Is It Ethical To Use Enhancement Technologies To Make Us Better Than Well?

In a provocative debate in this month's PLoS Medicine, the premier open-access medical journal, two of America's foremost medical ethicists, Arthur Caplan and Carl Elliott, lay out the pros and cons respectively of these new enhancement technologies.

Caplan, who chairs the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania School Of Medicine, says that "nobody is perfect--but why not try to be better?" He argues that it is in our human nature to strive for self-improvement and he sees real value in using technology to "enhance our vision, memory, learning skills, immunity, or metabolism." What's more, says Caplan, "putting the brakes on biologically driven human betterment would have real consequences for science. Some lines of research would be slowed or restricted." There is no reason why we "should not try to improve the biological design with which we are endowed."

But Elliot, Associate Professor at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota, and author of the book Better Than Well, worries "about the larger social effects of embracing medical enhancement technologies too enthusiastically." For example, athletes taking steroids may improve their own ability but they set off "a steroid arms race" that could destroy their sport. Manufacturers of enhancement technologies "will usually exploit the blurry line between enhancement and treatment in order to sell drugs." Citing the story of the diet drug Fen-Phen, Elliot says that "an alarming number of supposedly risk-free enhancements have later been associated with unanticipated side effects."

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Citation: Caplan A, Elliott C (2004) Is it ethical to use enhancement technologies to make us better than well? PLoS Med 1(3): e52.