Defining and Analyzing Disability in Human Enhancement

Abstract

Human Enhancement Technologies (HET) offer valuable assistance for individuals with disabilities. Alongside these opportunities, it is important to consider the ethics that inevitably emerge. The field of disability studies recognizes that disability is a key aspect of human experience and that the study of disability has important political, social, and economic implications for society as a whole, including both disabled and nondisabled people. This chapter raises ethical questions about HET for disability through review of the literature surrounding this topic. To evaluate the ethical implications of regulating enhancement technologies for disability, medical and social models of disability are applied towards select cases. This chapter responds to the work of select disability scholars (see Dolmage; Kerschbaum & Price; Meloncon & Oswal; Vidali) by characterizing ethical perspectives from medical and social lenses. While a medical interpretation of disability offers a stark and impersonal approach, a social interpretation offers a detailed and individualistic one. The majority of scholarship noted here favors the social model. The framework presented herein seeks to abide by the social model of disability. Since HET have become an ethically contested field of discourse today, this chapter divides the literature into the following sections: 1) definitions, distinctions, and challenges of medical and social models of disability; 2) ambiguity, authenticity, and the ab/normality construct; 3) forced privacy and the privilege to hide; and 4) recent trends in regulation and the ethics of development.