I’ve long been fascinated with synesthesia, a condition in which”the real information of one sense is accompanied by a perception of another sense.” Humans have reported the ability to perceive sounds as having certain colors (sometimes even the ability to “see” music) or “taste” certain words. More commonly, synesthetes perceive numbers and letters as having [...]
Posts under ‘Gene Therapy’
R.U. Sirius offers his utopian vision for a transhuman future
One of my favorite blogs, io9, has been running a series of posts on “posthumanity” from both fiction and real-life. Today R.U. Sirius of h+ Magazine has a great post up about his “best-case scenario for posthumanity.” In it, he describes what his ideal vision of the future might look like, which includes open-source style [...]
Will we be mining the moon in the next ten years?
A feature in the Montreal Gazette examines ten predicted innovations that will take place over the next decade. Most of them are completely plausible. The full list is as follows: Lunar mining Medical miniaturization 3-D printing Smarter smart phones Cloud computing Nanotechnology Flying on algae (algae-based fuels) Living forever Biotechnology Alternative energies We’re already seeing [...]
Top Transhuman Trends and Stories of 2009 – Part Two
Just in time for New Year’s Day, here’s a continuation of the Top Transhuman Tech Trends of 2009: Improved Gene Therapy While gene therapy holds a lot of promise for providing effective treatments to previously untreatable diseases, in has traditionally been very difficult to administer effectively and also carried the very real risk of serious [...]
In time for Thanksgiving: Human health continues to improve
Here in the United States, we’re getting ready to celebrate the beginning of what’s regarded as the “holiday season” with Thanksgiving, a time to reflect on the things we’re thankful for. I don’t think I’m alone when I say I spend a lot of time looking forward to scientific advances yet to come, which sometimes [...]
Your next surgeon may be a robot
Employing nanobots to patrol the blood vessels of the human body and repair damage along the way is still a couple decades away, at least, but doctors are already employing small robots that patients can swallow to perform remote surgeries. Some of these robots are even capable of being swallowed as separate components and then [...]
Gene therapy helps the blind to see, play softball
People with Leber’s congenital amaurosis (LCA), a rare eye disease, are blind from birth. A new gene therapy trial conducted by the University of Pennsylvania and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, however, improved vision in subjects with a single injection. The results were most effective in children, who had the benefit of less accumulated retinal [...]
Gadget site highlights “enhanced human future”
This week, popular gadget site Gizmodo is highlighting how humans will integrate technology into their bodies in a series they’re calling “This Cyborg Life.” It’s about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature’s ultimate machine. So far, posts have ranged from the practical [...]
Gene therapy: Don’t call it a comeback?
Gene therapy has been shown to have great potential, but has been difficult to administer effectively and for some, has had tragic side effects. In one of the most well-known incidents, a few children cured of a rare disease through gene therapy developed leukemia, from which one died. Despite this terrible setback, researchers now believe [...]