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- Allen Buchanan (2008). Enhancement and the Ethics of Development. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 18 (1):pp. 1-34.Much of the debate about the ethics of enhancement has proceeded according to two framing assumptions. The first is that although enhancement carries large social risks, the chief benefits of enhancement are to those who are enhanced (or their parents, in the case of enhancing the traits of children). The second is that, because we now understand the wrongs of state-driven eugenics, enhancements, at least in liberal societies, will be personal goods, chosen or not chosen in a market for enhancement services. This article argues that both framing assumptions must be rejected, once it is understood that some enhancements— especially those that are most likely to garner resources and become widespread— will increase human productivity. Once one appreciates the productivity-increasing potential of enhancements, one can begin to see that enhancement need not be primarily a zero sum affair, that the social costs of forgoing enhancements may be great, and that the state may well take an interest in facilitating biomedical enhancements, just as it does in facilitating education and other productivity-increasing traditional enhancements. Appreciating the productivity-increasing potential of enhancements also makes it possible to view the enhancement debate in a new light, through the lens of the ethics of development.Reading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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Traditionally, biomedical research has been devoted to improvement in the understanding and treatment or prevention of disease. Building on the knowledge generated by the long history of disease-oriented research, the next few decades will witness an explosion of biomedical enhancements to make people faster, stronger, smarter, less forgetful, happier, prettier, and live longer (Turner et al. 2003; Vastag 2004; Rose 2002). As with other biomedical interventions, research to assess the safety and efficacy of these enhancements in humans should be conducted before their introduction into clinical practice.1 However, various concerns regarding the ethics of enhancement research could be raised. Those who ..
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| | Other links: muse.jhu.edu dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... As the President's Council on Bioethics emphasized in a recent report, rapid growth of biotechnologies creates increasingly many possibilities for enhancing human traits. This article addresses the claim that enhancement via biotechnology is inherently problematic for reasons pertaining to our identity. After clarifying the concept of enhancement, and providing a framework for understanding human identity, I examine the relationship between enhancement and identity. Then I investigate two identity-related challenges to biotechnological enhancements: (1) the charge of inauthenticity and (2) the charge of violating inviolable core characteristics. My thesis is that a lucid, plausible understanding of human identity largely neutralizes these charges, liberating our thinking from some seductive yet unsound objections to enhancement via biotechnology.
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| | Other links: jmp.oxfordjournals.org dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The hopes and fears expressed in the debate on human enhancement are not always based on a realistic assessment of the expected possibilities. Discussions about extreme scenarios may at times obscure the ethical and policy issues that are relevant today. This paper aims to contribute to an adequate and ethically sound societal response to actual current developments. After a brief outline of the ethical debate concerning neuro-enhancement, it describes the current state of the art in psychopharmacological science and current uses of psychopharmacological enhancement, as well as the prospects for the near future. It then identifies ethical issues regarding psychopharmacological enhancements that require attention from policymakers, both on the professional and on the governmental level. These concern enhancement research, the gradual expansion of medical categories, off-label prescription and responsibility of doctors, and accessibility of enhancers on the Internet. It is concluded that further discussion on the advantages and drawbacks of enhancers on a collective social level is still needed.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Positions on the ethics of human enhancement technologies can be (crudely) characterized as ranging from transhumanism to bioconservatism. Transhumanists believe that human enhancement technologies should be made widely available, that individuals should have broad discretion over which of these technologies to apply to themselves, and that parents should normally have the right to choose enhancements for their children-to-be. Bioconservatives (whose ranks include such diverse writers as Leon Kass, Francis Fukuyama, George Annas, Wesley Smith, Jeremy Rifkin, and Bill McKibben) are generally opposed to the use of technology to modify human nature. A central idea in bioconservativism is that human enhancement technologies will undermine our human dignity. To forestall a slide down the slippery slope towards an ultimately debased ‘posthuman’ state, bioconservatives often argue for broad bans on otherwise promising human enhancements. This paper distinguishes two common fears about the posthuman and argues for the importance of a concept of dignity that is inclusive enough to also apply to many possible posthuman beings. Recognizing the possibility of posthuman dignity undercuts an important objection against human enhancement and removes a distortive double standard from our field of moral vision.
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| | Other links: blackwell-synergy.com interscience.wiley.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Positions on the ethics of human enhancement technologies can be (crudely) characterized as ranging from transhumanism to bioconservatism. Transhumanists believe that human enhancement technologies should be made widely available, that individuals should have broad discretion over which of these technologies to apply to themselves, and that parents should normally have the right to choose enhancements for their children-to-be. Bioconservatives (whose ranks include such diverse writers as Leon Kass, Francis Fukuyama, George Annas, Wesley Smith, Jeremy Rifkin, and Bill McKibben) are generally opposed to the use of technology to modify human nature. A central idea in bioconservativism is that human enhancement technologies will undermine our human dignity. To forestall a slide down the slippery slope towards an ultimately debased ‘posthuman’ state, bioconservatives often argue for broad bans on otherwise promising human enhancements. This paper distinguishes two common fears about the posthuman and argues for the importance of a concept of dignity that is inclusive enough to also apply to many possible posthuman beings. Recognizing the possibility of posthuman dignity undercuts an important objection against human enhancement and removes a distortive double standard from our field of moral vision.
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| | Other links: transhumanism.org | Scholar | More options ... Among moral philosophers, general disapproval of genetic enhancement has in recent years given way to the view that the permissibility of a eugenic policy depends only on its particular features. Buchanan, Brock, Daniels, and Wikler have extensively defended such a view. However, while these authors go so far as to argue that there are conditions under which parents are not only permitted but also obligated to proeure genetic treatments for their intended child, they stop short of arguing that there are conditions under which parents are required to procure enhancements. By contrast, David Heyd argues that parents are required to proeure treatments or enhancements for their future child, but only. if the intervention would not alter the future child’s personal identity. In this paper I take the case for genetic enhancement a step further by arguing that there are conditions under which parents are morally required to procure genetic interventions for their intended child, regardless of whether the intervention is a treatment or an enhancement, and regardless of whether it would alter the child’s personal identity.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The last 10 years has seen the development and deployment of new biotechnologies not just as potential treatments but also as potential enhancements. The definition and differentiation of treatment (therapy) from enhancement is an ongoing clinical, ethical and social debate that ranges across a proliferating number of convergent technologies. Many of these innovations will ‘come-on-line’ as present generations of young people will be reaching adulthood and considering parenthood. This paper reports on a project that explored the possibilities for human enhancement with young people in order to gather their attitudes towards enhancement and the types of arguments/reasoning they employ when thinking about the possibilities and the techniques. The project focused on if/how distinctions are made between treatment and enhancement, between the different techniques that might be used for enhancement (genetic and non-genetic) and perceptions of risks and benefits. The young people’s viewpoints, their methods of reasoning and underlying values are compared with those of bioethicists writing on the topic.
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| | Other links: eprints.lancs.ac.uk | Scholar | More options ... Is nanotechnology-based human enhancement morally permissible? One reason to question such enhancement stems from a concern for preserving our species. It is harder than one might think, however, to explain what could be wrong with altering our own species. One possibility is to turn to the environmental ethics literature. Perhaps some of the arguments for preserving other species can be applied against nanotechnology-based human enhancements that alter human nature. This paper critically examines the case for using two of the strongest arguments in the environmental ethics literature to show that nanotechnology-based human enhancements are impermissible: 1) Our species, like many other naturally occurring species, has aesthetic value. So, nanotechnology-based human enhancements that alter our species should be prohibited. 2) Our species plays valuable ecological roles. Nanotechnology-based human enhancements that alter our species are likely to interfere with our species playing our ecologically valuable roles. So, such enhancements should be prohibited. Neither argument, ultimately, proves conclusive. The paper concludes, however, that considerations underlying both arguments may show us that some nanotechnology-based human enhancements are impermissible.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... It often appears that the most appropriate form of addressing disadvantage related to disability is through policies that can be called “status enhancements”: changes to the social, cultural and material environment so that the difficulties experienced by those with impairments are reduced, even eradicated. However, status enhancements can also have their limitations. This paper compares the relative merits of policies of status enhancement and “personal enhancement”: changes to the disabled person. It then takes up the question of how to assess the priority of the claims of disabled people in the face of scarcity of resources for which there can be many competing social claims, arguing for the theory of “declustering disadvantage”.
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| | Other links: journals.cambridge.org homepages.ucl.ac.uk dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Opponents of biomedical enhancement often claim that, even if such enhancement would benefit the enhanced, it would harm others. But this objection looks unpersuasive when the enhancement in question is a moral enhancement — an enhancement that will expectably leave the enhanced person with morally better motives than she had previously. In this article I (1) describe one type of psychological alteration that would plausibly qualify as a moral enhancement, (2) argue that we will, in the medium-term future, probably be able to induce such alterations via biomedical intervention, and (3) defend future engagement in such moral enhancements against possible objections. My aim is to present this kind of moral enhancement as a counter-example to the view that biomedical enhancement is always morally impermissible.
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| | Other links: blackwell-synergy.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Discussion of Allen Buchanan, Enhancement and the ethics of development
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