1. Enshrining human ,
transhuman and posthuman
self agency
through Property Rights
law and statute
Presented by Morris Folke Johnson
To : Colloquium on the Law of Futuristic Persons
10 December 2011
Amphitheatre, Terasem Island, Second Life

2. Speaking Note 1
• My proposition is that a proactive stance should be
taken so that what those who wish to move human
evolution along can do so without diverting time, and
resources to ask line-item permission from any other
human or social, cultural, theistic or governmental
jurisdiction or construct. There are a wide range of
implications enabled by successful application of
“Property Rights” to support human self-directed
evolution in all of its manifest forms. I am going to
some use language which may bring forth some strong
discussion….Please in advance let me make apology to
those whose sensitivity I may offend.

3. Definition
• “Self-agency:
a developmentally based transformation
in conceptualizing self as a purposeful agent
capable of shaping motives, actions, and
future possibilities.”
“Research in Nursing & Health, 2003, 26, 20–
29”

4. Speaking Note 2
• I had a hard time deciding on a term to cover self-
ownership in a way that applies to humans
, transhumans , posthumans or any type of
cybernetic or digital construct and especially to
medicine in all its forms
preventative, regenerative, crisis-management
and palliative.
• What I did was find a search term which seemed
to bring up scholarly papers covering the
derivatives of self-ownership of one’s body.

5. History-Religion
• “God gave us self agency, self agency that allows us to make
our own decisions - good and bad. Through a lot of the bills
that the church has obviously been supporting and
spearheading - like the liquor laws, they are trying to control
that legal self agency we have been given. All this shows is
fear and the need to be in control. If God was truly a part of
the church, then they wouldn't have this fear and need to be
in control.”
http://www.abc4.com/content/news/top%20stories/story/The-secret-
untold-story-behind-Utahs-new-
liquor/zTDj3R5_qkClr_IPeUKQnA.cspx?rss=20

6. Speaking Note 3
• Religions in large measure attempt to justify the taking away of the
capacity to make many decisions about our bodies through
interpretations of scripture writings.
• Property Rights are removed from the individual and in the extreme
tolerate “honor killing” of children and family members by some
religious cultures.
• Capital punishment imposes upon individuals the condition that if
they destroy the rights of others to enjoy their own bodies they will
in turn be stripped of this ownership by the state or some third
party society agrees to delegate this function to.
• The killing of “un believers” in the middle ages or “Witches” at
Salem are all instances where self-ownership was stripped by
others without justification by or permission of the person whose
body was being damaged.

7. History-Culture
“-The disenfranchisement of the individual is
reinforced by caste and gender constructions
that have historically created a loss of self-
agency for women and lower castes”
“Purifying the earthly body of God: religion and ecology in
Hindu India By Lance E. Nelson …. Pg. 124 “

8. Speaking Note 4
• Be it women as second-class citizens, slavery of
one class or nationality by another, or apartheid ,
or treatment of gay/lesbian/bi-trans-sexuals or
the treatment of jewish persons by the German
3rd Reich, we have a history overflowing with
person’s debasing the rights of others to enjoy
their most prized possession their own bodies
without just cause. Perhaps laws against rape also
detail how one person may not interfere with the
enjoyment or use by another person of their own
body.

9. History- Medicine
• “How the patient-doctor relationship affects self-
agency…
• Patients are often more successful at self-advocacy if
the particular problem they are describing also
connects to some aspect protected under the "Patient
Bill of Rights." However, self-advocacy can also resolve
other situations, such as differences of opinion between
the patient and doctor, or personality conflicts, or even
minor problems in delivery of health care.”
“ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-advocacy ”

10. Speaking Note 5
• The history of medicine delegating doctors, regulators
and other third parties to interfere with the
chemicals, therapies, devices a person may direct to
have control over to control their own body functions
has changed but is still does essentially the same
thing…third parties exhibit control over the use you
wish to make of your own body. In balance the citizen
of today does have more capacity to take back this
control than ever before…however the cost in time
, effort and money reduces the degree to which we
actually control our body when dealing with healthcare
issues.

11. Current Views
• “A growing body of research has documented the
contributing role of self-efficacy beliefs in
self development, adaptation, and
change at different phases of the life course”
-“Role of Affective Self-Regulatory Efficacy in Diverse Spheres
of Psychosocial Functioning” Child Development, May/June
2003, Volume 74, Number 3, Pages 769–782

12. Speaking Note 6
• Academic literature has collected a lot of
valuable material to enrich our discussion.

13. Self-Agency VS Ownership
• “Women are, therefore, entitled to independent land rights
solely on the basis of having rights as humans. Likewise, the
interdependence principle refers to the fact that rights are
interconnected with each other, so that the fulfilment of one
right is tightly connected to the fulfilment of other rights.
From this perspective, the fulfilment of the rights to political
participation, and to an adequate living, (just to mention
some examples), would be tightly connected to the right to
land. “ “Gender & Development Vol. 16, No. 1, March 2008
pgs. 55-71”

14. Speaking Note 7
• There does appear to be a logic track to justify
tightly-held personal ownership rights as part
of an already accepted system of rights.

15. Human Rights in a Posthuman World
• “We can view appearance discrimination cases in the
workplace as presenting the question of how and when the
law will permit the commodification of worker's bodies VS
• …by treating the human body as uncommodifiable, and
treating everything else as property, we sufficiently protect
human rights and dignity from the threats posed by property
rights”
• “Conference Papers -- Law & Society; 2008 Annual
Meeting, p1, 0p.”
• http://my.news.yahoo.com/woman-gets-100-silicone-
injections-to-have-the-world-s-biggest-lips.html

16. Speaking Note 8
• Legally minded persons do recognize that property rights
may be used by individuals to back their perceived rights to
modify their bodies. Yes something as demure as the right
for someone to wear to work and in public places tattoos,
display cosmetically reshaped bodies as a method of self-
expression is a discussion area where general agreement in
much of the world stands behind the freedom to choose
how to modify your own body…..irregardless of prior,
present or future intent for personal uses of such
modifications… If in due course this also enables one to
create personal gain , wealth, power and such , this
“commodification” would be supported by the application
of “Property Rights”.

17. Human Rights in a Post Human World:
Critical Essays/Discussion
“Focusing on the human right to development, the author
examines why the UN Declaration on the Human Right to
Development has not attracted more attention and goes on to
highlight the work of Arjun Sengupta and its implications for
the human right to development. It goes on to examine how in
the current world scenario the 'emancipatory potential' of
human rights may be carried forward “
• http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Law/PublicI
nternationalLaw/InternationalHumanRights/?view=usa&ci=97
80198061762

18. Speaking Note 9
• While we all think first of our own jurisdictions
, the global jurisdiction is the final goal of any
crystallization of a Human Right.

19. Why choose Property Rights
……as opposed to Human Rights?
• “transhumanists do not accept that there is any "essential natural
essence to being human" that must be respected, an essence that I
believe we must hold on trust, untampered with, for future generations.
It is difficult to define what constitutes this essence, without referring to
a soul or at least a "human spirit" - the latter of which does not require
any religious belief, but does require that we see ourselves as more than
just machines. The fact that at least a large majority of transhumanists
are atheists and they do see humans as machines might explain, in
part, why they believe no such respect is required. “
• http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/transhumanism_the_dangers
_of_creating_humanity_2.0/

20. Speaking Note 10
• Those who oppose the idea of self directed
modification to drive directed evolution of everything
from your “Omics” to various levels of organelle
substitution or addition to cybernetic modifications to
transloading or uploading into a digital substrate with
or without subsequent downloading to a cybernetic or
organic construct may use quite a variety of arguments
and forums to sway social, cultural and political
constructs to crystallize opposing views into “LAWS”.
Property Rights may be the simplest method for
individuals to decouple their activity from the force or
effect of those who would for a wide range of motives
choose to derail the aforementioned activities.

21. Short-Term Derivative Deliverables
• Baby Step Example…Unregulated Access to personal medical
information… “Should Patients Get Direct Access to Their
Laboratory Test Results? An Answer With Many Questions… “
• http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/early/2011/11/22/jama.2011.1797.full
• At Humanity+Harvard in June 2010 I presented a piece with details of a
globally distributed open-source broad scoped medical interactive
database…. Self-agency or Self-ownership of your own body would greatly
reduce the capacity of third parties to discourage such an enterprise
• http://www.slideshare.net/lifespan.pharma.inc/humanity2010-june13d1-
s2ver2transcriptednoted
“ Third parties invoke the fear of “loss of privacy” and infringe on your
ownership Rights over your free choice to use your medical data in a manner
of your own choosing….Morris Johnson 10 Dec 2011 “

22. Speaking Note 11
• What we have had for most of recorded
history is a system which controls individuals
in a manner which has all the defining aspects
of ownership. True self-ownership can have
some immediate short term
consequences….YES, disruptive in some
aspects but ABSOLUTELY EMPOWERING in
other aspects.

23. Looking for Testable law
• USA….Human Tissue Bill …. section 32 ‘establishes that
property rights are created where there has been “an
application of human skill” to controlled material’
• ROHANHARDCASTLE, LawandtheHumanBody: Property
Rights,Ownership
• and Control, Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2007, Hardback, 210
pp., £40.00

24. Speaking Note 12
• This statement may indeed cover the
issue…..humans with sufficient skill and
sophistication to apply knowledge to
“controlled material” AKA one’s own body
may have an already established justification
to have “property rights” to this body.

25. Potential Test case situation #1:
Person who is diagnosed terminal with <90
days life decides to order his live body be
deanimated and put into cryogenic stasis
10 days later, in hopes that a body in that state
would have a greater chance of successful
reanimation of an undamaged consciousness in
some biological, cybernetic or synthetic digital
life-form…

26. Speaking Note 13
• To begin discussion I present 5 token test
situations covering a variety of scenarios.

27. Potential Test case situation #2:
• Woman wishes to have her placenta cooled
and frozen after delivering a child and does
so. …. Woman bequests placenta to her child
in her will and dies shortly after in a car
accident.
• Child has need for stem cells derived from
the tissue 10 years later to grow a new limb.

28. Potential Test case situation #3:
• -person reads journal papers and self
diagnoses a lead to a treatment not within
the scope of standard approved therapies
….a very limited number of replicated
successes exist….the person procures all the
required services without asking for ethics or
regulatory body approval, simply asserting
right to manage his body as if it were any
other piece of personal property….

29. Potential Test case situation #4:
• A person wishes to consume a pharmaceutical
substance not approved by regulators of his country
or admissible for importation to his country asserts
right to acquire , transport and consume said
substance to alter in a manner purported to
enhance the normal capabilities of his neurological
function asserting right to alter his personal
property in a manner of his own choosing and
within the scope of his own personal comfort level
for risk aversion.

30. Potential Test case Situation #5:
• Person wills his assets to be managed by a
computer program which he terms an artificial
general intelligence which he has satisfied has
captured enough of his mindfiles so as to act on his
behalf as if it were he……The AGI immediately upon
his death orders his body frozen and asserts the
right to act as his custodian until a reanimation
procedure can be carried out….under what
conditions can property rights be transferred to
others

31. Issues
• Qualifications for person to assume complete
unrestricted self-
agency/ownership…age, intellectual
capacity, knowledge/education ..….tests of
ownership…..
• When does diminished capacity/infirmity result in
relinquishment or transfer of said ownership to a
custodian or other third party?
• When does criminal activity result in loss of self-
agency to a third party?

32. Speaking Note 14
• This is by no means an exhaustive list of issues
related to our discussion of Property Rights
over your body, but is meant to facilitate the
detailing of such a list.

33. Issues
• What is the appropriate function for regulators
such as FDA, DEA when third parties cease to
have the capacity to interfere with the rights an
individual gains when they gain legal recognition
of self agency and self ownership over their own
bodies?
• What other changes to current law are natural
derivatives of personal property rights that
recognize self-ownership of one’s body?

34. Speaking Note 15
• Making “Disruptive Change” constructive is
the task.

35. The Scope of The Paradigm shift
• When Singularity University speaks of
changes that may impact the lives of a
billion persons in less than 10 years I
immediately think of the enshrinement
in law and statute of personal property
rights that include the ownership of
own your own body.

36. Speaking Note 16
• I really believe that simple recognition of the
ownership of one’s body by the resident consciousness
may by itself have one of those 10^9<10 types of
impacts on the world as we know it.
• This recognition then marginalizes the arguments to
and against the other means to this end.
• The bottom line is that when you control the discussion
you are in much better than if you are responding to
the arguments of others, who by setting the area for
discussion thereby lessening your chances of winning
such an argument.

37. To Contact Me:
• On Second Life… MorrisFolkeJohnson
• Email- lifespan.pharma.inc@gmail.com
• To download a copy from the Web:
• http://www.slideshare.com/lifespan.pharma.inc
• Phone/FAX- 306-447-4944
• Cel/mobile 701-240-9411
• Snail Mail:
• SW34-01-16-W2nd meridian, Rd 707 South, Box
10, Beaubier, Saskatchewan, Canada, S0C-0H0

38. I invite your opinions of what all might be
the derivatives and deliverables of self-ownership.