How Far Is Too Far With Human Enhancement?
By NATHAN DAY WILSON
Executive Director, Chautauqua-Wawasee
Didn’t you feel betrayed when Lance Armstrong was convicted of using performance-enhancing drugs? When steroid use prevented Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens from inclusion in the Baseball Hall of Fame, even with their clearly superior records, didn’t you think they got what they deserved? After all, it’s just wrong for athletes or anyone to use artificial means, such as performance-enhancing drugs, to go beyond their natural limits. Right?
Yet more than $12 billion was spent last year on elective, cosmetic surgeries. Some use Viagra to improve sexual performance; some use Ritalin for the off-label purpose of increased focus; some use antidepressants for brighter moods and less anxious outlooks.
Are those uses also just wrong? Or is it OK to use some procedures and pharmaceuticals to enhance us some times but not others. If so, which times and uses are allowable and which ones are not?
While you’re thinking about that, I’m going to have another cup of coffee. (Get it? I’m enhancing myself by drinking caffeine, but we don’t tend to question that enhancement.)
If the coffee thing wasn’t personal enough, let’s say my daughter, whom I love and for whom I want the best, and your son are competing for the only full ride scholarship to the world’s very best university. Let’s say we both know how to cognitively enhance our children. If you or I provide those enhancements for our children, are we cheating? Or, if we do not take advantage of those enhancements for our children, are we being bad parents? If the enhancements are so expensive only I can buy them, is it just tough luck for your son? Or, should my daughter not be allowed to utilize them because your son cannot afford them?
Where should we draw the lines for human enhancement technologies? When are they cheating? Will only the rich benefit? Is enhancement not only permissible, but sometimes a moral duty?
Within five years, these will not only be interesting questions — they will be inescapable ones. They are, at once, about public policy, ethics, funding, religious and more.
On April 23, there is a great way to learn and discuss these and other issues. Chautauqua-Wawasee is hosting an evening event, “The Promise and Peril of Human Enhancement: Will Technology Put an End to Disability?” at the Oakwood Resort Events Center.
For this event, Chautauqua-Wawasee is bringing to Indiana the international award-winning film, “FIXED: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement.” The film investigates our drive to be “better than human” and the radical technological innovations intended to take us there.
Before the film there will be a buffet dinner, catered by Oakwood. After the film, there will be a panel discussion with the film’s director, as well as nationally known experts Dr. Eric Meslin of the IU Center for Bioethics, Dr. Jason Eberl of the Marian University College of Osteopathic Medicine, and Dr. Ron Turner of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. I will moderate the panel.
To learn more about the April 23 event, go to www.chqw.org, call (574) 518-1094, stop by Oakwood Resort, 702 E. Lake View Road, Syracuse, or contact me using the information below.
Wilson is executive director of Chautauqua-Wawasee. Follow him on Twitter: @nathandaywilson.
Related article: Chautauqua-Wawasee Hosts Event On Technology and Disability