Transhumanism’s first target


I’m thinking of having my teeth completely replaced by implants. We did not evolve to live to be 90, and our teeth are in no way equiped to make the journey with us. We spend ridiculous amounts of our time brushing them, filling their defects, having them pulled and replaced and straightened, all so that the little shits can betray us in our 70s and have to be replaced by dentures anyway. I can’t imagine how much time and money we spend in a lifetime maintaining our stupid teeth and fighting the fact that our longevity has overtaken parts of our biology.

Let our dental technology catch up with our medical technology. We can make materials that can protect a 4 million pound space shuttle hitting the atmosphere at over 17,000 MPH, but we’re still stuck with teeth that get bested on a daily basis by microscopic bacteria? You pay a few thousand dollars to have all your teeth replaced once you’re an adult, and then you never have to worry about them again. Think of the money and time we’d save! If we all had bionic teeth, it would be worth a half percent of GDP growth, easy. And goodbye bad breath, which could be just the thing to reverse the declining birth rate in America. There’s another percent right there.

You might ask, “Why doesn’t everybody do this? Why don’t dentists recommend this to people if this is such a good idea, genius?” The answer to that is self-preservation. The dentists know they have the technology to make themselves obsolete, and they’ve been hoping nobody would point this out. Don’t be surprised if I’m found floating dead in the Charles one morning, with a #7 dental pick in my back.


4 responses to “Transhumanism’s first target”

  1. I’ll never have implants.

    I spent over 10 years on an online support group (email list) for caregivers of people with dementia, since it killed my mom in her early 60s.

    It wasn’t unusual to read of patients destroying all their dental work (teeth grinding in addition to general dental neglact)

    One particularly horrific posting was about a gentleman who had several thousand dollars worth of implants installed prior to his developing dementia.

    He had subsequently shattered all the implants, leaving nothing but “jagged metal posts” in their place.

    I’ll stick with dentures, thanks – at least you can take them out at night.

  2. Maybe we just need to get rid of the bacteria that hides in our mouth; I’ve always hated flossing anyway. Get rid of the bacteria, problem solved!

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