ZusammenfassungDer Artikel untersucht die Frage, ob es sinnvoll ist, Doping im Sport unter ärztlicher Kontrolle freizugeben. Dazu werden die Auswirkungen einer Freigabe untersucht, die stets nur eine begrenzte Freigabe wäre, allein wegen der Risiken. Die unangenehmen Begleiterscheinungen der Dopingkontrollen würden nicht entfallen. Die Auswirkungen einer Freigabe von Doping im Wettkampfsport wären entweder unsinnig oder aber mit Nachteilen behaftet. Es ist nicht notwendig, die Frage zu klären, was die „Idee des Sportes“ ausmacht und ob sie verändert werden darf. Allein unter praktischen (...) Aspekten zeigt sich, dass dem Sport mit einer Freigabe des Dopings keine Vorteile, aber viele Nachteile erwachsen. (shrink)

No artigo, abordo a ideia de melhoramento humano (MH), visando a contestar três frustrantes tendências dos seus críticos, a saber, as ideias de: (1) que a natureza humana será artificializada, sugerindo que estaremos diante de algo novo e incomparavelmente perigoso, bem como que ainda seja possível preservar uma separação radical entre natureza e técnica; (2) que é possível abordar e criticar o MH a partir de uma singularidade semântica; e, diretamente relacionada à anterior, (3) que há univocidade entre os defensores (...) do MH acerca de como os indivíduos devem lidar com os meios biotecnocientíficos disponibilizados, a saber, como uma ingênua e acrítica obrigação de melhorar. In this paper, I discuss the idea of human enhancement (HE). My goal is to refute three frustrating trends in the HE criticism, namely the ideas that: (1) human nature will become artificial, suggesting that we will be facing something new and uniquely dangerous, and that it is still possible to preserve a radical separation between nature and technique; (2) it is possible to address and criticize HE from a semantic uniqueness, which is directly related to the previous item; and (3) there is an univocity among the HE's defenders on how individuals should handle the available bio-techno-scientific tools made available, namely, as a naive and uncritical obligation to become enhanced. (shrink)

The generic idea that the human should enhance seems uncontroversial. However, there is a great controversy about the meaning of enhance and the means that should be used. The possibilities of enhance humans through the use of biotechnology are a central theme of the current bioethical debate. Human Enhancement is the concept used to translate the idea that a biotransformation would generate a bioenhancement. In this article, we present a proposal for a factual-elementary framework of the generic concept of human (...) enhancement, in order to highlight the differences between a normative terminology and a descriptive terminology. Then, we contest the radical polarization that creates a harmful bias in the debate, arguing that what is at issue is a decision making based on non-universal value judgments. (shrink)

How should ethics help decide the morality of enhancing morality? The idea of morally enhancing the human brain quickly emerged when the promise of cognitive enhancement in general began to seem realizable. However, on reflection, achieving moral enhancement must be limited by the practical challenges to any sort of cognitive modification, along with obstacles particular to morality’s bases in social cognition. The objectivity offered by the brain sciences cannot ensure the technological achievement of moral bioenhancement for humanity-wide application. Additionally, any (...) limited moral enhancement will not easily fulfil ethical expectations. Three hypothetical scenarios involving putative moral enhancement help illustrate why. Philosophical concerns about the “Does-Must Dichotomy” and the “Factor-Cause Plurality,” as I label them, forbid easy leaps from views about morality on to conclusions about ways to enhance morality, and then further on to ethically justifying those enhancements. A modest and realistic approach to moral enhancement emerges from exploring these issues. (shrink)

Two features characterize new and emerging technosciences. The first one is the production of peculiar ontologies. The human agent is confronted with a biophysical world the contingent, indeterminate character of which does not hamper but expands the scope of purposeful action. Uncertainty is increasingly regarded as a resource for an expanding will rather than a drawback for a disoriented agent. The second feature is that ethics is increasingly considered as the core regulatory means of this messy, ever-changing world. The ambivalences (...) of the ethical government of contingent assemblages are discussed by focusing on the governmentality perspective. The latter helps to make sense of the regulatory alliance between ethics and technoscience. A reflection on Foucault’s account of ethics shows that the emancipatory role of the latter is today hampered by its embroilment with the instrumental reason it aims to govern, nor can older models of ethical commitment find any straightforward application. Mapping the issue in terms of mutual constitution of power, potentiality and possibility gives salience to a particular question: what we are able not to do. (shrink)

Should use of performance-enhancing drugs (PED) in sport be banned or not? In my article, I propose an interpretation of what I take to be a widely shared but also a heavily criticized view: PED us...

New physiological and pharmacological research points to the possibility of a pill that produces the complete physiological effects of exercise. Is replacement of exercise with a pill a good idea? And if so, under what circumstances? To explore answers, I have examined three approaches to the understanding exercise. From a dualist point of view, exercise is explained mechanistically in terms of physiological cause and effect relationships. From this perspective, and in particular for reluctant exercisers, there seems to be no strong (...) argument against the use of a pill. From a phenomenological point of view, exercise is understood from a first person perspective focusing on experiential qualities. It is argued that a pill can never replace the embodied, experiential values of exercising and their potential ethical significance. In other words, the use of a pill is rejected. From a critical social constructivist point of view, exercise is understood as an expression of sociocultural values. Exercise can be a source of both bodily alienation and embodied self-realization and meaning. It is argued that in settings of alienating exercise malpractice, an exercise pill can be a temporary lesser evil approach. It is pointed out, however, that the long-term solution to malpractice is not a pill but a change of practice. In a final section, the possibility of the exercise pill is contextualized in the larger, bio-ethical debate on human enhancement. (shrink)

The use of certain performance-enhancing drugs (PED) is banned in sport. I discuss critically standard justifications of the ban based on arguments from two widely used criteria: fairness and harms to health. I argue that these arguments on their own are inadequate, and only make sense within a normative understanding of athletic performance and the value of sport. In the discourse over PED, the distinction between “natural” and “artificial” performance has exerted significant impact. I examine whether the distinction makes sense (...) from a moral point of view. I propose an understanding of “natural” athletic performance by combining biological knowledge of training with an interpretation of the normative structure of sport. I conclude that this understanding can serve as moral justification of the PED ban and enable critical and analytically based line drawing between acceptable and nonacceptable performance-enhancing means in sport. (shrink)

I denne artikkelen drøfter jeg bruk av biomedisinsk teknologi i prestasjonsfremmende hensikt i konkurranseidrett. Mer presist utforsker jeg mulighetene for å skille mellom etisk akseptabel og etisk uakseptabel bruk. Jeg kritiserer WADAs normative grunnlag for å forby visse biomedisinske midler og metoder, og argumenterer for at eventuelle forbud må bygge på tydeligere verdisyn på idrett. Jeg undersøker to idealtypiske syn og deres teknologiske implikasjoner. Det smale synet er liberalt og avviser begrensninger i bruk av biomedisinske midler og metoder blant voksne (...) idrettsutøvere som dårlig begrunnet paternalisme. Det brede synet innebærer en mer restriktiv holdning og aksepterer en viss regulering av trening og prestasjonsutvikling også utenfor konkurransene. I en avsluttende del veier jeg det smale og det brede synet mot hverandre og reflekterer over hvilket syn som vil dominere framtidens idrett.Nøkkelord: etikk, idrett, biomedisinsk teknologi, dopingEnglish summary: The use of biomedical technology in sport: Are there any limits?In the article I examine the use of biomedical technology to enhance performance in competitive sport. More specifically I examine the possibilities for distinguishing between ethically acceptable and ethically unacceptable use of such technology. I criticize the World Antidoping Agency's normative criterion for banning certain technologies as it is vague and unclear. I argue that any ban by WADA has to build on a clear and operational normative view of sport. Two relevant ideal-typical views are examined together with their technological implications. The narrow view is liberal and rejects restrictions on the use of biomedical technology among professional athletes as unjustifiable paternalism. The wider view implies a more restrictive approach and accepts certain regulations of performance-enhancing means and methods outside of competitions. In the conclusion, I compare the narrow and the wider views and reflect upon their possible status in competitive sport in the future. (shrink)

New technologies facilitate the enhancement of a wide range of human dispositions, capacities, or abilities. While it is argued that we need to set limits to human enhancement, it is unclear where we should find resources to set such limits. Traditional routes for setting limits, such as referring to nature, the therapy-enhancement distinction, and the health-disease distinction, turn out to have some shortcomings. However, upon closer scrutiny the concept of enhancement is based on vague conceptions of what is to be (...) enhanced. Explaining why it is better to become older, stronger, and more intelligent presupposes a clear conception of goodness, which is seldom provided. In particular, the qualitative better is frequently confused with the quantitative more. We may therefore not need “external” measures for setting its limits – they are available in the concept of enhancement itself. While there may be shortcomings in traditional sources of limit setting to human enhancement, such as nature, therapy, and disease, such approaches may not be necessary. The specification-of-betterment problem inherent in the conception of human enhancement itself provides means to restrict its unwarranted proliferation. We only need to demand clear, sustainable, obtainable goals for enhancement that are based on evidence, and not on lofty speculations, hypes, analogies, or weak associations. Human enhancements that specify what will become better, and provide adequate evidence, are good and should be pursued. Others should not be accepted. (shrink)

Sports physicians are continuously confronted with new biotechnological innovations. This applies not only to doping in sports, but to all kinds of so-called enhancement methods. One fundamental problem regarding the sports physician's self-image consists in a blurred distinction between therapeutic treatment and non-therapeutic performance enhancement. After a brief inventory of the sports physician's work environment I reject as insufficient the attempts to resolve the conflict of the sports physician by making it a classificatory problem. Followed by a critical assessment of (...) some ideas from the US President's Council on Bioethics, the formulation of ethical codes and attempts regarding a moral topography, it is argued that the sports physician's conflict cannot be resolved by the distinction between therapy and enhancement. Instead, we also have to consider the possibility that the therapy-based paradigm of medicine cannot do justice to the challenges of the continuously increasing technical manipulability of the human body and even our cognitive functions as well. At the same time we should not adhere to transhumanist ideas, because non-therapeutic interventions require clear criteria. Based on assistive technologies an alternative framework can be sketched that allows for the integration of therapeutic and non-therapeutic purposes. After a thorough definition of standards and criteria, the role of the sports physician might be defined as that of an assistant for enhancement. Yet the process of defining such an alternative framework is a societal and political task that cannot be accomplished by the sports physicians themselves. Until these questions are answered sports physicians continue to find themselves in a structural dilemma that they partially can come to terms with through personal integrity. (shrink)

Recent developments in the study of our brain and neurochemical maps have sparked much enthusiasm in some scholars, making room for speculations over the possibility to shape our morality from within ourselves rather than through [failed] socio-political projects. This paper aims at criticising the prospected scenario put forward by some scholars supporting a specific version of Moral Enhancement as an overly optimistically described manipulative tools. To do so, I will focus on a specific version of Moral Enhancers, namely Emotional Enhancers. (...) By looking from close at this group of enhancers and the potential results of their implementation, I will underline the risks that those could pose to sexual minorities, and I will use this analysis to support a much more cautious assessment of these drugs and a broader assessment of what their social acceptance would mean. (shrink)

In this issue, Ahmadi1 reports on the practice of hymenoplasty—a surgical intervention meant to restore a presumed physical marker of virginity prior to a woman's marriage. As Mehri and Sills2 have stated, these women ‘want to ensure that blood is spilled on their wedding night sheets.’ Although Ahmadi's research was carried out in Iran specifically, this surgery is becoming increasingly popular in a number of Western countries as well, especially among Muslim populations.3 What are the ethics of hymen restoration?Consider the (...) role of the physician. Two of the doctors interviewed by Ahmadi reported being in ‘a perpetual state of guilt because of the surgery's inherent aim at deceiving the groom’ and noted their ‘personal conflict’ at being involved in this deception. Yet: "None of the doctors believed that the surgery was unethical, arguing that the girl could be ‘abused’ and ‘can even die’ if she is discovered not … ". (shrink)

“Love hurts”—as the saying goes—and a certain amount of pain and difficulty in intimate relationships is unavoidable. Sometimes it may even be beneficial, since adversity can lead to personal growth, self-discovery, and a range of other components of a life well-lived. But other times, love can be downright dangerous. It may bind a spouse to her domestic abuser, draw an unscrupulous adult toward sexual involvement with a child, put someone under the insidious spell of a cult leader, and even inspire (...) jealousy-fueled homicide. How might these perilous devotions be diminished? The ancients thought that treatments such as phlebotomy, exercise, or bloodletting could “cure” an individual of love. But modern neuroscience and emerging developments in psychopharmacology open up a range of possible interventions that might actually work. These developments raise profound moral questions about the potential uses—and misuses—of such anti-love biotechnology. In this article, we describe a number of prospective love-diminishing interventions, and offer a preliminary ethical framework for dealing with them responsibly should they arise. (shrink)

The author examines whether Kantian ethics would condone the use of pharmaceutical drugs to enhance one’s moods and cognitive abilities. If key assumptions concerning safety and efficacy, non-addictiveness, non-coercion, and accessibility are not met, Kantian ethics would consider mood and cognitive enhancement to be impermissible. But what if these assumptions are granted? The arguments for the permissibility of neuroenhancement are stronger than those against it. After giving a general account of Kantian ethical principles, the author argues that, when these assumptions (...) are granted, Kantian ethics no longer justifies the prohibition of neuroenhancement, and responds to two objections. (shrink)

This article examines the role and value of defiance in sport. I argue that defiance is a virtue in sport and make a case for it as a spirited and praiseworthy way of counteracting burdened conditi...

Non è un caso che l’enhancement umano, cioè il potenziamento di capacità fisiche, cognitive ed emotive degli esseri umani con l’ausilio di tecnologie, sia diventato un tema centrale nei dibattiti etico-applicativi e nei tentativi contemporanei di arrivare a una comprensione più adeguata della natura umana. In esso si incontrano quesiti decisamente ricchi e complessi, sia dal punto di vista tecnoscientifico e medico sia da quello filosofico – e lo fanno in un modo che ci permette di vedere questi quesiti sotto (...) una nuova luce. Il numero raccoglie alcune voci italiane, tedesche, inglesi e statunitensi su diversi aspetti della problematica dell’enhancement umano. Tra le tematiche discusse troviamo il potenziamento genetico, le dimensioni etiche dell’enhancement, la relazione uomo-tecnologia, il cosiddetto enhancement morale, la relazione tra enhancement ed eugenetica, la distinzione tra potenziamento e terapia e la rilevanza delle neuroscienze per lo sviluppo futuro delle bio-tecnologie, della medicina e dell’etica. (shrink)

Whatever we speak about enhancement as the, just, one array of the wide range of the bioethical fields, or as the kind of ideological and theoretical field, it is necessary to emphasize relevant ideological and theoretical distinctions between different approaches. Trying to give some fundamental shape to debate among them, as well within themselves, I specified three possible streams with more or less arbitrary boundaries. First one is transhumanistic stream , whose representatives openly promote the practice of genetic, prosthetic and (...) cognitive enhancement of human kind - transition from human to a post human society; bioconservative, whose representatives perceive a threat in the violation of human dignity, meddling in “God’s business” ( playing God ), and in changes to the nature of human beings; representatives of the “middle standpoint” consider that danger lies within the dialectic relation of “capitalism and medicine.” I present the tree ideological standpoints trying to building consistency through different ethical arguments. Discussing the relevant theoretical/ideological distinction between standpoints and their claims, I will argue that ideological distinction among standpoints is less relevant than contingency within their arguments. Such mutual contingence creates some similarity regarding epistemological and social issues. (shrink)

Enhancement is a basic principle of modern sport. Their increase of achievement is usually attributed to the sportsmen’s natural assessment, their health, their training methods and their employment. In contrast, increase in output by pharmacological means is outlawed. The modern medical techniques created a whole range, by which sportsmen are supported. Consequently, sometimes difficult decisions with concrete medications develop. It is not always clearly to be differentiated whether something is a pharmacological interference, which serves the therapy or leads however to (...) the outlawed increase in output. At present Enhancement is in discussion, a phenomenon, which is related to doping in sports, but which concerns achievement-increasing use of medicines not only in sportsmen. -/- Leistungssteigerung ist ein Grundprinzip des modernen Sports. Gewöhnlich werden für die Steigerung der Leistung die natürliche Veranlagung der Sportler, ihre Gesundheit, ihre Trainingsmethoden und ihr Einsatzwille veranschlagt. Leistungssteigerung durch pharmakologische Mittel ist dagegen geächtet. Die modernen medizinischen Techniken haben einen ganzen Bereich geschaffen, durch den die Sportler bei der Erbringung ihrer Leistung und deren Erhalt unterstützt werden. Dabei entstehen mitunter schwierige Entscheidungsfragen bei konkreten Medikationen. Nicht immer ist klar zu unterscheiden, ob etwas ein pharmakologischer Eingriff ist, der der Therapie dient oder aber zur geächteten Leistungssteigerung führt. Gegenwärtig wird über Enhancement diskutiert, ein Phänomen, das mit dem Doping verwandt ist, aber leistungssteigernde Verwendung von Medikamenten bei Gesunden im Allgemeinen, also nicht nur bei Sportlern, betrifft. (shrink)