Georgetown University Medical Center

Paolo Benanti

Section: Visiting Scholar Program

Fr. Paolo Benanti, TOR, a visiting scholar at the Center July-December 2009, is currently an assistant professor in moral theology at the Gregorian Pontifical University, Rome Italy.

Research Topic: The cyborg: body and corporeity in the post-human age: Anthropological perspective and bioethics consideration

The acceleration that biotechnologies have witnessed in recent years has created numerous new frontiers in biomedical practice and in the possibilities in which technology offers medicine. For example interactions between man and machine are possible today. They are able to modify the human body, cybernetics has made giant steps promising to realize the dream of a better man and nanotechnologies miniaturize the concept of the machine revolutionizing prospective for the use of mechanical equipment in symbiosis with the body. Today a man can modify himself. In a certain sense become the creator of his own corporeity.

The study we propose intends to offer a contribution to moral Theology and bioethics in this sense, offering an analysis of the cultural panorama that the cyberculture generates and proposing a scientifically correct view of the technological practices that are being developed in this sector. Particular interest is paid to the current clinical practices and to the future prospects that these technologies offer. A crucial pivot in this journey will be an analysis of the evaluation structure adopted up to now with regard to interventions on the human body. The purpose of the study is to indicate, as far as possible, the conceptual framework in which ethical discernment is placed regarding cyborgs and to indicate some instruments to evaluate the phenomenon under examination. In connection with all of this a consideration must be proposed on the ethical dimension of technology, understood as the structured and constant response to the complexity of reality on the part of mankind, which investigates the possibility of developing an ethic of technology.