 |
 Proposal for the Declaration of Intelligent
Beings' Rights
 |
insrtead of Human Rights,
use the
Rights of Intelligent Beings
replace the term men and women
with
intelligent beings
use the
Rights of Intelligent Beings
replace the term men and women
with
intelligent beings
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Proposal for the Declaration of Intelligent
Beings' Rights
how
(and why)Our proposal is divided into two parts:
extending the scope of the Human
Rightsextending the scope of the beings
that are includedThe need for these amendments is becoming an issue due to the latest developmensts of science and technology.
In 1979 Karel Vasak defined three generations of human rights:
The first generation includes our civil and political rights: the rights to life and political participation. It was declared - for the first time - in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and was echoed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The second generation is about our social and cultural rights,as in: International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
The third generation includes a declaration of solidarity rights: rights to peace and clean environment.
We consider biological liberty (shortly: bioliberty) as a next, fourth generation kind of rights.
extending
the list of the Human Rights (biological liberty)The Universal Declaration of Human Rights declared everybody's rights to their lives, freedom, to marry, to found a family, etc. The emerging new technologies change the situation, and the legal regulation shoud follow these changes. To give an example, genetic technologies give an oppotunity to change the way of reproduction, and smart drugs to modify our brains. Now it isn't enough to declare parental rights for choosing the kind of education one prefers for his or her children, but sooner or later one will be able to choose the kind of biological and mental parameters one prefers. We will have an opportunity to eliminate the riks of the "Genetic Lottery". On the other hand, unless we declare our rights to our unperturbed brains, we will loose the control of our mental states, and loose our traditional liberties, as well.
So the extension of the list of Declared Human Rights both gives new opportunities and protections to us.
Our proposed amendments to the Declaration of Human Rights:
- Everybody has the right to make decisions on their all-time mind including the right to refuse any governmental or other interference.
- Everybody has the right to modify their bodies without an external influence (including the use of enhancement technologies and either active or passive euthanasia)
- Everybody has the right to choose reproductive technologies to give life to their children or to reproduce themselves (including cloning)
extending the scope of those beings that
are
includedIt is declared by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that every human has the same rights. The authors of this document used the "human beings" term as it seemed to be evindent to them that only a human being can be regarded as an intellignet being. But now, facing with the perspectives of biotechnology, it seems to be a real possibility that other, non human or non fully human forms of intelligence will appear. So our second proposal is to extend the Declaration of Human Rights to every intelligent being, and instead of "Human Rights", to use the "Rights of Intelligent Beings".
Similarly, replace the term "men and women" with "intelligent beings" in the Declaration of the Rights of Intelligent Beings, as not only two genders are possible, and we should not exclude other ones.
