Human Enhancement: Enhancing Health or Harnessing Happiness?

Hofmann, Bjørn

doi:10.1007/s11673-018-9888-z

Cited by 7 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…Medical enhancements raise issues of equity, justice, how to assess future benefits and harms, and how to set limits. They call for reflections on naturalness, on the therapy-enhancement-distinction, on the relationship between health and disease, and on the basic conception of goodness in medicine [ 59 , 60 ].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of philosophy and ethics at the edges of medicine

Hofmann

2021

Philos Ethics Humanit Med

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Background The edge metaphor is ubiquitous in describing the present situation in the world, and nowhere is this as clearly visible as in medicine. “The edge of medicine” has become the title of books, scholarly articles, media headlines, and lecture series and seems to be imbued with hype, hope, and aversion. In order better to understand what is at stake at “the edge of medicine” this article addresses three questions: What does “the edge of medicine” mean in contemporary debates on modern medicine? What are the challenges “on the edge of medicine” (in these various meanings of “on the edge”)? How can philosophy and ethics contribute with addressing these challenges? Methods Literature searches in PubMed and Google Scholar are used to identify uses of the phrase “the edge of medicine” while conventional content analysis is used to analyze meanings of and challenges with “the edge of medicine.” These results are then investigated with respect to how philosophy and ethics can address the identified challenges. Results The literature reveals that “the edge of medicine” has many meanings, such as: Border; Margin (of life); Frontier; Forefront; Fringes; Plunge (abyss); Brink (verge); Conflict; and Balancing. In general, the various meanings address four basic challenges: setting limits, keeping control, make meaning, and handling conflicts or aporias. The analysis of each of the meanings of “the edge of medicine” identifies a wide range of important and urgent tasks for the humanities in general, and for philosophy and ethics in particular: 1) clarifying concepts; 2) clarifying assumptions and premises of arguments, methods, advice, and decisions; 3) elaborate new concepts and new theories; 4) conceptualize and handle uncertainty, moral regret, and residue; 5) reveal “the emperor’s new clothes;” 6) identify trends and reflect on their implications; 7) demarcation; and 8) reflecting on goodness in medicine. Conclusion The phrase “the edge of medicine” expresses a wide range of challenges for modern health care. Together with other disciplines philosophy and ethics can and should make crucial contributions at “the edge of medicine,” which is where the future of human beings and societies is created and formed.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of philosophy and ethics at the edges of medicine

Hofmann

2021

Philos Ethics Humanit Med

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“…Contrary to what authors such as Harris [9,10], Koch [11], Melo-Martin [12], and Hofmann [8,13] argue, new technologies that facilitate the enhancement of dispositions, capabilities, and skills need to set limits in the face of traditional distinctions such as therapy-improvement, health-illness, capabilities-disabilities. Therefore, what is at stake is not that enhancement would be based on vague or semantically imprecise conceptions, but the way we deal in a normative manner with some concepts in the sphere of public discussions.…”

Section: Dissecting the Vague Concept Of 'Enhancement'mentioning

confidence: 91%

“…And despite this vagueness, there seems to be a tendency in the literature to define that the objective of human life should be thought in terms of what is greater, stronger, faster, smarter, or even more resilient. Hofmann [8] (p5) stated that "human enhancement does not challenge health when defined in terms of the ability to set new norms in response to challenges of the situation, for example, when increasing human margins to specific diseases through immunization". The problem with this argument is that "increasing the margin of tolerance", as subsequently complemented by Hofmann, may be a disguised way to cure the fear of death as well.…”

Section: Dissecting the Vague Concept Of 'Enhancement'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Human Enhancement: Perfection, Desire and Capabilities

Peruzzo¹

2023

GJIDD

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Human enhancement theses are epistemologically confusing and ethically challenging; they have been triggering a wide variety of academic and public debates. The present paper is aimed at classifying the different types of arguments supporting the debate on human enhancement, which, in particular, have important implications for the concept of health. Therefore, contrary to a trend in human enhancement literature that points out perfection as the milestone to improve the lives of human beings, this study shows that this scenario is intrinsically linked to inconsistent, theoretically poor issues.

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“…Moreover, emerging biotechnologies, such as personalized medicine, gene editing, and artificial intelligence, may be forceful tools to promote human positive wellbeing. However, given limited resources, it is contested whether positive wellbeing (e.g., happiness) should be the primary goal of medicine [85,91,92]. As there still are so many individuals with pain and suffering that can be addressed by healthcare, it can infringe the principle of justice to promote the positive wellbeing of a selected group of persons who are considered to be healthy.…”

Section: From Alleviating Pain To Promoting Pleasurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to such approaches, medicine should stick to the treatment of disease (and abstain from enhancement of health) in order to (re-)establish natural human functioning (and abstain from improvement). However, naturalness can mean many things [94][95][96] and reference to nature may not provide robust normative guidance [97,98]. The same problem occurs when we try to use the therapy-enhancement distinction to restrict the moral expansion of medicine.…”

Section: Aligning Medicine With Its Basic Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing the moral expansion of medicine

Hofmann

2022

BMC Med Ethics

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Science and technology have vastly expanded the realm of medicine. The numbers of and knowledge about diseases has greatly increased, and we can help more people in many more ways than ever before. At the same time, the extensive expansion has also augmented harms, professional responsibility, and ethical concerns. While these challenges have been studied from a wide range of perspectives, the problems prevail. This article adds value to previous analyses by identifying how the moral imperative of medicine has expanded in three ways: (1) from targeting experienced phenomena, such as pain and suffering, to non-experienced phenomena (paraclinical signs and indicators); (2) from addressing present pain to potential future suffering; and (3) from reducing negative wellbeing (pain and suffering) to promoting positive wellbeing. These expansions create and aggravate problems in medicine: medicalization, overdiagnosis, overtreatment, risk aversion, stigmatization, and healthism. Moreover, they threaten to infringe ethical principles, to distract attention and responsibility from other competent agents and institutions, to enhance the power and responsibility of professionals, and to change the professional-beneficiary relationship. In order to find ways to manage the moral expansion of medicine, four traditional ways of setting limits are analyzed and dismissed. However, basic asymmetries in ethics suggest that it is more justified to address people’s negative wellbeing (pain and suffering) than their positive wellbeing. Moreover, differences in epistemology, indicate that it is less uncertain to address present pain and suffering than future wellbeing and happiness. Based on these insights the article concludes that the moral imperative of medicine has a gradient from pain and suffering to wellbeing and happiness, and from the present to the future. Hence, in general present pain and suffering have normative priority over future positive wellbeing.

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Human Enhancement: Enhancing Health or Harnessing Happiness?

Cited by 7 publications

References 64 publications

The role of philosophy and ethics at the edges of medicine

The role of philosophy and ethics at the edges of medicine

Human Enhancement: Perfection, Desire and Capabilities

Managing the moral expansion of medicine

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