1 - Introduction
Summary
But what do we want in man? Is it physical excellence, mental ability, creative power, or artistic genius? We must select certain ideals that we want to raise.
(Franz Boas, Anthropology and Modern Life)In 1998, the eminent molecular biologist and Nobel laureate James Watson challenged critics of non-therapeutic human germ-line interventions by posing the rhetorical question: “if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we do it?” Indeed, why shouldn't we? Put like this, it seems decidedly irrational to object. It seems quite obvious that there cannot be anything wrong with making better human beings, for how can it possibly be wrong to create something that is better? Attempts to make better human beings by means of biomedical interventions are commonly referred to as “human enhancement’. Even when it is used as an umbrella term covering what are thought to be augmentations of a variety of particular human abilities (such as the ability to concentrate, to stay awake or to remember), the very use of the term “human enhancement” in connection with these interventions gives reason to suppose that it is not only a particular ability that is meant to be improved, but also, with and through that ability, the human being as such, that is, the human as a human. This interpretation may not strike one as immediately compelling.
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- Information
- Better Humans?Understanding the Enhancement Project, pp. 1 - 12Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2013