WTA's Three Programs of Activity
Adopted October 2006 by the WTA Board of DirectorsCampaign for the Rights of the Person
A campaign to modify national laws and international human rights conventions to establish(a) that bodily autonomy, reproductive rights, and cognitive liberty should be explicitly recognized and protected,
(b) that universal access to enabling technologies is a right in itself, and a precondition for all other rights, and that
(c) personhood, sentience, and capacity for having morally relevant interests are the bases of rights-bearing, not humanness or the human genome.
Specific goals:
(a) Expanded access to reproductive health technologies (contraception, fertility, prenatal testing, abortion, and germinal choice).
(b) Liberalized psychoactive drug laws, and support for research into cognitive enhancement technologies, vaccines and treatments for substance dependence, and safer psychoactive substances.
(c) Extension of human-level rights protections to great apes.
Action items:
(a) Support and outreach to drug law reform efforts, reproductive rights campaigns, transgender rights, access to treatment and assistive devices for the disabled, and extending rights to great apes;
(b) A conference at the United Nations in New York in April 2007, co-sponsored with the IEET and the IHEU Bioethics office at the United Nations
(c) Advertise and build the wta-disability list.
(d) Publish pamphlets on H+ and disability, transgender, reproductive rights, drug law reform and great apes.
More on the Rights of the Person Campaign
Campaign for Longer Better Lives
A campaign for a multinational research program to develop therapies to slow aging.Specific Goals:
Have the National Institutes of Health in the United States, and parallel agencies in the rest of the world, endorse and commit to anti-aging research programs to secure the “Longevity Dividend.”
Action items:
Letter writing, public forums, conferences in support of the Longevity Dividend initiative, SENS and parallel initiatives, in coalition with anti-aging and related groups.
More on the Longer Better Lives Campaign
Campaign for a Future Friendly Culture
A campaign to encourage balanced and constructive portrayals of longevity, human enhancement and emerging technologies in popular culture.Specific goals:
(a) Solicit offensive and counterproductive portrayals of longevity, human enhancement and emerging technologies, and encourage our membership, chapters and allies to dialogue with the authors, producers and distributors.
(b) Increase the sensitivity of culture creators and consumers to the biopolitical messages and bioconservative tropes in popular culture.
(c) Arrange letter-writing, protests, and boycotts of especially offensive films, television programs and books.
(d) Encoruage and promote transhumanist artists, authors, film-makers, game designers and culture creators.
Action items:
(a) Advertise and build the wta-arts list and Transhumanist Arts Gallery.
(b) Encourage members and chapters to report positive and negative portrayals of human enhancement, longevity, emerging technologies and posthumanity to the wta-arts list.
(c) Post critiques of bioconservative popular culture on the WTA website, and examples of more complex and constructive visions of the future.
(c) Send representatives to speak at appropriate meetings, such as conferences on science fiction and popular culture, and organize panels at SF cons on the need for more complex protrayals of a posthuman future.
(d) Arrange fora and meetings with authors, artists and culture creators to discuss the biopolitical messages in popular culture, and heighten their sensitivity to bioconservative tropes and biases.
More on the Future Friendly Culture Campaign
