Since Donald Trump’s inauguration, the intensity of the news has fried the brain. Accordingly, our cover this week features a tonic designed to soothe the synapses and galvanise grey matter—both by stepping back from the headlines and by describing a set of therapies that seek to augment the body, rather than just restoring it to health when it goes wrong.
People have always sought to transcend the limits imposed by biology: pacemakers and plastic surgery are both forms of enhancement. The boosters of superhumanity are much more ambitious, talking of bioengineered immortality and brain-machine interfaces that confer godlike intelligence. This, understandably, stirs memories of eugenics.
We started with a creepy cover that portrayed the sort of Überhuman you would not want to meet on a dark night. It was a powerful image, but it was not an accurate representation of what we are trying to say. Our argument is that maximising the benefits and minimising the risks of human enhancement would drive out the quacks and the extreme biohackers and attract financing for treatments that are likely to be benign.
A second idea, of a grandfather toting a grandfather clock, pointed to how many of the benefits of enhancement will come from prolonging people’s lives. According to a study, a drug that slowed the ageing of everyone in America enough to raise life expectancy by a single year would bring benefits of $38trn. One company reported introducing genes into mice to get them to produce so-called Yamanaka factors, which prompt cells to revert to a more youthful state. Follistatin may lengthen the ends of chromosomes, a possible indicator of longevity. Metformin, a drug to treat diabetes, is about to enter a clinical trial that took years to set up.
We also tried a paragon of classical beauty in augmented form. Our Venus de Milo had a superbrain wired to the world. She had also sprouted a mind-controlled robotic arm that was brandishing a hypodermic containing some state-of-the-art molecular enhancers.
We liked the idea of exceeding perfection. The hitch was that Alexandros of Antioch’s masterpiece is missing her arms. In our editorial we try to draw a distinction between human enhancement and bodily repair. With its prosthetic limb, this cover mixed them up.
Another depiction of perfection is Vitruvian Man, by Leonardo da Vinci, dating to around 1490. Leonardo had used his own measurements to complement the study of proportions by the ancient architect Vitruvius, who asserted that the human form is governed by mathematical laws—and that architecture should be, too.
We initially updated our model of perfection to be made of gold and to have wires coming out of his head. But we ended by choosing blue. The wires are arranged in DNA’s double-helix. A pair of arms are brandishing symmetrical syringes.
“Dawn of the superhuman age”, one potential cover line, sounded unreservedly positive, so we changed it to the more nuanced: “Rise of the superhuman”. And enhancement will indeed raise ethical questions about what it is to be a person, and whether the world is about to be ruled by a cohort of billionaire Übermenschen.
Last, we had to consider our figure’s anatomy at the point where the diagonals of the square intersect. Leonardo is pretty generous: nobody could doubt that he was portraying a man. That left us in a quandary as to where the attributes of superhumanity begin and end. Should a superman possess a super manhood? That was a question we could not answer.
One possibility was to duck it by arranging our type tastefully across our figure’s hips. Better, though, to borrow the solution of mannequin-makers and Action Man and do without—even though that may not count as enhancement.
Leader: How to enhance humans
Briefing: Dreams of improving the human race are no longer science fiction