Engineering Greater Resilience or Radical Transhuman Enhancement?
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Andy Miah
This article investigates the conceptual distinctions between therapy and various forms of human enhancement. It begins by proposing a typology of human enhancements in order to make more rigorous and grounded discussions about the distinction between therapy and enhancement. Three types of human enhancement are proposed: 1) engineering traits of accepted value, 2) engineering traits of contested value and 3) radical transhuman enhancements. Subsequently, the paper explores the distinctions between the ethical justifications that are advanced for therapeutic interventions, comparing them with human enhancements, concluding that the salient characteristic of health-related suffering enables enhancement to gain legitimacy from the perspective of traditional medical ethics. Finally, the paper considers a number of practical obstructions to the realization of radical transhuman enhancements. Specifically, it discusses procedural obstacles to approving experimental medical research for human enhancements, the likely commercialization of human enhancements that would ensue from their development, and the need to develop experimental medical interventions via animal models.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
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- The Ethics of Autonomous Military Robots
- Privacy, Data Protection, and the Unprecedented Challenges of Ambient Intelligence
- The Legal and Ethical Changes in the NHS Landscape Accompanying the Policy Shift from Paper-Based Health Records to Electronic Health Records
- Engineering Greater Resilience or Radical Transhuman Enhancement?
- The Historical Idea of a Better Race
- Global Governance in Human Embryonic Stem Cell Science: Standardisation and Bioethics in Research and Patenting
- Discussion
- Letter from Utopia
- Letter to Utopia
- Book Review
- Review of Biotechnology and the Human Good
- Review of The Regulation of Cyberspace by Andrew Murray
- Review of Nanoethics
- Editorial
- Brains, Trains and Automobiles: An Editorial
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Article
- Death in Traffic: Why Are the Ethical Issues Ignored?
- The Ethics of Autonomous Military Robots
- Privacy, Data Protection, and the Unprecedented Challenges of Ambient Intelligence
- The Legal and Ethical Changes in the NHS Landscape Accompanying the Policy Shift from Paper-Based Health Records to Electronic Health Records
- Engineering Greater Resilience or Radical Transhuman Enhancement?
- The Historical Idea of a Better Race
- Global Governance in Human Embryonic Stem Cell Science: Standardisation and Bioethics in Research and Patenting
- Discussion
- Letter from Utopia
- Letter to Utopia
- Book Review
- Review of Biotechnology and the Human Good
- Review of The Regulation of Cyberspace by Andrew Murray
- Review of Nanoethics
- Editorial
- Brains, Trains and Automobiles: An Editorial
