There is a remedy available for many of our ailments: Psychopharmacology promises to alleviate unsatisfying memory, bad moods, and low self-esteem. Bioethicists have long discussed the ethical implications of enhancement interventions. However, they have not considered relevant evidence from psychology and economics. The growth in autonomy in many areas of life is publicized as progress for the individual. However, the broadening of areas at one’s disposal together with the increasing individualization of value systems leads to situations in which the range (...) of options asks too much of the individual. I scrutinize whether increased self-determination and unbound possibilities are really in a person’s best interests. Evidence from psychology and economics challenges the assumption that unlimited autonomy is best in all cases. The responsibility for autonomous self-formation that comes with possibilities provided by neuro-enhancement developments can be a burden. To guarantee quality of life I suggest a balance of beneficence, support, and respect for autonomy. (shrink)

Anti-aging medicine has emerged in the past two decades as both a medical practice and scientific objective largely aimed at intervening into the process of aging itself rather than its “associated” diseases. This has provoked a both excitement and concern in bioethical deliberations on the meaning and potential impact of an effective intervention. In this article, I examine the different ways in which bioethicists, other social scientists, and anti-aging proponents frame anti-aging goals, in particular, the construction of immortality as its (...) implicit and explicit aim. This research is based upon over 9 years of anthropological, ethnographic interview- and observation-based research in the field and draws substantially from the US President’s Council on Bioethics’ deliberations on this topic as well as from interview data and other publications/discussion on anti-aging medicine. I argue that while the framework of life and death provide the primary structure for many bioethical and social science critiques of anti-aging medicine, many if not most anti-aging practitioners, researchers, and advocates employ the alternative structure of health and pain to orient their work. These divergent orientations of life/death and health/pain beget competing conversations around anti-aging medicine; including voices from the front lines of anti-aging practice complicate bioethical critiques and ultimately beg different questions. Positioning the painful, physiological decline of aging as the ultimate adversary rather than death challenges traditional models of biomedical intervention based on “nature” and “disease” constructions. (shrink)

*The opinions expressed are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy of the National Institutes of Health, the Public Health Service, or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Emerging technologies are increasingly used in an attempt to “enhance the human body and/or mind” beyond the contemporary standards that characterize human beings. Yet, such standards are deeply controversial and it is not an easy task to determine whether the application of a given technology to an individual and its outcome can be defined as a human enhancement or not. Despite much debate on its potential or actual ethical and social impacts, human enhancement is not subject to any consensual definition. (...) This paper proposes a timely and much needed examination of the various definitions found in the literature. We classify these definitions into four main categories: the implicit approach, the therapy-enhancement distinction, the improvement of general human capacities and the increase of well-being. After commenting on these different approaches and their limitations, we propose a definition of human enhancement that focuses on individual perceptions. While acknowledging that a definition that mainly depends on personal and subjective individual perceptions raises many challenges, we suggest that a comprehensive approach to define human enhancement could constitute a useful premise to appropriately address the complexity of the ethical and social issues it generates. (shrink)

Over the last decade, more U.S. taxpayers money has been spent trying to anticipate and address the bioethical issues raised by advances in human genetics than any other set of issues in the field. Does this make sense? Not everyone in bioethics thinks so. Some think there are more important topics, like issues of health care justice, that will be neglected if the field continues to follow the money to dwell on the moral challenges of a relatively small community of (...) research scientists. Others decry genetic exceptionalism as inappropriately singling out this scientific enterprise for criticism and regulation, when the same issues are faced even more acutely in other parts of the biomedical world. Human genetics is not accelerating as fast as pharmacology, for example, or as easy to abuse as virology, or as philosophically challenging as neurology. (shrink)

Over the last decade, more U.S. taxpayers money has been spent trying to anticipate and address the bioethical issues raised by advances in human genetics than any other set of issues in the field. Does this make sense? Not everyone in bioethics thinks so. Some think there are more important topics, like issues of health care justice, that will be neglected if the field continues to follow the money to dwell on the moral challenges of a relatively small community of (...) research scientists. Others decry genetic exceptionalism as inappropriately singling out this scientific enterprise for criticism and regulation, when the same issues are faced even more acutely in other parts of the biomedical world. Human genetics is not accelerating as fast as pharmacology, for example, or as easy to abuse as virology, or as philosophically challenging as neurology. (shrink)

With a few notable exceptions disability studies has not taken account of intersexuality, and it is principally through the lenses of feminist and queer-theory oriented ethical discussions but not through ‘straight’ bioethics that modes valuing intersex difference have been proposed. Meanwhile, the medical presupposition that intersex characteristics are inherently disabling to social viability remains the taken-for-granted truth from which clinical practice proceeds. In this paper I argue against bioethical perspectives that justify extensive and invasive pre- and post-natal medical interference to (...) eradicate intersex. I argue instead that to constitute the necessary conditions for the recognition of the intersexed child as a person, a life valid in its own right, clinicians must refrain from aggressive interference. Clinical specialists presuppose that intersexed children will be socially disabled and unrecognizable as persons; frustrated by the general failure of traditional interventions to assign a sex, clinicians are now pursuing prenatal technologies, including selective termination, to erase intersex. (shrink)

Nanomedicine offers remarkable options for new therapeutic avenues. As methods in nanomedicine advance, ethical questions conjunctly arise. Nanomedicine is an exceptional niche in several aspects as it reflects risks and uncertainties not encountered in other areas of medical research or practice. Nanomedicine partially overlaps, partially interlocks and partially exceeds other medical disciplines. Some interpreters agree that advances in nanotechnology may pose varied ethical challenges, whilst others argue that these challenges are not new and that nanotechnology basically echoes recurrent bioethical dilemmas. (...) The purpose of this article is to discuss some of the ethical issues related to nanomedicine and to reflect on the question whether nanomedicine generates ethical challenges of new and unique nature. Such a determination should have implications on regulatory processes and professional conducts and protocols in the future. (shrink)