Enhancing Medicine? Should Medicine Be in the Business of Human Enhancement?

Abstract

The application of biomedical technology to human enhancement raises important philosophical, theological, and ethical questions. This paper focuses on questions relating to the practice of medicine: in particular, whether medicine should be in the business of human enhancement. I briefly outline the landscape of human enhancement, or better, anthropotechnics, and articulate a theological framework for the justification of biomedical research. I outline a theology of medicine in which vulnerability is recognised to be a fundamental feature of human existence, and care of various kinds is medicine’s primary response to it. In light of those theological perspectives, I seek to determine whether anthropotechnics and associated research is the proper concern of medicine. I close with some reflections on medicine, technology, and the commodification of the body in the late modern West.