E-Humans: biotech and neuro-rights

The advances in biotechnology are truly impressive and range from such incredible things as the one achieved in October 2024 by the company REMspace, which managed to get two people to communicate while they slept in an experiment based on lucid dreams; or the news that went around the world last April 2025, about the resurrection of the direwolf (like the one that appeared in "Game of Thrones"), extinct 13,000 years ago, by means of genetic editing and cloning techniques, with plans to recover other species such as the mammoth or the Tasmanian tiger, although it is true that this experiment has not been published in any scientific journal, although it has not been published in any scientific journal.000 years ago, by means of gene editing and cloning techniques, with plans to recover other species such as the mammoth or the Tasmanian tiger, although it is true that this experiment has not been published in any scientific journal, so there is no record that it has been reviewed by other experts.

With regard to advances in biomedicine, in April 2021, the controversial experiment carried out by the team of Spanish scientist Juan Carlos Izpisua, whose results were published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, on the creation of artificial organs suitable for human transplants, was made public, developed at the Kunming University of Science and Technology (China), in which 132 embryos were created with a mixture of monkey and human, having achieved that three of the chimeras (named after the mythological monster with the head of a lion, the belly of a goat and the tail of a dragon), of 10,000 cells, were able to develop to the point where they were able to develop into artificial organs suitable for transplants to humans.The researchers then stopped the study after 19 days of development outside the womb.

Dr. Izpisua and his team also managed to reverse cellular ageing in mice in an experiment that managed to slow down the biological markers that indicate the passage of time in animals, which was published in March 2022 in the journal Nature Aging, and whose objective is to configure a biomedical solution capable of restoring the health of tissues and the organism by improving cellular function, thereby contributing to resilience in neurodegenerative diseases, which would represent a transcendental scientific advance.

In this line of generating artificial organs for transplantation into humans, in the experiment also published in the journal Cell Stem Cell in September 2023, carried out by the team of another Spanish doctor, Miguel Ángel Esteban, in collaboration with the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health (China), the first human organ (a kidney chimera) was designed inside a pig, which progressed along the line marked by Dr. Izpisua in 2017 with the creation of mixed pig-human embryos, although he was not directly involved in this experiment.

It should come as no surprise that most of these experiments are carried out in China, where the requirements are more relaxed compared to the ethical and scientific questions of European regulations, where there are limits to the creation of human pre-embryos and embryos for experimental purposes, as provided for in Regulation (EU) 2024/1938, on Substances of Human Origin (SoHO); and the Spanish regulation provided for in Article 26-2-c)-7º of Law 14/2006 of 26 May on assisted human reproduction techniques, which considers the production of interspecific hybrids using human genetic material to be a very serious offence, except in the cases of currently permitted tests.

These medical advances are also materialised in prostheses and bioaccessories, such as the one announced in August 2020 by Neuralink (Elon Musk's company), referring to a chip eight millimetres in diameter, which is implanted in the affected subject and connects the brain via Bluetooth to a computer, with the aim of curing degenerative diseases, with the first successful implant having been carried out in February 2024, according to the company itself.

Likewise, in October 2023, Darío and Tiago, who suffer from paralysis and spinal muscular atrophy, were the first to test "Atlas 2030" in A Coruña, the first exoskeleton for children, made of aluminium and titanium, weighing twelve kilos and equipped with eight joints that imitate the functioning of muscles, so that it adapts to the child's body to enable them to stand and walk, helping them to walk.

In the field of visual prostheses, the prototype of an autonomous smart contact lens developed by the IMT Atlantique school of technology and the Flexible Electronics Department of the Georges Charpak Micro-Electronics Centre of Provence (France), which includes a flexible micro-battery with the possibility of incorporating augmented reality, was presented in May 2019. And in May 2020, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (China) and the University of Berkeley (USA) published in the journal Nature their work on an artificial eye capable of mimicking the resolution of human vision and obtaining high-resolution images using individual electrical nanowires.

As for the study of the brain, in April 2019, the brains of thirty-two pigs were partially revived hours after being slaughtered, restoring circulation and oxygen flow, in an experiment conducted by Yale University School of Medicine (US) and published in the journal Nature, which could be a valuable test bed for studying brain disorders and diseases. And in October 2024, the entire brain of a fly was mapped, obtaining 21 million images and using 7,050 slices of the brain, which is an extraordinary breakthrough for neuroscience, providing a model for studying the human brain and the fight against mental illness.

But everything related to the brain leads us to the regulation of neuro-rights, understood as the rights that protect the mental health and privacy of people in an environment where neuroscientific technologies make it possible to enter and control the human brain; and, in particular, with regard to the protection of data directly linked to brain activity, the relevance of which we already spoke about in these pages in 2019.

In this way, regulations are beginning to be passed in this regard, such as the constitutional amendment approved in Chile to include the rights of the brain; or the reform of the Comprehensive Privacy Act of the State of California (United States) in September 2024 to guarantee the privacy of neural data. Although Spain has not yet passed laws protecting neuro-rights, there is a provision in the Charter of Digital Rights published by the Government in 2021 that foresees the enactment of regulations in the future.

Article by Javier López, partner at ECIJA Madrid, published in Byte Magazine.