Who owns your body

And if we are really, completely within immanence, to whom does the body belong, if not to me? Who can define its dignity, if not me? Indeed, there are many Johns. He was the first person to have written, to my knowledge, that each person has ownership over their own personhood.

It's not a coincidence that he is the one who wrote that, He was a doctor, and well-acquainted with flesh, the body's reactions. And also because he was in the midst of the glorious British revolution, the Bill of Rights Revolution.

So this whole theory about social contract rights, about elementary, fundamental rights, about civil disobedience, also means that one has natural rights that are predetermined among which, the right of ownership of oneself.

He went even further by saying: "If can have ownership over exterior things, if I can acquire the world by working on it, by adding value to it," — this idea of property was first born out of the appropriation of myself. And think about it, if we have ownership over the body, we have, according to classical themes, the usus, fructus and abusus. Usus means — it's always nice using Latin terms — usus means usage.

So if I have usus over the body, the dwarfs can do their work with dignity. Then, fructus, we have it fructified and so John Moore can have access to his cell money. And then you have abusus, I can abuse it and do whatever I want with it, and if I want to have it cryogenized, that's my problem.

It appears to me that this new generation is a generation that rejects predetermined structures, one that wants to define their own career, that wants to define their life by traveling, and to build themselves, their own self, be their own creator. And we can see, anecdotally, sociologically, to what extent this generation who appropriates their own body with tattoos for instance, It's also a way to define one's sexuality in a much more fluid way. There is a study that came out which showed that generation Z - it's not even Y anymore, it's Z — Generation Z is post-gender.

It's not even bi anymore, everyone defines their own sexuality by adding a little bit of this or that. So this results in many things. For instance, one can be half-sexual, Grey-sexual, gyno-sexual, pan-sexual, Strauss-Kahn sexual — No, not that.

Anyway, there are many versions. I don't know all of them, and can't describe them on stage. But it's interesting, you should look them up.

And more importantly, it will allow us to tackle the three big themes of the future: The subject of human augmentation, the enhancement of oneself, the theme of transhumanism, and the theme of data. If tomorrow I can, and I already can enhance myself, that's to say building my own artificial arms, enhancing my limbs, enhancing my brain abilities, even modifying my own DNA. If tomorrow I want to test, I want to explore immortality, be it through cryogenisation — here is that nice example again.

Or for instance, as Ray Kurzweil, the Pope of transhumanism, envisions it, by transferring my consciousness onto a USB key. Well, similarly, I am going to define, even contractually, the way in which my body relates to the world.

And then there is a third question that might seem a little marginal, the question of data. We produce, a large amount of data, and its value is humongous. However, this data, which is worth so much money and with which some companies make so much money, well, your personal data doesn't belong to you. In the same way there isn't a patrimoniality of the body, there isn't a patrimoniality of data.

For the exact same reasons, because data is considered to be an expression of your personality, and as we saw, within the law, the personality is inalienable and the body isn't patrimonial. If tomorrow we find, that we are able to build a private property for data, which will be to the digital age what intellectual property was to the industrial revolution, you will then become an owner, in truly legal and financial terms, of your own data, which you will be able to negotiate.

In other words: you will finally get paid for using Facebook. So, "my body belongs to me" isn't a platitude. It's a tattoo we would finally all wear. Because this brand new generation will have to confront all these problems. Transhumanism is coming, bioethical committees are already outdated. And in order for everyone to able to choose their own values, in this complex universe, we must first own our own bodies. Thank you! You have JavaScript disabled. But consent from whom? If a body cannot be owned in the first place, who can really grant consent?

So despite the fundamental legal protection against slavery contained in the notion that a body cannot be owned, there seem to be occasional moves to undermine this idea. Her way of looking at things takes us a step closer to a society in which slavery becomes once again imaginable. Email By ticking "email" you agree that we may hold and process your data. You may ask to see the information we hold on you and you may request that your details are deleted from our records at any time. You also have the right to object to Life processing your data.

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Your email address will not be published. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Click to Text: Requires mobile phone. Read our terms of service. Supreme Court is about to decide whether a private company can own a piece of our bodies. Right now, a company called Myriad Genetics has a patent on two genes both closely associated with breast and ovarian cancer.

The gene patents not only violate the First Amendment and block diagnostic testing and research that could lead to cures, they limit women's options regarding their medical care. The patent system was designed to grant certain rights to inventors for their inventions in order to reward and encourage human ingenuity. But genes are naturally-occurring parts of our bodies, not inventions.