Inquiring into Human Enhancement

Interdisciplinary and International Perspectives

Sylvie Allouche, Jean Gayon, Michela Marzano, Jérôme Goffette, Simone Bateman

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137530073
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Human enhancement has become a major concern in debates about the future of contemporary societies. This interdisciplinary book is devoted to clarifying the underlying ambiguities of these debates, and to proposing novel ways of exploring what human enhancement means and understanding what practices, goals and justifications it entails.

Part I

Human Enhancement: What Do We Mean?

1

The Concept and Practices of Human Enhancement: What Is at Stake?

Simone Bateman and Jean Gayon

Human enhancement has generated a considerable amount of debate, with little concern as to what precisely is meant by this term and to what concrete practices it refers. Some authors, mostly philosophers, have offered formal definitions of the term; many others have often simply provided working definitions or based their reflections on an implicit understanding of the term (Menuz et al., 2013). We do not intend here to propose yet another definition, but to identify and characterize the contexts in which new uses of the term enhancement have emerged and to provide, on this basis, some points of reference as to what is at stake.

Our investigation, based on the collaboration of a sociologist and a philosopher and historian of science, led us to identify in the literature on human enhancement three distinct uses of the term, according to that aspect of humanness that is put forth as the aim of enhancement: improvement of human capacities, self-improvement and improvement of human nature (Bateman and Gayon, 2012). These three layers of meaning are not commonly distinguished in the literature, even though they are conceptually distinct; in fact, they tend to be amalgamated in conventional usage.

In trying to describe each one of these uses, we have tried to keep in mind the following questions: does the term human enhancement refer to forms of improvement that are novel and distinct from traditional practices for improving human beings? Does the term human enhancement imply changes in our subjective views as to what is meant by improvement? What moral and political commitments underlie contemporary controversies about human enhancement? Indeed, our analysis of the varying contexts in which present uses of the term have emerged has strengthened our initial intuition that the concept and practices of human enhancement are a specific and distinct phenomenon.

Improving human capacities

In 1993, LeRoy Walters, a philosopher and specialist in religious studies and ethics, gave a talk at the Hastings Center, a pioneering bioethics research institution in the United States, in which he raised questions concerning the moral acceptability of using ‘genetic interventions’ to enhance various human capabilities. He submitted ‘four scenarios of genetic enhancement’, an issue that he cautiously qualified as ‘a taboo topic in current discussions of ethics and human genetics’: genetic interventions might one day be used to improve the immune system, to decrease the need for sleep, to increase long-term memory, and to reduce the aggressive tendencies of humans while increasing their inclination to generosity.¹ Walters’ thoughts on this issue, that he would later call ‘enhancement genetic engineering’ were part of a larger philosophical project that he was conducting on gene therapy (Walters and Palmers, 1997). His lecture provoked vivid controversies that went way beyond the issue of genetic enhancement. This led the Hastings Center to request and obtain, in 1995, funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a project entitled ‘On the prospect of technologies aimed at the enhancement of human capacities’. The collective volume that resulted from the Hastings Center project – Enhancing Human Traits, edited by the philosopher Erik Parens and published in 1998 – was one of the first books to highlight this particular meaning of the term ‘enhancement’.

The Hastings Center event thus appears as a significant milestone in the emergence of ‘human enhancement’ as a conventional term and an independent topic of ethical concern. There are two reasons for this. First, the event emphasizes the fact that the debate about practices later to be qualified as enhancements seems to have originated in the field of bioethics,² where there was already prior ethical debate on the social implications of biomedical practices derived from advances in the life sciences:

The Institute [that is, the Hastings Center³] was founded in 1969 to fill the need for sustained, professional investigation of the social impact of the biological revolution. Remarkable advances were being made in organ transplantation, human experimentation, prenatal diagnosis of genetic disease, prolongation of life and control of human behaviour – and each advance posed specific problems requiring that scientific knowledge be matched with ethical insight ... . The Institute’s approach was to bring together from many disciplines concerned professionals committed to meeting several times a year over a period of years, with ‘homework’ in between. These 75 Fellows ... make up four groups, each concentrating on a specific area: (1) behaviour control, (2) population control, (3) genetic engineering and counselling and (4) death and dying. (Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences, 1973)

Indeed, the practices that we presently consider as forms of human enhancement are for the most part based on medical applications of biotechnology that lend themselves easily to a relatively stable functional classification, as exemplified by the table of contents of the book Enhancing Human Capacities (Savulescu et al., 2011): improvement of physical capabilities, cognitive abilities (perception, attention, memory and reasoning), mood, lifespan and quality of aging, and moral improvement. But what has made the enhancement of capacities a distinct issue is awareness that many therapeutic means can be used for non-therapeutic purposes (Rothman and Rothman, 2003; Goffette, 2006; see also Goffette, Chapter 2, and Menuz, Chapter 3, of this book). This is an old and familiar issue both in medical practice and in pharmacology, as illustrated by the case of amphetamines, originally developed in the context of research on molecules affecting blood pressure (Rasmussen, 2008). In the 1990s, the acceptability of non-therapeutic uses of medication became a regular issue in bioethical debates. What should one think, for example, about the prescription of growth hormone to children who are simply a little shorter than others? In 1996, 40 per cent of growth hormone prescriptions in the United States were for ‘off-label’ use (Sandel, 2007, p. 17). Should one use drugs, usually prescribed to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, to improve the memory of students or chess players (Frankford, 1998, p. 71)? These situations, and many others, have led to the development of a more systematic exploration of the distinction between the treatment of disease and the improvement of capacities – a constitutive element of the debate on human enhancement.

The Hastings Center event appears as a significant milestone for a second reason: it points to the fact that the debate about human enhancement seems to have originally emerged from bioethical discussions about the acceptability of genetic engineering (the third area of concern in the Hastings Center’s original agenda). This practice, which evokes the perils of eugenics, was often addressed by philosophers in the field of applied reproductive ethics, such as Jonathan Glover (1984) or John Harris (1992). However, prior to 1990, the term genetic enhancement was not common in philosophical debates, even though one could find frequent reference to this term in the context of research on gene transfer in plant or animal microorganisms. But as the debate over human enhancement took hold, the meaning of the term evolved from an explicit reference to the controversial practice of genetic engineering to a notion encompassing a far broader range of practices, not limited exclusively to the biological sciences and biotechnologies.

Indeed, it is around the 1990s that the notion of technological convergence appeared, initially with reference to the digitalization of communication technology, and later extended to the other forms of technology. The term ‘converging technologies’ is now more frequently associated with the so-called ‘NBIC revolution’, that is the convergence of nanotechnology–biotechnology–computer science–cognitive sciences, as it is referred to in a report prepared by Mihail Roco and William Bainbridge for the US National Science Foundation in June 2002 (and later published in 2003):

We are living through two tremendous patterns of scientific–technological change: an overlapping of a computer–communications revolution and a nanotechnology–biology–information revolution. Each alone would be powerful; combined, the two patterns guarantee that we will be in constant transition as one breakthrough or innovation follows another.

Those who study, understand and invest in these patterns will live dramatically better than those who ignore them. Nations that focus their systems of learning, healthcare, economic growth and national security on these changes will have healthier, more knowledgeable people in more productive jobs creating greater wealth and prosperity and living in greater safety through more modern, more powerful intelligence and defense capabilities (Roco and Bainbridge, 2003).

In 2004, the European Commission also gathered a group of experts around the theme ‘Foresighting the New Technology Wave’. Their report on this issue, published under the title Converging Technologies – Shaping the Future of European Societies, identified previous or ongoing research programmes involving converging technologies and defined the term as ‘enabling technologies and knowledge systems that enable each other in the pursuit of a common goal.’ (European Commission, 2004, p. 17).

Converging technologies, and the powerful research incentives behind them, have consequently expanded our overall conception of possible enhancement practices, thus releasing the concept of enhancement from its exclusive association with biomedical technologies, especially genetic, to which it had been attached until the 1990s. Indeed, it prepared the way for the dissemination of ideas and debate that go far beyond the bioethical debate.⁴

It is thus striking that even in as recent a book as Beyond Humanity: The Ethics of Biomedical Enhancements (2011), philosopher Allen Buchanan should choose biomedical enhancements as his principal concept; this seems to situate his own reflections within the bioethical tradition. The original emphasis on improvement of capacities appears clearly in his definition: ‘ ... interventions that directly improve human capabilities by the application of technologies to the human body or to human gametes or embryos.’ (Buchanan, 2011b, p. 43). However, in a smaller book, Better than Human: the Promise and Perils of Enhancing Ourselves (2011), written and published later the same year, Buchanan distinguishes ‘enhancement’ as a general term from his concept of ‘biomedical enhancement’. He defines enhancement itself as ‘ ... an intervention – a human action of any kind – that improves some capacity (or characteristic) that normal human beings ordinarily have, or more radically, that produces a new one.’ (2011a, p. 5).

Even if Buchanan’s two books provide an impressive analysis of the landscape of the human enhancement debate, his definitions do not fully capture the full extent of its practices. ‘Human enhancement’ as used today is indeed narrower than ‘a human action of any kind – that improves some capacity ... ’ (2011a, p. 5, our emphasis); however, with the emergence of converging technologies, the term embraces far more than biomedical practices. Nevertheless, Buchanan’s terminology points to three important features of the modern debate on ‘human enhancement’: (1) the explicit aim to improve this or that capacity; (2) the idea that this requires direct and deliberate interventions on the human body; and (3) the idea that these interventions involve the use of technology.

Self-Improvement

In the same year that LeRoy Walters gave his lecture at the Hastings Center, psychiatrist Peter Kramer published a book called Listening to Prozac (1993). Kramer had been led to question the nature and effects of Prozac in depressive patients, after they began reporting that they felt not only relieved but ‘better than well’. He coined the term ‘cosmetic pharmacology’, thus making an analogy with cosmetic surgery, to describe the use of psychopharmacology for personality modification. Kramer himself did not use the word enhancement in his book, but in 2003, philosopher and bioethicist Carl Elliot did, in a book entitled Better than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream. In this book, prefaced by Kramer, Elliot incorporates Kramer’s views on psychopharmacology and extends them to a variety of ‘enhancement technologies’ aimed at improving one’s appearance and sense of well-being (Prozac, Ritalin, Botox, Viagra, growth hormone, cosmetic surgery, sexual reassignment surgery, and so on).

Kramer and Elliot approach the human enhancement debate from a different perspective: their examples point to the notion of self-improvement, thus bringing to the debate the interpretation of enhancement practices by those who wish to make use of them. Self-improvement is not a structured doctrine but a subjective posture: the mental world of those who aspire to be enhanced is in most cases focused on the vision the individual wishes to give of him or herself, or as sociologist Erving Goffman (1959) would have said, on the presentation of s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• Part I  Human Enhancement: What Do We Mean?
• Part II  Learning from Enhancement Practices
• Part III  Visions of the Future: Lessons from Art and Fiction
• Index