We have on various occasions spoken in Futuribles of the putative transformation of the human in a ‘cyborg’ or transhumanist direction and of the various questions raised. This article by the surgeon Thérèse Awada enables us to put this prospect into perspective by showing how complex the human body is and how intervening surgically to repair and enhance it is no small matter.
By way of some historical reminders on the development of plastic surgery and some very concrete clarifications of the present state of the art, Thérèse Awada affords us a better grasp of the surgical actions deployed to repair, regenerate or ‘enhance’ the human body. She shows that these are often, as yet, only palliative solutions and far from being totally satisfactory for the patients who resort to them. Lastly, she raises a number of questions aimed at marking out the ethical issues surrounding the prospective introduction of technology into the body. This is a practitioner’s perspective which casts a different light on these sensitive questions…
