The flip side of the steroid scandal in baseball is last week's announcement of the first cloned dog. Ballplayers are punished for using pharmaceutical technologies to improve their physical abilities, while scientists are rewarded for pushing toward a similar goal — in the words of artificial intelligence techno-visionary Ray Kurzweil, "reverse engineering our biology and then reprogramming it."

Biological engineering is not just about curing disease anymore. The incentives and profits are moving toward drugs, gene therapies and other technologies to enhance human performance — memory, creativity, concentration, strength, endurance, longevity. Asking athletes not to partake of these advances is not just hypocritical, it's likely to be increasingly futile.

In the 70s, the idea seemed so far-fetched that it became a TV series, but the field of bionics, the integration of biology and technology, is gaining strength.

NewsCenter 5's Rhonda Mann reported Friday that a new prosthetic knee, developed using MIT research, is among those leading the way.

It was a hot summer day. John Warren, a scuba diving instructor, was filling an air tank when it exploded.

"I was standing within two feet of the tank and caught the majority of the fragments," Warren said.

His right leg was severed above the knee. His left leg was seriously injured. After being fitted with many prostheses, in February, Warren was one of the first to try a Rheo-Knee.

"Within those 60 steps the patient has to vary their speed a little bit, the knee starts learning how they move, how they walk, and at that point figures out how to adjust itself with the person," Warren said.

What makes the Rheo-Knee different is that it's the first to use artificial intelligence -- tiny sensors that analyze the knee 1,000 times per second allowing it to adjust to any step or misstep.

Thanks to laser surgery, Tiger Woods now has better-than-perfect vision. Is it fair play?

Nothing destroys a sporting reputation like steroids. In 1998, Mark McGwire was a baseball hero. Wearing a T-shirt bearing the slogan, "If Popeye wants his arms back - he'll have to wait until October", he obliterated the record for the number of home runs in a season. Last month, McGwire was branded a cheat for using a legal, performance-enhancing steroid precursor, androstenedione, when he achieved the feat.

It may seem like a simple case of right and wrong. McGwire used a steroid precursor, albeit one that was legal in baseball, and he has been punished. But the line between right and wrong in sport is being increasingly blurred. It is now possible to enhance performance through surgery and, very soon, gene therapy. Accusations of double standards are in the air.

When McGwire achieved his record, he was also wearing contact lenses. Natural vision is 20/20, but McGwire's lenses improved his vision to 20/10, so he could see, at a distance of 20ft, what a person of normal vision could see at 10ft. Clearly, that could make a difference when you're trying to hit a fast ball. But the hearing, which criticised him for his artificially enhanced muscles, made no mention of his artificially enhanced eyesight.

Thirty years from now, the uproar surrounding Barry Bonds' alleged steroid use might seem quaint by comparison to the human enhancement technologies that could be available then.

In the next few decades, futurists say, athletes and soldiers will call on artificial muscles to lift heavier loads and run faster. Bionic eyes will let them see distant targets, while "nanobots" enhance their cognitive abilities and genetic-engineering techniques boost their performance under pressure.

"The use of anabolic steroids, in retrospect, will seem almost prehistoric — as well as stupid," said Jerome C. Glenn, executive director of the American Council for the United Nations University (Washington) and co-author of the book 2004: State of the Future. "In the future, we'll be able to enhance ourselves in other ways that won't be so dangerous."

For a glimpse of what post-human athletes may look like beginning in the 2012 or 2016 Olympics, take a look at an obscure breed of cattle called the Belgian Blue.

Belgian Blues are unlike any cows you've ever seen. They have a genetic mutation that means they do not have effective myostatin, a substance that curbs muscle growth. A result is that Belgian Blues are all bulging muscles without a spot of fat, like bovine caricatures of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Levels of a particular hormone may influence a person's ability to cope with stress, suggests a study of soldiers put through a prisoner of war camp simulation.

Soldiers enduring punishing stints in military survival school performed better and felt more attuned to their environments when they had higher levels of a hormone called dehydroepiandrosterone-S (DHEA-S), report US scientists. The ratio of DHEA-S against levels of another stress hormone, called cortisol, was important in coping with stress, they suggest.

The researchers say DHEA-S could one day be given to people before stressful experiences to help them cope better during traumatic events.

DHEA-S is secreted by the outer portion of the adrenal gland in response to stress. People aged 20 to 25 have the highest levels of DHEA-S, which then drops by a factor of five by age 80.

Previous studies have shown the hormone enhances memory and reduces depression and aggression in mice. It turns up in low levels in people suffering from depression and anxiety, although its role in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been unclear.

Now, researchers led by Charles Morgan, a psychiatrist at the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in West Haven, Connecticut, have tested a theory that the hormone kicks in to act as a "buffer against the negative impact of stress".

Ray Kurzweil has proposed a nanobiotechnology research program to replace the cell nucleus and ribosome machinery with a nanocomputer and nanobot to prevent diseases and aging and another program to create defensive technologies against rogue designer viruses.

Kurzweil presented the ideas in a keynote at the recent "Breakthrough Technologies for the World's Biggest Problems" conference on April 28, sponsored by the Arlington Institute.

In the popular imagination, the technologically altered human being is a cross between RoboCop and the Borg.

The hardware that would make such a mating of humans, silicon chips and assorted weaponry a reality is, unfortunately, still on back order.

Many people, however, have already made a different kind of leap into the posthuman future.

Their jump is biochemical, mediated by proton-pump inhibitors, serotonin boosters and other drugs that have become permanent additives to many human bloodstreams.

Over the past half century, health-conscious, well-insured, educated people in the United States and in other wealthy countries have come to take being medicated for granted.

The mere thought of hauling a 70-pound pack across miles of rugged terrain or up 50 flights of stairs is enough to evoke a grimace in even the burliest individuals. But breakthrough robotics research at the University of California, Berkeley, could soon bring welcome relief — a self-powered exoskeleton to effectively take the load off people’s backs.

"We set out to create an exoskeleton that combines a human control system with robotic muscle," said Homayoon Kazerooni, professor of mechanical engineering and director of UC Berkeley’s Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory. "We’ve designed this system to be ergonomic, highly maneuverable and technically robust so the wearer can walk, squat, bend and swing from side to side without noticeable reductions in agility. The human pilot can also step over and under obstructions while carrying equipment and supplies."

The Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton (BLEEX), as it’s officially called, consists of mechanical metal leg braces that are connected rigidly to the user at the feet, and, in order to prevent abrasion, more compliantly elsewhere. The device includes a power unit and a backpack-like frame used to carry a large load.

Carrying on a conversation in a busy restaurant can be a challenge for anyone who wears a hearing aid. The devices amplify speech, but they amplify the general racket in the room, too.

But a microphone that imitates the remarkably acute hearing of a tiny fly - and gives it a boost with the latest in miniature lasers and signal processing - may one day help solve this problem.

Exoskeletons that amplify physical ability could be available within a decade, thanks largely to work by the the US military.

According to a report in the latest issue of the Assistive Technology Journal, published by AT Network and California Assistive Technology Systems, several technology companies and universities are developing motorized exoskeleton devices that can help people with disabilities.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory engineers are developing a microelectrode array for a multi-laboratory DOE project to construct an artificial retina or "epiretinal prosthesis."
LLNL's polymer-based microelectrode array.

The three-year DOE project brings together national labs, universities and a private company, with Oak Ridge serving as the lead laboratory.

An epiretinal prosthesis could restore vision to millions of people suffering from eye diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa, macular degeneration or those who are legally blind due to the loss of photoreceptor function. In many cases, the neural cells to which the photoreceptors are connected remain functional.

On Slashdot, infonography notes that the "BBC is reporting about using tattoos to monitor the state of a diabetics' health. While TV's the Invisible Man series had this, this is actually real. Designed by Gerard Cote, of Texas A&M University they are made of polyethylene glycol beads that are coated with fluorescent molecules.

The convergence of nanoscale research with other sciences and technologies has created a vast opportunity to enhance human performance, scientists say in an exciting new report.
The report, issued by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Department of Commerce, examines the integrated role of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science in improving mental and physical performance.