Human enhancement, in which nanotechnology is expected to play a major role, continues to be a highly contentious ethical debate, with experts on both sides calling it the single most important issue facing science and society in this brave, new century. This paper is a broad introduction to the symposium herein that explores a range of perspectives related to that debate. We will discuss what human enhancement is and its apparent contrast to therapy; and we will begin to tease apart (...) the myriad intertwined issues that arise in the debate: (1) freedom & autonomy, (2) health & safety, (3) fairness & equity, (4) societal disruption, and (5) human dignity. (shrink)

This article proposes a model for regulating use of cognition enhancement drugs for nontherapeutic purposes. Using the method of reflective equilibrium, the author starts from the considered judgment of many citizens that treatments are obligatory and permissible while enhancements are not, and with the application of general principles of justice explains why this is the case. The author further analyzes and refutes three reasons that some influential authors in the field of neuroethics might have for downplaying the importance of justice: (...) (1) Justice applies only to public funds and state action—not to individual choice or corporate actors. (2) “Performance enhancement” does imply questions of justice, while “performance maintenance” does not. (3) There is no sufficient difference between cognition-enhancement drugs and other technologies to warrant the importance of justice for the debate. The challenges are refuted by taking into account the difference between consumption and tool use, and the influence of socioeconomic pressure for widespread use that existing drugs could have on the basic structure of society and equal autonomy of citizens. The analysis of requirements of justice points to a conclusion that introducing economic disincentives for the use of cognition-enhancement drugs would be the most legitimate public policy. With the imposition of taxes, fees, and requirements of additional insurance, the use and indirect coercion to use would be less profitable and less widespread, while additional funds thus created could be allocated to meet basic medical needs and/or education. (shrink)

Recent advances in biotechnologies have led to speculations about enhancing human beings. Many of the moral arguments presented to defend human enhancement technologies have been limited to discussions of their risks and benefits. The author argues that in so far as ethical arguments focus primarily on risks and benefits of human enhancement technologies, these arguments will be insufficient to provide a robust defence of these technologies. This is so because the belief that an assessment of risks and benefits is a (...) sufficient ethical evaluation of these technologies incorrectly presupposes that risk assessments do not involve value judgements. Second, it presupposes a reductionist conception of ethics as merely a risk management instrument. Each of these assumptions separates ethical evaluation from discussion and appraisal of ends and means and thus leaves important—indeed, essential—ethical considerations out of view. Once these problematic assumptions are rejected, it becomes clear that an adequate defence of human enhancement technologies requires more than a simple balance of their risks and benefits. (shrink)

This paper presents the principal findings from a three-year research project funded by the US National Science Foundation on ethics of human enhancement technologies. To help untangle this ongoing debate, we have organized the discussion as a list of questions and answers, starting with background issues and moving to specific concerns, including: freedom & autonomy, health & safety, fairness & equity, societal disruption, and human dignity. Each question-and-answer pair is largely self-contained, allowing the reader to skip to those issues of (...) interest without affecting continuity. (shrink)

Enormous resources are being invested in genetics, neuroscience and nanotechnology in search vital processes that might provide effective treatment for genetic and severe degenerative disorders, but these goals are still distant. Institutional and military resources are being poured into biotechnological developments for behavioral intervention and cognitive and moral enhancement for persons with difficulties as well as for healthy individuals. Enhancement will increase health and empowerment inequities to the detriment of the disadvantaged. Marked inequality in Latin America calls for an urgent (...) focus on the compromised values at play in biotechnological interventions that will be unavailable to those in need. (shrink)