Posthuman Blues

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The number of accessory or supernumerary glands varies: three pairs in one case, five milk-secreting organs in another, and eight glands in both sexes (1-2% of females and males) have been recorded. They are often asymmetrically placed and not uniformly developed. Comparative studies of the mammae in "lower animals" and the disposition of the supernumerary organs in the human subject suggest the probability that remote human ancestors normally possessed more than two glands; the occasional occurrence of the variant mammae in positions anticipated by the milk-ridges, rudimentary organs sometimes occupy very unusual locations, including the back, lateral thorax, neck, shoulder, inner aspect of the arm, axilla, buttocks, hip, thigh and labium majus.

(Via Aberrant News.)

How very Cronenbergian. And quite possibly a foretaste of future biotech fashions; we're probably only a few years from extra nipples being all the rage.

And then comes the era of cosmetic transgenics: humans endowed with suction cups, pincers, antennae, tails, exoskeletons, extra eyes, chromatophores. Within a decade or two we may be steeped in a "biopunk" milieu -- and not all of the modifications will be pure whimsy. It's not terribly difficult to imagine a genetic caste system arising, the human race fracturing into a sort of hive society complete with scurrying worker drones and decadent posthuman overlords -- Huxley's "Brave New World" on LSD.

This is, of course, exactly what Francis Fukuyama and his ilk are trying to prevent. But genetic modification, once it matures, will be as ubiquitous as body-piercing, and equally difficult to arrest should it be deemed illegal.

Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" features commercial "mod parlors" where customers can have themselves upgraded with trendy cybernetic enhancements. Genetic modification may not be nearly so overt; a "package" could come bundled in the form of a designer virus or nanobot, invisible to society at large. It could even take the form of genetic "spam." (Imagine a population waking to the unpleasant fact that some malicious gene-hacker has deigned to gift them with a third arm or an eyestalk or two just for the unfettered surrealism of it.)

How might a society react to a rash of "mod plagues"? Maybe we'll simply go with the flow, becoming submissively polymorphic while the ruling class -- assuming there is one -- watches from a safe distance.