Personalized Medicine and the Icarus Project: Ethical and Moral Issues in Sending Humans into Space

The irresistible urge of humans to expand their current competence in mastering the environment is nowhere more apparent than the attempt to conquer space and colonize other worlds. The promise of an expanded universe for earth’s life forms is irresistible. It is driven by positive and negative forces: among others, devastating climate change (and irreducible disagreements on the measures needed to reverse it), the threat of nuclear conflicts that will make huge segments of earth uninhabitable, and the possibility of harvesting precious resources on other celestial bodies. The questions that arise involve the selection and preparation of humans for life in other worlds but equally important, a consideration of the practical, moral, and ethical issues that arise in our exploiting novel environments. Our ethical deliberations should not only focus on the consequences of space travel for the astronaut, but just as responsibly on our impact on the geophysical features and life forms we encounter in the new worlds we explore and manipulate. It is worth remarking that the push to explore other worlds (such as the proposal for human colonization of Mars in the next few decades) is regarded by some as yet hopelessly deficient in an adequate understanding of human physiology, and the vulnerability that makes individuals unequal to the harsh challenges of space. Anthropologist Rayna Slobodian mounts a cogent argument for remaining solidly earthbound, at least for the present; she correctly points out that the data on the impact of the unique environments astronauts will encounter although abundant and exponentially expanding, are still inadequate to adequately mitigate the dangers of space travel. She advocates ethical advertising in “selling space” to the public. The way in which the space industry hides (at times without even knowing it) the full extent of the risks for Mars missions with humans involves . . . romanticism, utopian ideals, lack of cognitive awareness, and fear-based selling . . . The rush to settle is dangerous and careless.