I know you're not sold on the idea of introducing cyborgs into the world but you've been outvoted. Let me explain why it's not as stupid as it sounds.

Philip K. Dick once wrote about his story "Second Variety":

My grand theme—who is human and who only appears (masquerading) as human?—emerges most fully. Unless we can individually and collectively be certain of the answer to this question, we face what is, in my view, the most serious problem possible. Without answering it adequately, we cannot even be certain of our own selves. I cannot even know myself, let alone you. So I keep working on this theme; to me nothing is as important a question. And the answer comes very hard.

You can see that theme running through some of his best work. Is it far-fetched to think that in the next hundred years we could create an android that passed for human? Probably, but think about the hundred years from 1900 to 2000 and people would have said we wouldn't be able to go from horse and buggy to the moon in half that time. On top of the Dick (hee hee) we read "A Cyborg Manifesto" in one of my classes and it argues that with our reliance on computing technology we're all becoming cyborgs anyway. By inserting an android into the story here, we also invoke Dick (ha ha) in that now everyone can potentially be a robot and not necessarily know it. To me that opens up some interesting possibilities for the story (especially because the David still resides in the uncanny valley and can't 100% pass as human) as well as the social element: they're living in a world where the population is literally starving yet others have the resources to make full-fledged human replicas? WTF?

If you STILL aren't convinced, I say to you this: tough. We all signed a blood oath (or just agreed) that if someone says something exists in our shared world, then it exists. As I've said, cyborgs aren't totally ridiculous and I've just inserted one into the world, so they now exist. Deal with it Mussolini.

=-BB-=