Some Intelligant "Re"-designing.

[TheBlackCat]

If feasible, maybe redesign the female pelvix bone to be a bit like a snakes jaw, so if need be, unhinging could be done so smarter babies can be delivered.
I do like the idea of a pouch however. Males and females could have them. (Ala a Sea horse)

There is no need to go through all that trouble. Jut make the birth canal come out of through the belly instead of the pelvis. The original 4-legged mammals, or even reptiles or amphibians (I am not as familiar with non-mammilian anatomy), needed their young to come out through their pelvis so that the birth canal was facing backwards. This prevented the babies from falling out. Since we stand upright, that is not a concern. Going through the belly would be much better because:
1. there would not be bones in the way, making the birthing process easier
2. there would not be such an upper limit on brain size, so babies could develop their brain's more completely during gestation instead of having to develop much of their brains after birth. This would improve the functionaility of newborns
3. the muscles would not need to be anywhere near as tight to keep the fetus from falling out, once again making the birthing process easier.
4. The skull could be a single bone instead of several, making it stronger

Other changes I would make:
flip the retina so the receptors are facing the inside of the eye not the outside. This would eliminate the need for a fovea altogether. I would make it so the receptor disks fall off from the base of the receptors instead of the tips, reducing the need for the pigment epithelium. I would also reduce the spherical and chromatic aberrations at the periphery of the cornea and lense. I would also eliminat the koniocellular visual pathway altogther and run everything through the main 2 pathways. I would also add a third color-sensetive pigment between the "red" and "green" wavelength pigments, improving our color discrimination (a yellow pigment). I would pair that with the blue pigments (they are already set up for that, anyway). I would also flatten the frequency response of the rods, so that we are sensetive over the entire visual range with them.

Have the motion sensetive and object recognition visual pathways close to each other so they can communicate effectively between them.

I would split half of each class of somatosensory neurons and half of each class of musclar neurons for a given part of the body, sending half up one side of the spinal cord and the other half up the other. That way if one half the spinal cord is damaged you will not lose all functionality on one side. Reducing the resolution for senses or specificity for movement by half is better than losing all sense and motion in a given area. I would not have them come back together until just before the thalamus.

The human nervous system is extremely dense already, I do not think it would be easy to increase the number of neurons without severely jepordizing their functionality or their ability to properly target and rewire their synapses.

I would reduce the number of redundant neurotransmitters. One synaptic excitatory and synaptic inhibitory is enough, if neurons want more specific behavior they can use different ion channels.

I would make it so that neurons can have both excitatory and inhibitory synapses. That would eliminate the need for inhibitory interneurons.

I would make the human genone ring-shaped like prokaryotes instead of linear so we don't need telomeres.

I would make the tase neurons line-labelled. We are surely wasting processing power with the unraveling jumbled taste sense we have.

I would make articular cartilage, tendons, and ligaments have blood vessles. It would be really nice if these tissues did a better job of regenerating when damaged.

I would eliminate the little toes. The big toe is important for walking, but the little toes are just a waste.

Someone else had already pointed out fixing the spinal cord.

Hairs are really important, they allow us to detect the flow of air around our bodies and thus identify movement nearby. Facial hair, however, is kind of a waste because our other senses are can take over on our face. (this is mustaches and bears only, the purpose of eyebrows and eyelashes is obvious).

I would make our ears assymetrical vertically like barn owls' so we can better localize sound that is above or below us (we are very bad at this)

I would give us nictitating membranes so we can protect our eyes but still see (albiet not as well).

I would give us the ability to synthesize all essential vitamins. I would also, if at all possible, eliminate the need of sunlight to synthesize vitamin D. This would eliminate the need for light skin, allowing us to have a lot more melanin and thus not need to worry about getting suburned and getting skin cancer from UV radition.

I would allow all cells to do lactic acid glycolysis if needed, and to switch back and forth at will. This would allow us to go without air significantly longer if need be.

That is all I can think of right now.

[Jaepheth]

Ok, on second thought wings are too out there...

I'd like to replace that change with: denser bones and muscles

I want to see humans beating silver back gorillas in fist fights.

[TheBlackCat]

The problem is that adding anything must take away from something else. There is simply finite resources available to any organism. Muscles are huge energy hogs (albiet no where near as much as neural tissue). Adding muscle mass must take away from some other function, most likely neural tissue. One hypothesis that I heard is that cooking food, which makes it easier to digest, allowed early hominids to divert resources that would normally go to a sophisticated digestive system to the brain, allowing an increase in brain size.

[Xon]

Sexual development occurly later after most of the mental development has been completed.

[Darth Wong]

Some of that reptilian "grow parts back after they've been ripped off" ability would be cool.

[Guardsman Bass]

Most of the good improvements have already been mentioned, but I think one of the best would be simply to give humans significantly better hearing and smell (although this might be difficult; you would have to extend the nasal cavity somehow). I think a number of our problems would go away if we weren't so sight-reliant; it would be more difficult for a woman to get raped if she can smell the guy from 100 feet away, hiding behind the corner, and hear the heartbeat of the guy's buddy approaching on the left.

[Molyneux]

Some of that reptilian "grow parts back after they've been ripped off" ability would be cool.

We don't need that from reptiles; the ability is already present in a much more closely-related species to us, the genetically-engineered MRL mouse line.

[wolveraptor]

Some of that reptilian "grow parts back after they've been ripped off" ability would be cool.

Having that ability has a lot of implications for one's immune system. It seems that surpressing your natural ability to fight off bacteria aids in regeneration. Mice with an autoimmune disorder were able to completely regenerate destroyed or damaged tissue with no scarring, and even new hair growth. Confusingly, this ability is present in some adult amphibians, such as salamanders but not in others, such as frogs. A cool ability for humans would be one which allowed us to suppress our immune systems while secreting some sort of slime shell that protected us from bacteria. In that state, we might regenerate limbs. Of course, bacteria already in our bodies might cause havoc during that time, so maybe we could also be exothermic and have a high salt-content to our blood. Variable temperatures and lots of sodium aren't conducive to bacteria growth.

[TheBlackCat]

(although this might be difficult; you would have to extend the nasal cavity somehow)

Not really, only a very small part of the nasal cavity actually has olfactory receptors. Although this might not be completely necessary. All mammals have about 1000 genes that code for oderant receptors (the actual proteins that are used to detect chemical structural features for smell). All mammals have genes coding same 1000 or oderant receptors. However, not all of these genes are active in every species. Different species have different numbers of genes that have been rendered inactive through mutation. Mice, for instance, have almost all 1000 or so. Whales and dolphins, which live underwater (and thus cannot use receptors that detect volatile chemicals) have none, or almost none. Humans have about 300. If we re-activated the rest, it would greatly improve our smell discrimination. We would probably not even need to increase the number of receptors (doing so would take away space currently used for other brain tasks).

One change I would make is to distribute the inputs to and outputs from the cortex. Currently everything besides smell goes through the thalamus. This makes organization simpler, but proves to be a severe weak point. Since everything is localized in one spot, damage to that spot can have massive implications for a wide variety of senses and motor tasks. I would spread each sensory modality or even sub-modality as well as different sets of motor functions through a variety of nuclei scattered throughout the white matter of the cortex, meaning damage to one specific area could not wipe out all cortical connections.

A lot of lower animals do much of their visual processing in the retina. That is not so good for us because it means that the retinal neurons, which lie on top of the receptors and thus distort the image we would see, would be more numerous and thus would distort vision more. However, if we flipped the retina so the receptors were on the outside, this would eliminate that problem. We could move processing from the primary visual cortex and LGN to the retina without hurting vision. If we moved the line angle task (where certain neurons are looking for lines of certain angles in the area of visual scene they are looking at, this being one of the primary tasks of the primary visual cortex) to the retina, we could eliminate the need for much of the primary visual cortex (which takes up a huge amount of the cortex). That space could either be allocated to better visual acuity or to other cortical tasks.

However, encoding would be a problem. If we had a single neuron for every angle there would be no where near enough room in the retina for the processing and the optic nerve would be huge (bigger than the eye itself). If we had one neuron for every area of the visual field that codes for all angles at a given point, we would not be able to encode contrast (contrast information is what the optic nerve primarily carries). If we had one neuron that encoded contrast, we could not encode angle. However, if we had two neurons, the average firing rate of the two neurons could encode contrast while the difference could encode angle. That would keep the optic nerve at about the same size, maybe twice as large at most, yet still allow for much of the primary visual cortex to be moved to the retina.

I would move the sympathetic outputs of the spinal column. Just have a few outputs, one in the brainstem, one in the chest, one in the abdomen, and one in the sacral region. Then have the basal root ganglion distribute the commands to the appropriate areas. Have all the inputs (besides the brainstem one) connect to the same set of basal root ganglion to give some redundancy, but we don't need ouptus at every level of the spinal column.

Rewire the human dermatomes for a 2-legged creature. There is no reason to have dermatomes for a 4-legged creature when we two legs.

A second thumb on the opposite side of the hand would be nice. So would better padding on the soles of the feet.

One thing to keep in mind is that we have limited space for our brain. If we increase one brain function (or increase the acuity of one sense) it must take away from some other brain function or the acuity of some other sense. In order to improve one brain function, you must reduce or simplify another. The same goes for the spinal column, there is limited space available there too.

[2000AD]

A combination of Culture Genofixing and IoM Space Marine biotech from their respective sci-fi universe would do me.

[Admiral Valdemar]

You realise, a lot of what is proposed here is the basis of synthetic biology which has, in some eyes, the aim of creating superior human organisms. If you want one term to sum it up, think Tyrell, Inc. More human than human, that's our motto. Or, of course, the new Cylons.

There are a great many things our species could do to make the body better along with the mind. We only really excel at mental capacity, but when it comes to sight, birds have us beat, speed, any four-legged animal (which is also more efficient). Power, agility, reflexes, we really do suck next to other animals.

If this stuff is used anywhere, you can bet bottom dollar some military organisation is going to be right on it. A soldier that is stronger, faster, smarter, able to regenerate any organ damaged, immune to all kinds of disease or chemical weapon, able to conciously control hormone and CNS/PNS neural nets as well as use only one half of the brain at a time to let the other rest (unless we get around sleep altogether, perhaps modafinil will help) and, best of all, able to be mass produced unlike expensive robots. Hell, welcome to the ultimate bio-weapon; the Tyrant programme.

Supplement that with cybernetic implants and MEMS/nanotech, and you have a fully wired human for the 21st century with none of that messing about with warranties and tune-ups for mechanical prosthetics.

[Molyneux]

Some of that reptilian "grow parts back after they've been ripped off" ability would be cool.

Having that ability has a lot of implications for one's immune system. It seems that surpressing your natural ability to fight off bacteria aids in regeneration. Mice with an autoimmune disorder were able to completely regenerate destroyed or damaged tissue with no scarring, and even new hair growth. Confusingly, this ability is present in some adult amphibians, such as salamanders but not in others, such as frogs. A cool ability for humans would be one which allowed us to suppress our immune systems while secreting some sort of slime shell that protected us from bacteria. In that state, we might regenerate limbs. Of course, bacteria already in our bodies might cause havoc during that time, so maybe we could also be exothermic and have a high salt-content to our blood. Variable temperatures and lots of sodium aren't conducive to bacteria growth.

The article actually does not say what disorder the MRL mice possess, nor have any of the other articles I have read on that mouse line; do you know what the negative side effects of that particular mutation are on the subjects?

[wolveraptor]

The autoimmune disorder the mice were bred for is called "lupus" according the first link.

Systemic lupus erythematosus is an inflammatory connective tissue disease of unknown cause that occurs chiefly in women, is characterized especially by fever, skin rash, and arthritis, often by acute hemolytic anemia, by small hemorrhages in the skin and mucous membranes, by inflammation of the pericardium, and in serious cases by involvement of the kidneys and central nervous system.

Obviously, this disease (chiefly found in young women) causes the immune system to turn against the body, which results in the above symptoms. If you need more information, this website goes into a lot more detail than I could understand.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Well, I have a friend suffering from lupus who was diagnosed with it a couple of years before I went to uni. If anything could stop an overactive immune system, him and similar sufferers would be the first in line. There are a lot of things we can think about fixing first that cause unnecessary death now before we get to improving our sub-par other features that deny us superhuman abilities.

[wolveraptor]

Since your friend probably couldn't regenerate if someone hacked his ear or arm off, I'd hazard a guess that there's a lot more to this regeneration than just surpressing the immune system.

[TheBlackCat]

There is a tough trade-off with the immune system. If you make it less sensetive to your own tissues, then you would likely make it harder for it to catch cancer. If you make it better at detecting cancer, then you would likely increase the chance of it going haywire and attacking heathy tissue. I find it unlikely you could have it both ways.

[Korvan]

I'm not a big fan of the human anus. Its inconviently placed between two very large muscles that don't always spread wide enough to allow clear passage of feces. Add a whole lot of hair for bits to get caught on and we're talking about a hell of a cleanup job.

I just want shitting to be as easy and maintence free as taking a piss is. As a male, I think the hose like function of the penis is great. I can direct urine well away from my body. I want a similar hose like extension for the anus. It should be able to retract when not in use, and extend out to maybe a foot long to allow for ease of handling.

[CoyoteNature]

I would have agreed witht the whole fat system redesgn, or the sunburn redesgn, or even gene defects thing, but doesn't that prevent the outgrowth of various cultural adaptations which then lead to technology?

It also keeps people from having any willpower at all when it comes to overeating for example or actually exercising.

Or problems with heart attacks because we eat fatty and high cholesterol foods.

I like most of the defects humans have, we wouldn't have what we have without them.

We design them now maybe, but in the beginning we wouldn't have survived without them.

The only thing I'd redesign is to make it less painful to age, why the hell do we have to fall apart as we age, our bones becomes weaker, our hearts become progressively clogged, our brains cut in the form of senility and memory. Its rather cruel of death to surive for long enough and then have to lose much of what you gained.

I was thinking about longer lives, but that would lead in turn to increased stagnation, slower development; sometimes I think people always think longer life is always good, it certainly wouldn't be good for our survival as a species.

[Broomstick]

Lots of grandiose ideas, but I think I'd start with simple stuff first. Or at least stuff that appears simple.

- either a larger jaw, or eliminate wisdom teeth (in my case, my jaw IS large enough for all four wisdom teeth to have come in straight with no complications - proof I have a big mouth, I guess. But I'm very much the excpetion.)

- equalizing height and strength between men and women. Men a little shorter, women a little taller, both a little stronger and evenly matched in strength. This would decrease sexual dimorphism somewhat, but with secondary sexual characteristics like tits and beards we should be able to tell the boys from the girls without difficulty.

- get rid of the appendix, unless someone can tell what the damn thing is useful for.

- and, probably my most fanciful change - guys, your genitals are just too damn vulnerable. Really, I can't stand it when I see a guy take it in the nuts and go totally fetal-position, it puts the empathy meter into the red. Those bits really should be tucked inside somewhere and only brought out when the circumstances indicate imminent use.

While sensory enhancement has some appeal, I'm not sure if having better noses, or better hearing, in our noisy, crowded, polluted world would really be an asset. Maybe better regeneration of the sensory apparatus we already posses so our senses don't dimish so much with age, or can recouperate better from injury.

[Admiral Valdemar]

- get rid of the appendix, unless someone can tell what the damn thing is useful for.

Some would argue it has some minor use in the immune system, but overall, we, as omnivores, don't really need it. Plus, appendicitis can be lethal.

- and, probably my most fanciful change - guys, your genitals are just too damn vulnerable. Really, I can't stand it when I see a guy take it in the nuts and go totally fetal-position, it puts the empathy meter into the red. Those bits really should be tucked inside somewhere and only brought out when the circumstances indicate imminent use.

I tend to feel it would be odd if my genitalia retracted or were less exposed like that of other animals. But if you were going to design a supersoldier, you could have no genitals at all, which would simplify plumbing at least.

While sensory enhancement has some appeal, I'm not sure if having better noses, or better hearing, in our noisy, crowded, polluted world would really be an asset. Maybe better regeneration of the sensory apparatus we already posses so our senses don't dimish so much with age, or can recouperate better from injury.

If anything, being able to get around the mitochondrial DNA erosion would be ideal. That is, currently, the main reason for cell decay as we age, so if you can produce some way of proof-reading and correcting that genetic material as with nDNA, you could potentially have infinite lifespan, especially if your body is geneered to be without major genetic diseases, physical abnormalities and had a self-regenerating ability to boot. The biggest problems then would be the big physical ones, such as a spinal orientation with the pelvis for walking, thicker braincase to protect our grey matter (and maybe increase in size to allow better brain growth) and so on, so forth. Issues like rewiring the ocular organs so the retina is perfect like that of the cephalopod's or producing hearing able to tune to more wavelengths with higher acuity would be cool and not aesthetically unappealing.

You have to admit, if you want to produce a perfectly engineered human, the physical changes that are readily visible will produce people a little off to what you see today most likely. Society accepting that would be an issue, unless it was for some synthetic workforce of clones or an army.

[Kitsune]

A little one...turn back on our ability to produce vitamin C on our own. Most Mammals can, just primates cannot. More proof we are primates to those who are not blinded by Jesus.

[wolveraptor]

If you kept your genitals inside your 98.6 degree body, all the sperm would die. It's a trade off -- higher activity levels in exchange for more vulnerable 'nads. I'm unsure of the avian method of preventing spermicide, but I think it may be a cooling system involving their hollow bones. Purely speculation though.

[Gandalf]

If you kept your genitals inside your 98.6 degree body, all the sperm would die. It's a trade off -- higher activity levels in exchange for more vulnerable 'nads. I'm unsure of the avian method of preventing spermicide, but I think it may be a cooling system involving their hollow bones. Purely speculation though.

Perhaps heat resistant sperm might be the way to go?

[Knife]

- and, probably my most fanciful change - guys, your genitals are just too damn vulnerable. Really, I can't stand it when I see a guy take it in the nuts and go totally fetal-position, it puts the empathy meter into the red. Those bits really should be tucked inside somewhere and only brought out when the circumstances indicate imminent use.
.

I've seen, in my hay days, more than one man being kicked/hit/slapped/knocked/ whatever in the nuts. The shock or even adrenalin rush that happens in combat after that is not pretty. Though eventually, they do calm down and are in serious pain.

[wolveraptor]

If you kept your genitals inside your 98.6 degree body, all the sperm would die. It's a trade off -- higher activity levels in exchange for more vulnerable 'nads. I'm unsure of the avian method of preventing spermicide, but I think it may be a cooling system involving their hollow bones. Purely speculation though.

Perhaps heat resistant sperm might be the way to go?

Brilliant Watson!