Human Enhancement Technologies Research Articles

The legal construction of privacy and data protection

In this contribution, the authors explore the differences and interplays between the rights to privacy and data protection. They describe the two rights and come to the conclusion that they differ both formally and substantially, though overlaps are not to be excluded. Given these different yet not mutually exclusive scopes they then apply the rights to three case-studies (body-scanners, human enhancement technologies, genome sequencing), highlighting in each case potential legal differences concerning the scope of the rights, the role of consent, and the meaning of the proportionality test. Finally, and on the basis of these cases, the authors propose paths for articulating the two rights using the qualitative and quantitative thresholds of the two rights, which leads them to rethink the relationship between privacy and data protection, and ultimately, the status of data protection as a fundamental right.

Introduction: Of Texts and Classrooms

This special issue of the Journal of Medical Humanities takes as its motivation the following two assertions: texts matter, and what we do with texts in our classrooms matters. The critical essays and pedagogical examples presented herein testify to the importance of these assertions for medical humanities educators seeking to prepare their students to be engaged participants in the healthcare system. Many of the pieces in this special issue began as conversations during a 3-day seminar at Hiram College’s Center for Literature and Medicine in summer 2011. The Center has hosted such gatherings for over 20 years, bringing together educators, practitioners, artists, and students committed to constructive dialogue and the lively exchange of disciplinary perspectives on topics ranging from narrative bioethics and human enhancement technologies to aging and global healthcare justice. The initial support for these seminars came from a National Endowment for the Humanities grant. That early and crucial funding made it possible to establish Hiram College as a meeting place for the kinds of conversations that took place in 2011. Those conversations grew out of three simple but fundamental questions—Why?, What?, and How?— we posed to seminar participants regarding medical humanities pedagogy generally and the role of texts within this pedagogy more specifically. Over the course of 3 days, we discussed the reasons, materials, and methods central to our roles as educators in medical humanities classrooms. In this issue, we include both theoretical examinations of medical humanities pedagogy—the what—as well as practical demonstrations—the how. During the summer seminar, participants found much value and inspiration in practical pedagogy demonstrations for the ways they focused attention on the payoff—the why—gained by meaningful uses of various kinds of texts across different educational settings. Our hope is that the pieces selected for inclusion in this special issue will prove equally useful for readers in healthcare education. Close reading, as a common approach, unites the diverse genres and settings represented not only in the pedagogical examples but also in the critical essays. As Anne Hudson Jones J Med Humanit (2013) 34:413–414 DOI 10.1007/s10912-013-9254-4

Continuidad de las innovaciones tecnológicas: el reto de las intervenciones biomédicas de mejora humana

One of the most recent debates among ethicists concerning the course of technological innovation is the human enhancement debate, which has been generated by the possibility of pushing human limits further by using the power of science. Many philosophers have warned us about the dangers of modifying human nature in a technical way. However, others argue that there are no morally salient differences between enhancing technical interventions and other kinds of technologies that human beings have taken to be usual for them. This paper shall critically analyze this argument. The main aim of this critical analysis is twofold, first, to show that people who make this argument are biased in several ways and, second, to claim that a more accurate and restricted definition of human enhancement technologies is needed.

Enhanced Warfighters: Risk, Ethics, and Policy

The United States military is making substantial investments to develop technologies that would enhance the ability of warfighters to complete their missions safely and effectively. Driven by neuroscience, biotechnology, nanotechnology, robotics, and other emerging technologies, this research includes combating sleep deprivation, improving cognitive performance, increasing strength, reducing muscle fatigue, and other enhancements to the human body and mind. As with other emerging military technologies, such as robotics and cyber-capabilities, human enhancement technologies challenge existing laws and policy, as well as underlying ethical values. But while the implications of human enhancement generally have been widely discussed, little analysis currently exists for the military context — specifically operational, ethical, and legal implications of enhancing warfighters, such as: How safe should these human enhancements and new medical treatments be prior to their deployment (considering recent controversies such as mandatory anthrax vaccinations)? Must enhancements be reversible or temporary (considering that most warfighters will return to society as civilians)? Could enhancements count as “biological weapons” under the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (considering that the term is not clearly defined)? This report begins an investigation into these and other issues in order to identify problems that policymakers and society may need to confront. We start with an analysis of international and domestic law, military policy, bioethics, and risk assessments. Then we offer a new framework for evaluating human enhancement technologies in a military context. As an initial model, we also discuss further considerations — related to character and honor, as well as broader social impacts — that can be integrated later into this evaluative framework.

Information beyond the forum: Motivations, strategies, and impacts of citizen participants seeking information during a consensus conference

During traditional consensus conferences, organizers control the formal information available to participants-by compiling structured background materials and recruiting expert panelists. Less formally, however, participants are encouraged to bring their own experiences into the deliberations, and in doing so, they often seek outside information. We explore this heretofore understudied phenomenon of information seeking during a deliberative event: the U.S. National Citizens' Technology Forum (2008), which addressed the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science on the potential development of human-enhancement technologies. Through interviews with participants and observation of in-person and online deliberations, we identify outside information-seeking strategies and motivations. Our study demonstrates that conceptualizing models of deliberation as standalone settings of communication exchange ignores the reality of the complex information environment from which deliberative participants draw when making sense of technical issues. Future citizen deliberations must incorporate outside information seeking in the design of the exercises.

The Humanity of the Human Body

The importance of the human body within traditional bioethical debates is amplified within the field of technoethics as scholars attempt to grapple with conflicting views of what it means to be human and what attributes are core to human beings within the era of human enhancement technologies. A technoethical perspective of the human being is presented to highlight defining characteristics of humans within a technological society. Under this framework, symbolic capacity and technical ability are assumed to be grounded within the free and ethical nature of human beings. Ideas from Modernity and Postmodernity are used to demonstrate the need for a more encompassing view of humans which accommodates both its technical and ethical dimensions. The concepts of homotechnicus and cybersapien are introduced to help provide a more unitary vision of the human being and the priority of ethics over technics within this technological society.

Knowing What to Wish For

Through an analysis of the appeals to human dignity used by bioconservatives to criticize transhumanist proposals for aggressive development of human enhancement technologies, I identify an implicit tension within such appeals that renders them internally incoherent and ultimately unpersuasive. However, I point the way to a more compelling objection to radical human enhancement available to bioconservatives, a version of the argument from hubris that employs an Aristotelian account of prudential virtue in order to challenge the normative content of the liberal transhumanist vision. The vulnerability of the transhumanist project to this argument is underscored by Ortega y Gasset’s critique of technological mass culture, in which he suggests that humans may increasingly lack the prudential virtues needed to identify and authentically choose those ends worthy of technological pursuit.

Ethical Blowback from Emerging Technologies

The military is a major driver of technological, world-changing innovations which, like the Internet, often have unpredictable dual uses and widespread civilian impact (‘blowback’). Ethical and policy concerns arising from such technologies, therefore, are not limited to military affairs, but can have great implications for society at large as well. This paper will focus on two technology areas making headlines at present: human enhancement technologies and robotics, representing both biological and technological upgrades to the military. The concerns we will raise are about (1) the unintended effects that these technologies could have on society and (2) the possibly self-defeating nature of these military programs in making war itself more, rather than less likely to occur. Given that society also can influence military programs (e.g., through civil protests) it is important for the military to attend to such concerns.

Health, Luck, and Justice

Health, Luck, and Justice

Defending human enhancement technologies: unveiling normativity

Recent advances in biotechnologies have led to speculations about enhancing human beings. Many of the moral arguments presented to defend human enhancement technologies have been limited to discussions of their...

Human Enhancement and Values

Human enhancement and its moral and ethical implications have emerged in recent years as a rapidly developing topic. For centuries humans wanted to be as good as possible and tried to achieve it through various means. With the development of advanced technology we invented new ways to improve and perfect our skills and talents. Nowadays, some forms of enhancement became an inseparable part of our life. Most of us begin each day with a cup of coffee, because we are aware that caffeine stimulates our brain, we wear contact lenses to see better and take multivitamin products to supplement our diet. A new vision of health is being created, in which there is no end point but only a possibility of constant improvement. Human enhancement is not only an issue about our bodies and brains but also about how our morality and ethics will look like in the future. Human enhancement technologies already started to affect our values and the moral and practical order of things, to which we got used to, may be soon changed. In this paper I identify values such as the concept of God and Nature, the art of living, the spirit of sport, own culture and imperfection and prove that human enhancements will be a serious threat to them. In my opinion, there is a borderline we should not cross when dealing with human enhancement technologies, as the triumph of scientific humanism may bring with it the obsolescence of man.

The ethics of using engineering to enhance athletic performance

Advances in sports engineering have been shown to contribute to the general trend in improving athletic performance. Whilst the advances made by sports engineers have made sport safer, more enjoyable and more accessible, they have also raised significant concerns about fairness and athlete passiveness. During an extensive programme of public dialog events on the role of technology in sport, issues raised were found to be similar to those commonly associated with other human enhancement technologies such as biological and chemical ‘doping’. It is argued that contrary to a large body of public opinion, sports engineering fundamentally differs from banned enhancement technologies; and that new advances should only be proscribed if they give the athlete an advantage over the sport.

State Neutrality and the Ethics of Human Enhancement Technologies

Robust technological enhancement of core cognitive capacities is now a realistic possibility. From the perspective of neutralism, the view that justifications for public policy should be neutral between reasonable conceptions of the good, only members of a subset of the ethical concerns serve as legitimate justifications for public policy regarding robust technological enhancement. This paper provides a framework for the legitimate use of ethical concerns in justifying public policy decisions regarding these enhancement technologies by evaluating the ethical concerns that arise in the context of testing such technologies on nonhuman animals. Traditional issues in bioethics, as well as novel concerns such as the possibility of moral status enhancement, are evaluated from the perspective of neutralism.

Toward Regulating Human Enhancement Technologies

John Basl (2010) in his valuable article “State Neutrality and the Ethics of Human Enhancement Technologies” has expertly elucidated one type of ground for the rationalization of public policy, nam...

Ethics of Human Enhancement: 25 Questions & Answers

Abstract This paper presents the principal findings from a three-year research project funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) on ethics of human enhancement technologies. To help untangle this ongoing debate, we have organized the discussion as a list of questions and answers, starting with background issues and moving to specific concerns, including: freedom & autonomy, health & safety, fairness & equity, societal disruption, and human dignity. Each question-and-answer pair is largely self-contained, allowing the reader to skip to those issues of interest without affecting continuity.

Neoliberalising Bioethics: Bias, Enhancement and Economistic Ethics

In bioethics there is an ongoing debate about the ethical case for human enhancement through new biomedical technologies. In this debate there are both supporters and opponents of human enhancement technologies such as genetic improvements of cognitive abilities (eg, intelligence). The supporters argue that human enhancement will lead to healthier and therefore better lives, meaning that any delays to the introduction of such technologies is problematic. In contrast, the opponents argue that new technologies will not solve problems such as inequality and social justice. In order to overcome opposition to human enhancement, Bostrom and Ord have outlined a test to evaluate ethical arguments for "status quo bias" or what they call "intuitive judgements" in the assessment of human enhancement. This article is a response to their paper in which I raise a number of problems with their position, particularly with their "status quo bias" test and the incorporation of economistic thinking into their ethical arguments.

Patenting Human Evolution

Patent protection for genetic enhancements would tend to spur genetic innovation, but would tend to limit access to those genetic enhancements through discriminatory mechanisms such as price and favoritism. The patent system would likely ensure high rates of genetic enhancement innovation, research, and development, efficiently mediate access to genetic enhancements, but would also likely allow access to genetic enhancements to fewer members of society. Most importantly, the patent system has the potential to promote the kinds of genetic enhancements that might lead to human evolutionary change. Public policy and the law must grapple with the implications of genetic enhancement before current technological possibilities become societal realities. The patent system is an odd candidate to become a substantial arbiter of parental decisions regarding genetic enhancement of their offspring. It is certain that the implications the patent system has for future human genetic enhancement should be subjected to thorough analysis and debate prior to the imminent arrival of human genetic enhancement technologies. Otherwise, patent law may drive human evolution in directions either unplanned - or worse - undesired.

Rethinking Enhancement in Sport

This article explores the arguments surrounding the use of human enhancement technologies in sport, arguing for a reconceptualization of the doping debate. First, it develops an overview and critique of the legislative structures on enhancement. Subsequently, a conceptual framework for understanding the role of technological effects in sport is advanced. Finally, two case studies (hypoxic chambers and gene transfer) receive specific attention, through which it is argued that human enhancement technologies can enrich the practice of elite sports rather than diminish them. In conclusion, it is argued that elite sports are at a pivotal moment in their history as an increasing range of enhancements makes less relevant the protection of the natural human through anti-doping.

IN DEFENSE OF POSTHUMAN DIGNITY

Positions on the ethics of human enhancement technologies can be (crudely) characterized as ranging from transhumanism to bioconservatism. Transhumanists believe that human enhancement technologies should be made widely available, that individuals should have broad discretion over which of these technologies to apply to themselves, and that parents should normally have the right to choose enhancements for their children-to-be. Bioconservatives (whose ranks include such diverse writers as Leon Kass, Francis Fukuyama, George Annas, Wesley Smith, Jeremy Rifkin, and Bill McKibben) are generally opposed to the use of technology to modify human nature. A central idea in bioconservativism is that human enhancement technologies will undermine our human dignity. To forestall a slide down the slippery slope towards an ultimately debased 'posthuman' state, bioconservatives often argue for broad bans on otherwise promising human enhancements. This paper distinguishes two common fears about the posthuman and argues for the importance of a concept of dignity that is inclusive enough to also apply to many possible posthuman beings. Recognizing the possibility of posthuman dignity undercuts an important objection against human enhancement and removes a distortive double standard from our field of moral vision.