Prompted Post 7: Ethical Arguments in the Field

In the world of Biomedical engineering there is a controversy about human enhancement. Human enhancement can be defined as to” improve the state of an organism beyond its normal healthy state” (Bostram). This article also talks a lot about how defining enhancement id difficult because of the fact that some enhancements may be therapeutic and not necessarily enhancements at all, because therapies are designed just to bring an organism from a state of disrepair to a healthy state. The main parts that are looked at when it comes to human improvement are: life extension, physical enhancement, mood and personality enhancement, cognitive enhancement, and designer children. The two sides of this argument are biological conservatives and transhumans. Biological conservatives are against human improvement and transhumans are for it.

Biological conservatives: These people believe that it is unethical to try and make the human population better than it is. They believe that making these transformations for people would be unfair for everyone who couldn’t afford the processes that would improve themselves. This would create a very wide and distinct physical difference between the rich and the poor. Another thing biological conservatives think is that there would still be drastic differences between people naturally. The article talks of one example regarding cognitive ability the writers said that it is unfair if a person is below average intelligence and receives some sort of treatment that would increase their intelligence then there would still be people who were smarter than this person that had not been exposed to this treatment. This kind of enhancement can easily be viewed as cheating in an academic sense (Bostram).

Transhumans: They believe that human potential has not been reached and that with the enhancements that are scientifically possible, and on their way, we as a species might be able to do the greatest things that humanity can accomplish. They push for the funding of any technology that could alleviate human suffering and try to improve life for as many people as possible. This group also advocates for the well-being of all sentient being that may come about be it humans another species that gains sentience or when and If humanity encounters another sentient race (The Transhumanist Declaration).

Works Cited

Bostrom, Nick, Rebecca Roache. “Ethical Issues in Human Enhancement.” nickbostrom.com. New Waves in Applied Ethics. 2008 Web. 20 October 2013

Baily, Doug, Anders Sandberg, Gustavo Alves, Max More, Holger Wagner, Natasha Vita-More, Eugene Leitl, Bernie Staring, David Pearce, Bill Fantegrossi, den Otter, Ralf Fletcher, Kathryn Aegis, Tom Morrow, Alexander Chislenko, Lee Daniel Crocker, Darren Reynolds, Keith Elis, Thom Quinn, Mikhail Sverdlov, Arjen Kamphuis, Shane Spaulding, and Nick Bostrom “The Transhumanist Declaration.” Humanityplus.org. Humanity+.  March 2009. Web. 20 October 2013