Natasha Vita-More
author of the “Transhuman Statement” 1982
author of “Transhumanism Now” 1995

For one thing, as you say, because the human population consists of myriads of (both genetic and fenotypic) variations. They are only “pathological” in as far as a medical doctor-patient-system constructs them as such.

But also because the “enhancement movement” does not have much to do with institutionalised medicine. Medical doctors are trained to diagnose and treat (and sometimes prevent) “pathological states / diseases” and return “the patient” to a “normal state”. But people who subscribe to an enhancement agenda are thinking more in terms of making themselves better (and better here means better than they were before, or better than their neighbour, or whatever).

There are presumably people who subscribe to both mindsets. But generally speaking, I believe that the agendas of the “enhancement movement” and institutionalised medicine are dispersed between two not much overlapping social worlds.

The autism thing was not very seriously meant — and I for one would be the first to question such vague diagnostic labels. Psychiatric diagnostics generally is a mess.

I think that the fact that I personally happen to know of at least a few autistic females who are friendly to the idea of longevity has more to do with the tendency of people to self-sort according to common interests (and being a nerd, I tend to seek out other nerds, some of whom are female) than with anything pertaining to particular neurological variations (i.e., autism).

In fact, one of the things that occasionally makes me leery of the whole “enhancement” thing (and I actually prefer the more neutral term “modification”, since “enhancement” can only describe the quality of a change from an individual’s subjective point of view) is the tendency some would-be “enhancers” have to pathologize practically everything in sight.

That is, some people (perhaps working from the mindset encouraged by many insurance companies, which requires that a given condition or state be “proven” a serious hardship for the individual in order to establish access to needed assistance) seem to be trying to define more and more things as “disease”.

I don’t take that approach at all — mine is more about self-determination and choice. Yes, I think people should be able to modify themselves in ways that (to them) comprise “enhancements”, but I really do not agree with the goal of defining more and more existing variations as intrinsically pathological. Society should be flexible enough to accommodate a wider range of people, it should not be looking to narrow that range! I see variant groups (such as autistics who wouldn’t seek a “cure” if one were available, a population in which I count myself) as litmus tests for future tolerance. If the world can’t deal with an autistic person, how the heck are they going to react to a three-armed cyborg?