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Course: Wireless Philosophy > Unit 6
Lesson 8: Enhancement: What Is biomedical enhancement?Enhancement: What Is biomedical enhancement?
In this Wireless Philosophy video, we consider various biomedical tools and techniques for improving our bodies or capacities, asking why certain improvements are welcomed as medical “treatments” while others, usually generating more ethical controversy, are classified as “enhancements.” What grounds this distinction, and does it give us good reason to worry about the growing development and use of technologies for the purposes of biomedical enhancement?
View our Democracy learning module and other videos in this series here: https://www.wi-phi.com. Created by Gaurav Vazirani.
Want to join the conversation?
- Who controls the resources and who is deemed eligible to receive the treatment (of whatever variety)?
As mentioned in the video, are the procedures for purely health/quality of life issues, or will they be used to exert control/exertion by one group over other groups?(1 vote)
Video transcript
In this Wi-phi video, we’re going to ask: what’s the difference
between a medical treatment and an enhancement? In deep brain stimulation, electrodes are surgically
implanted in the patient’s brain. A neurostimulator sends electrical
impulses into the electrodes, changing the brain’s
activity in the targeted areas. This can be an effective treatment
for patients with Parkinson’s disease, and may help with a
variety of other conditions, such as epilepsy, Tourette’s syndrome, major depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Deep brain stimulation is just one
of the latest entries in humankind’s long and ingenious history of
medical treatment technologies. It will eventually take its
place alongside bandages, crutches, and canes, pacemakers, dialysis machines, and cochlear implants. In addition to using technology
to treat health problems, people have used tools
and technology to enhance their bodies and natural
abilities for just as long. As the technological frontier advances, possibilities that were recently science
fiction may really be on the horizon: What if you could implant a chip in your
brain to access the internet in thought? What if you could edit the
genes of your future children to ensure that they
live at least 100 years? What if you could take a
pill that made you smarter, harder-working, and more virtuous? Transhumanists believe we
are on the cusp of such advances. And, as their name suggests,
they advocate embracing them as the next step in our
evolution beyond humanity. Opponents of transhumanism are skeptical about
the wisdom of this path. Isn’t there something deeply worrisome about such invasive modifications
to normal human functioning? Well, you might respond, what about deep brain stimulation? “Surgically burying electrodes
deep in your brain and sending pulses of electricity through
them to modify neural functioning” is no less invasive than most
proposals transhumanists embrace. We need to think more
carefully about the difference between a medical treatment
and an enhancement. This distinction doesn’t just
concern futuristic technologies. Take cosmetic surgery, for example. Cosmetic surgery to
correct the disfiguring injuries suffered by a burn victim
is a medical treatment. By contrast, a surgical facelift to
smooth your wrinkles and help you look
younger is an enhancement. Treatments aim to repair an injury, relieve a symptom, or combat a disease. Treatments are intended to cure. If you need a cure, then you’re somehow sick. Treatments are always responses to real
or perceived problems with your health. Enhancements, by contrast, have nothing intrinsic
to do with ill health. A facelift makes you look younger
-it doesn’t cure your face. Wrinkles aren’t a disorder. You may wish you had a supercharged memory, but that doesn’t mean there’s
anything wrong with your brain. Enhancements aim not to cure you, but to upgrade you -to help you go beyond what a
healthy person is capable of doing. One and the same intervention might
be a treatment or an enhancement, depending on why it’s performed. To borrow the language
of insurance companies, treatments must be medically necessary In other words, their justification is that they are
required to restore or protect your health. Of course you might have
a range of treatment options, none of which is individually necessary. But what makes those your options is that they’re all ways
of restoring you to health. You need to do something
on the list of treatments, or else you’ll stay sick. For example, prescription eyeglasses
count as a medical treatment, because they’re meant to assist people
whose vision isn’t functioning as it should. Augmented reality glasses, by contrast, count as an enhancement, because they help you move
beyond a normal level of function. So, transhumanists advocate
medical technologies that help us go beyond the
level of functioning typical of a healthy human being, regardless of their utility
as treatments for ill health. Imagine that every great
disease has been cured, or was easily treatable. Given the choice, few if any of us would turn down the
opportunity to live in this alternative reality. Everybody would be healthy. Now imagine that medical
enhancements were commonplace. Self-improvement efforts would be just as likely
to involve genetic editing, electronic implants, drug cocktails, or plastic surgery as they would to center
on diet and exercise, meditation, charity work,
or joining a book club today. You might regularly
run into people who were smarter than the greatest
genius who’s ever lived. Some of your friends
might be 150 years old. Instead of going to the gym, you might go to the muscle
factory to pick up a new set of abs. While a world of perfect
health is pretty easy to imagine, it’s very hard to envision a world of
extensive technological enhancement. So it’s reasonable to pause and ask: is this a world we want? What do you think?