Biotech and transhumanism links

Although I am certainly partial to the physical sciences due to my background, biotechnology is starting to be increasingly amazing. Scientists and doctors can design, repair, and manipulate cells and organs in ever more sophisticated ways. Consider these recent examples: Organs Tailor-Made With Body’s Own Cells Human Muscle, Regrown on Animal Scaffolding Human embryonic stem cells could help to treat deafness

Of course, any discussion on the topic shouldn't omit the work on fully synthetic cells – combined with the exponentially increasing ability to design DNA sequences it's clear this is a research direction with legs.

Scientists learning to program "synthetic life" with DNA 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists

Two significant parallel developments in my view are cybernetic augmentation (I would jump to the chance to get AR contacts!) and so-called 'smart drugs', as recently featured in Wired UK's Transhumanism week series of articles and elsewhere:

Engineers take first step towards augmented-reality contact lenses Smart drugs to 'moral enhancement': a chemical approach to transhumanism Advanced robot hand enables cybernetic augmentation

News like these keep rolling in and keep fascinating me – truly we live in interesting times.