Why Some People Object to Transhumanism

I would like to call your attention to Entries 5, 6 and 7 here:

5. Responsible Reproduction: Having children will be framed almost exclusively in the light of responsibility. Human reproduction is, at the moment, not generally worthy of the term “procreation.” Procreation implies planned creation and conscientious rearing of a new human life. … Parental licensing may be part of the process; a liberalization of adoption and surrogate pregnancy laws certainly will be. …

6. My Body, My Choice: Legalization and regulation will be based on somatic rights. Substances that are ingested – cogno enhancers, recreational drugs, steroids, nanotech – become both one’s right and responsibility. Actions such as abortion, assisted suicide, voluntary amputation, gender reassignment, surrogate pregnancy, body modification, legal unions among adults of any number, and consenting sexual practices would be protected under law. …

7. Persons, not People: Rights discourse will shift to personhood instead of common humanity. I have argued we’re already beginning to see a social shift towards this mentality. Using a scaled system based on traits like sentience, empathy, self-awareness, tool use, problem solving, social behaviors, language use, and abstract reasoning, animals (including humans) will be granted rights based on varying degrees of personhood. …

Combining 5 and 6: You can do anything you want … provided we agree with it. (It's additional evidence that, as I've mentioned before, The Abolition of Man was not a straw-man argument.) Combining 6 and 7: If your brain is currently off, you have no rights … but don’t you dare take away my dope!

The really worrisome part of combining 6 and 7 is that they may claim that only drug users (of whatever drug happens to be trendy at the time) are truly human. It makes at least as much sense as the rest.