The rise of the biocyborg: synthetic biology, artificial chimerism and human enhancement

Abstract

Applying technologies into the human body makes a hybrid human/machine: a cyborg. We identified four types of cyborgs in the literature: the original cyborg, enhanced temporarily for space exploration, the science-fiction cyborg, the “Haraway cyborg” used to critic the dualisms and the “everyday cyborg” who became one by necessity, and learns to live with the implanted technologies. We propose in this article a fifth version: the biocyborg. Such a cyborg presents a new kind of hybridity that we named artificial chimerism, it leads to a multi-scale non-Darwinian evolution and the willingness to become a biocyborg is not only driven by necessity but also by the desire to be enhanced and to push the physiological boundaries of the human body. Becoming a biocyborg comes with new vulnerabilities as any embodied technologies but the associated risk is multi-level and also concerns the human species.