"The current doping agony," says John Hoberman, a University of Texas authority on performance drugs, "is a kind of very confused referendum on the future of human enhancement." Some athletes today look grotesque. Curt Schilling, the All-Star pitcher, in 2002 talked to Sports Illustrated about the major leagues. "Guys out there look like Mr. Potato Head, with a head and arms and six or seven body parts that just don't look right."

Steroids are merely a primitive form of human enhancement, however. H. Lee Sweeney of the University of Pennsylvania suggests that the recent Athens Olympics may have been the last without genetically enhanced athletes. His researchers have created super-muscled "Schwarzenegger rats." They're built like steers, with necks wider than their heads. They live longer and recover more quickly from injuries than do their unenhanced comrades. Sweeney sees it as only a matter of time before such technology seeps into the sports world.

My major concern is that overzealousness about stopping human enhancement that can (and will) be used to cheat, along with the resulting stigma that clouds such approaches, will impact the rates of technological development and implementation for people that could really use new therapies, like folks with debilitative diseases. And why are the two specifically interrelated? Because the new, genetic methods of enhancement could be essentially undetectable by means other than, "man, that dude is freakishly huge/fast." This untrammeled capacity for abuse scares people, especially reactionary people that make and enforce laws.

My other hesitance about condemning most human enhancement (even for athletes) is the fact that we already do it. Aspirin, anti-depressants, caffeine, high-altitude training, supplements, artificial insulin. The question isn't a matter of "yes or no," it's a measure of "how much" and "in what cases," and that can be an arbitrary judgment.

Particularly awesome:

Another DARPA program, originally christened Regenesis, started with the observation that if you cut off the tail of a tadpole, the tail will regrow. If you cut off an appendage of an adult frog, however, it won't, because certain genetic signals have been switched off. This process is carried out by a mass of undifferentiated cells called a blastema, also called a regeneration bud. The bud has the capability to develop into an organ or an appendage, if it gets the right signals. Early results in mice indicate that such blastemas might be generated in humans. The program, now called Restorative Injury Repair, is aimed at allowing regrowth of a blown-off hand or a breast removed in a mastectomy. (Instances of amputated fingertips regenerating in children under 12 have long been noted in scientific journals.) "We had it; we lost it; we need to find it again" was Regenesis's original slogan.

Of course, then we'll have a rash of elementary school kids lopping off fingers and such, just to watch them grow back. Especially after we get rid of pain:

DARPA provided critical early funding for its "pain vaccine," a substance designed to block intense pain in less than 10 seconds. Its effects last for 30 days. Tests show it doesn't stifle reactions. If you touch a hot stove, your hand will still automatically jerk away. But after that, the torment is greatly reduced. The product works on the inflammatory response that is responsible for the majority of subacute pain. If you get shot, you feel the bullet, but after that, the inflammation and swelling that trigger agony are substantially reduced.

I'm tempted to excerpt the whole article, which is adapted from the author's new book, "Radical Evolution : The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human." Check it out.