Masterclass in Neurobioethics “Neurobioethics and Transhumanism” Theology’s perspective on human head transplantation
by Giulia Bovassi –
How should theology interpret transhumanism? What can be said about the man’s relation to God, his spiritual striving, and his self-understanding? These are just some of the questions that emerged during the meeting on Friday April 20 during the speeches held by professors Giorgia Salatiello and Sr. Daniela Del Gaudio.
«A spiritual revolution» and a pure «technical» action are among the most highlighted points during latest session of the Masterclass in Neurobioethics, “Neurobioethics and Transhumanism.”, Dr. Sergio Canavero emphasized the possibility of a head transplantation of human beings, a possibility often met with precaution.
GdN coordinator Fr. Alberto Carrara, discussed how many thinkers disregard a specific vision about human nature and consequently ethical action. He insisted that human acts cannot be isolated from a relationship with freedom, responsibility and dignity, which are decisive elements for every medical action. The doctor should join, assemble, restore the functioning between the living body and the deceased donor’s body. The doctor could, erroneously, glimpse a mere “producing” in what he is doing, reducing the meeting between doctor and patient to an approach between an operator and an object. In the body transplantation case, one’s original vocation is to take care for the other. Every ill person directs his fears and hopes to the other person’s competence, letting the doctor enter his lives in a concrete act of trust, both professional and human.
The two interventions, “Theological Anthropology Questions about the Recent Scenarios Raised by Transhumanism” by Prof. Giorgia Salatiello (Pontifical Gregorian University) and “The Creational Destination of Man to Immortality: Identity and Resurrection” by Prof. Sr. Daniela Del Gaudio (Pontifical Urbaniana University), extended the consideration to the central points of the Trans and Posthumanist movement, and theology, in some concepts of common interest (for example immortality, life, meaning of death, of freedom, of corporeality, of the person and the task entrusted to him when God is perceived in his origins), promoting an exchange as constructive as possible. In this sense, during the first intervention some themes, particularly suggested throughout the Masterclass’s opening lectures, re-emerged, confirming the fact that, using Prof. Salatiello’s words, «transhumanism constitutes a major challenge for theological anthropology»: to embrace a vision of the human being as a creature implies that our free action is not arbitrariness (without constraints, bare of foundations); greater dependence on God implies greater freedom because God places the creature free (in the Christian conception freedom is constitutively oriented to the good). The concept of “person” is a notion that contains in itself the relationship with God, the uniqueness of the individual and, again, the free response to the loving call.
Transhumanist language often indicates a fluid, evolutionary view of the human being, together with the lack of distinction between him and artifacts or between man and animal. The individual (a term more commonly used precisely because it can underline the ontological poverty in the definition of person) is drastically reduced to the dualistic vision of himself.
Sr. Daniela Del Gaudio further analyzed the theological comparison in the light of eschatology, linking the substantiality of the human being as a relational being in his relationship with God and in the human being as integrated whole, whose soul informs the matter and whose identity is substantially shaped by the spiritual element. The body historically characterizes the person in the union through the spiritual trait, which remains when everything else changes. Facing the attempt of some doctrines to dissolve the unity of the human being through the subtraction of the soul, Prof. Del Gaudio spoke of «pneumatic realism», using Pope Benedict XVI’s expression, in response to thorny questions, such as the doubts about the identity of the resurrected bodies, if separated from the soul. 
In the resurrection, the soul will reshape the matter in that same form that «virtually preserves in itself», our corporeity will be transfigured and renewed on the model of Christ. The encounter with Christ marks a new life and following of Christ reveals the vocation to immortality, a call to eternal life. The Catholic Church affirms that there is a resurrection: our body preserves its identity in it and the human Ego subsists and survives, despite the dissolution of the body. Through Christ’s victory over death, which becomes a liberation and fulfillment. Here death, suffering, and pain finds new meaning and eternal life perpetuates the call to live with Christ, a communion that makes all other relationships more complete and alive.
At the conclusion of the round-table seminar, there was a debate on the ideas of the “Letter Placuit Deo to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Certain Aspects of Christian Salvation” of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in which explicit reference is made to two tendencies now widely spread, or from which certain school of thought seem to draw inspiration: neo-Pelagianism and neo-Gnosticism. The first consists in man’s effort to achieve salvation by himself, observable in the way he uses (or becomes a servant of) the technique, then robotics, technologies, etc; the second seeks a subjective salvation through the liberation from the body. Transhumanism contains tendencies toward both of these two approaches, «two temptations of the human being».
The question emerges: «Can the man who can dispose of everything also dispose of himself as he pleases?». This is an urgent question that must be answered to protect the fundamental rights of man so that he will be guarded, not dominated, by his neighbors and his works.
Serena Montefusco started giving information how institutions are dealing with the great number of migrants arriving in Italy. At the European level, she saw that soft low and funding activities have been implemented to improve the labour market and integration of migrants. For example, in 2016, thanks to the Action Plan on the Integration of the Third Country Nationals and the New Skills Agenda for Europe, it was possible to implement new tools aiming at helping integrate newcomers and local stakeholders assess their qualifications and skills. Moreover, Europe is offering significant funding for labour market integration. Yet, these funds are granted by each Member State and reach cities indirectly. At National level, institutions are responsible for labour law, social security, and active employment policies. Even though decentralized member states, such as Italy, face a formal devolution of responsibilities, the national government sets out an integration plan, objectives, and managing public employment services.
The round-table seminar, part of the Masterclass in Neurobioethics, hosted three major psychotherapy schools and five experts in the field to undertake an interactive experience for mutual exchange and in-depth training on the Masterclass main topic, the so-called “head transplantion” on the human being. The meeting, coordinated by Prof. Alberto Carrara and introduced by Dr. Maria Luisa Pulito, psychiatrist, neurobioethicist and former GdN member, joined the psychological perspectives essential to correctly examine the above-mentioned surgical project. The patient’s psychological rejection, after the transplantation of visible parts of the body, is not a hypothetical deduction, but an objective datum the scientific community must consider. These patients express discomfort towards their new organ in various ways: as highlighted by Dr. Pulito, they feel their integrity undermined and consequently need to assimilate the deconstructed image of themselves again; they are sad for the lack of that particular lost reference of their body; they are animated by anguish, paranoia, sense of persecution and extraneousness towards that novelty applied to their figure; all of this contributes to the expression of that psychological rejection, decisive for that patient called to reassess his own history. Precisely about this story, Dr. Pulito, using the formula coined by P. Ricoeur, «synthesis of the heterogeneous», shows how much the narrative experience and temporality, which determine the “specific” of each human being, are dense synthesis that invests us with its features in the union between the temporal and historical permanence of the personal identity, defined largely by the relational interaction. A balance between permeance and change. In the end, making precise reference to the potential patient, result of a hypothetical fulfillment of the “body-to-head transplantation”, Dr. Pulito asks herself: «Will the impression left in the brain circuit of the original body be felt in the new one? Which synthesis of the heterogeneous will be possible through the head transplantation?».
The director of the S.I.S.P.I., the International School of Specialization on the Imaginative Procedure, Dr. Alberto Passerini, proposeed, together with his colleague Dr. Manuela De Palma, psychologist and psychotherapist, hypothetical considerations on the implications related to the head transplantation, founded on what has already been learned in the Imaginative Experience. Dr. De Palma highlighted how much a transplantation, which is considered “routine” nowadays, already breaks into the recipient’s psychic life, arousing adjustment, assimilation and accommodation’s trends. This transversal impact induces different symptoms, including anxiety, stress, depression, which cause on the patient a crisis due to disturbances in his own body image, self-representation, identity, in addition to the already mentioned obstacles in the perception of his new self-belonging to the transplanted organ (psychological rejection). The body image, as our own body’s psychic representation, lasts despite the change (we modify the image of our body even during the pain and the suffering; yet still the identity, the biographical answer we give to ourselves, remains within the alterations). The relationship between the Corporeal-Imaginary Ego and the Psychic Ego is profoundly changed because of the dissociation between bodily and psychic images (we can understand it if we examine the psychosis cases). The muddled mental adjustment, within the transplantations, involves two phases: first, when the familiar piece has been removed (sorrow), as deprivation of a belonging; second, which is characterized by an oppressive sense of guilt caused by possessing something unduly (because it is property of someone else, who is deceased).
According to some mindsets, the human being could be reduced to cerebral activity and content or, by other means, to the information inscribed in his genes, from which what so many call “genomania” was born. These are penetrating linguistic twists, descriptive of a specific type of man, which the experts Dr. Chiara D’Urbano and Dr. Pasquale Ionata, psychologists and psychotherapists, scatter thanks to the psychodynamic experience. Dr. D’Urbano sums up the dense and rich picture until now analyzed both in the round-table seminar, that has seen so many professionals participating, and from the opening of the Masterclass itself. Dr. D’Urbano offered a reflection whose principle is exquisitely anthropological and philosophical, referring to the first introductory lesson on the Transhumanist and Posthumanist movements. It is useful to remember the principles since they themselves demonstrate the ambivalence on which a great part of contemporary society is culturally nourished: the exaltation of the body and of aesthetics until its empowerment and, at the same time, the mortification of corporeity in favor of the cerebral matter alone as summary of the human being himself. The patterns of attachment, the synergy between mind-body and the brain, and relationality, are examples of how life, since its origins, is a path of adherence and adjustment in view of an inexhaustible construction of the identity and of our self-understanding. “Mentalizing”, or “keeping the mind in mind”, indicates exactly the amount of literature that a good reader, as we are with ourselves, must accomplish by looking at himself in his own entirety.
Such a dense experiential content demands in turn for a weighted metabolization, in order that a new piece can be added to the interdisciplinary mosaic that the Masterclass is proposing; but it is equally true -as suggested by Dr. Viviana Kasam- which immediately urges a curiosity about the limit of human action, stimulated precisely by its relapses. These are the questions that Dr. Kasam, president of BrainForum Italy, extended to all those who, faced with the rapid advance of technology, perceive the duty to dwell on this dynamism with a critical gaze. The launch of the second edition of “Cinema & Brain“, which this year will take place in Milan, through the initiative “Neurofiction. A plausible future?“, is functional for this purpose, in so far as there will be a debate, on the occasion of the screening of the film “Frankenstein Jr.” (1974), between the coordinator of the GdN, Alberto Carrara, and the neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero, which will summarize the main theme of our Masterclass: “Head transplantation: the hunt for immortality“. Recalling Prof. Carrara’s initial thought on the posthumanist inspired scenes presented at the recent Gucci’s runway show – cinematography, art, fashion are channels for solicitations and a socio-cultural effect quite in line with the more widespread common feeling. Therefore, through the provocations launched by the Milanese event, we will find further pressure to ask ourselves where the limit is and when the reliability of our awareness is put into crisis by the power that a decision, such as the consent to the head transplantation. The UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights is carrying out extensive research on consent, so that the network woven by a man’s decisional freedom can be said to be protected in times of vulnerability.
