming near the edge of the impossible.
Another method of half jacking the genetic makeup of a human is to explore the concept of creating Chimeras, meaning connecting organisms containing the cells of humans and animals.
According to a new article featured in Financial Times called, Petri dish magic cultivates a modern chimera, by Anjana Ahuja:
“Several teams in the US are inserting human tissue into early pig and sheep embryos. The journal MIT Technology Review estimates that 20 such hybrid embryos have been produced, an early proof-of-principle step towards growing human organs inside animal tissue. The hybrid embryos have been observed in early development but, crucially, are never brought to term. The Salk Institute in California, together with the universities of Stanford and Minnesota, are among the institutions pioneering the as-yet-unpublished research.”
We have talked about Chimeras before and cloning when scientists in Oregon created small adorable monkeys in a lab out of cells from multiple embryos, not only were the monkey’s clones, they were clones made from cells of other monkey and the most important part is that the monkeys were fit and healthy.
For the longest time, I had wondered if human chimeras could be made and discovered that there had been attempts in the past to create super soldiers using cells from animals to make hybrids.
I realized that what I was seeing and reading about sounded very much like what was written when H.G. Wells admonished us in the book “The Island of Dr. Moureau.”
For decades, newborn mice have been “humanized” by the insertion of human liver cells and immune cells to render them more biologically analogous to humans during drug testing.
Now “pluripotent” human cells are being inserted into early animal embryos: these are cells feted for their ability to blossom into virtually any cell, and very early animal embryos are able to integrate them more easily.
From this research we will be able to grow healthy human hearts, lungs and kidneys in animal tissue and harvest them for transplants. Nurturing human organs inside pigs and sheep is one possible solution to the worldwide shortage of organs available for transplantation. Growing them from a patient’s own cells may also mean a lower risk of rejection.
Now the big question: if you were in need of an organ and could not wait for a donor, would you consider having a cloned organ from your own cells be put into your body to save your life knowing that it was nurtured in a pig or a sheep?
Would you consider being genetically modified for space travel, or would you contribute your sperm or even an egg to further the project of creating Homo Caelestis?
This new science is now being offered in order to help guarantee the survival of the human species and the survival of you or a member of your family. If you think there is no dignity in these practices, perhaps you may think about these statistics.
There are a little over 123,000 Americans who are waiting for organ transplants, so it is no secret there is a shortage of organs available that can be used to save a life. There is most certainly a market that makes money off of harvested organs from humans to save lives.
The transplant business is not above the idea of using the body as a commodity in the marketplace. Organ donation is big business. Your body becomes a commodity, leading to big profits to the physicians and hospitals involved in the transplant process. And while it is still illegal to sell the organs themselves, the organizations that facilitate the process charge hefty “processing fees” which go into the pockets of doctors, hospitals and facilitators of the organ donations themselves.
People often complain about doctors who play God and we have seen many scientific breakthroughs get shut down because of what is “Frankenstein Science.” But frankly speaking, this in a way is a part of playing God, which merely is the process of giving new life to your organs in someone else’s body.
There is yet an unmentioned paranormal aspect to the prospect of Chimeras and Homo Caelstis. How does this type of creation affect the one who has been created? There are many people that worry about how this creation will adapt to those who are not like them.
What about the psycho-spiritual issues regarding consciousness and death. If a baby suited for space travel has a longer life, how will I cope with its mortality or even immortality?
There are many who will say that creations like these will lack a soul, or guidance or even approval from God.
There are also worries that Chimeras that provide organs for transplant may somehow convert what is called organ or cellular memory.
There are theories and different accounts of organ memory within the body of a recipient of organ transplants.
In the book, Change of Heart, dancer Claire Sylvia claims that after a heart and lung transplant operation, she discovered that new organs were not the only thing she inherited. She began to crave beer and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Her friends were also noticing that she would sometimes act like a teenager and walk like a boy. She claims that she inherited the traits of her young male donor.
“Cellular memory” is a theory that states the brain is not the only organ that stores memories or personality traits, that memory as a process can form in other systems in the body and can be stored in organs such as the heart.
A 47 year old man receiving a heart from a 17-year-old black boy suddenly picked up an intense fondness for classical music. The boy whose heart had been donated was killed in a drive-by shooting, still clutching his violin case in his hands.
A 47 year old transplant patient claimed that his new heart was responsible for a sudden onset of eating disorders, heralded from the heart’s previous owner, a 14-year-old girl.
Once, a change in sexual orientation was even documented in a 27 year old lesbian who soon after getting a new heart settled down and married a man.
The most stunning example of cellular memory was found in an eight year old girl who received the heart of a ten year old girl. The recipient was plagued after surgery with vivid nightmares about an attacker and a girl being murdered. After being brought to a psychiatrist her nightmares proved to be so vivid and real that the psychiatrist believed them to be genuine memories. As it turns out the ten year old whose heart she had just received was murdered and due to the recipients violent reoccurring dreams, she was able to describe the events of that horrible encounter and the murderer so well that police soon apprehended, arrested, and convicted the killer.
Other common quirks recorded have been changes in attitude, temperament, vocabulary, patience levels, philosophies, and tastes in food and music.
These types of opportunities will also have to meet legal criteria. Legal questions about who owns what including your own DNA will inevitably arise and of course, what is or is not a human being with the entitlements of same.
Those who believe that laws forbidding it will prevent it from happening are as naïve as those who believe that it will be completely safe and without the genetic slippery slope.
Now that we have arrived in the brave new world, it is important the problem which faces us now is a responsible management of technology and resources.
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